BRAMA (THE GATEWAY)

BRAMA

By Volodymyr TYKHYY

DIRECTORY FILMS LLC - as PROD

Fantasy - Completed 2017

Inside the Chornobyl exclusion zone Grandma Prisa, the family matriarch, consorts with water nymphs, eats a diet filled with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and claims to have personally stabbed 12 SS soldiers to death during World War II.

Festivals
& Awards

Tallinn Black Nights IFF 2017
International competition
    • Year of production
    • 2017
    • Genres
    • Fantasy, Thriller
    • Countries
    • UKRAINE, USA
    • Languages
    • UKRANIAN
    • Budget
    • 0.6 - 1 M$
    • Duration
    • 106 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Volodymyr TYKHYY
    • Writer(s)
    • Pavlo ARIE
    • Producer(s)
    • Igor SAVYCHENKO (Directory Films), Marko SUPRUN (Bedlam Productions), Volodymyr TYKHYY, Volodymyr FILIPPOV, Dmytro KOZHEMA
    • Synopsis
    • Baba Prisa (Grandma Prisa) lives in an abandoned village in the Chornobyl exclusion zone together with her divorced and chronically ill daughter Slava and her mentally challenged grandson Vovchyk. They live off what the land around Chornobyl can provide with help from Prisa’s miserly Great Patriotic War pension. From time to time, the local Sheriff pays them a visit and Grandma Prisa treats his infertility with local herbs. After meeting the stalkers, Vovchyk rebels against his family and wants to move to Kyiv and meet women. As time goes by, this cycle of life gets sharper.
      Baba Prisa is no stranger to otherworldly phenomenon and occasionally consorts with mermaids living in the surrounding forrest. In the middle of the day she meets a forest nymph. According to legend, this is a forewarning of an early death. Baba Prisa has already “lived her life” and is not afraid of death. But Vovchyk also encounters the nymph during daylight. Despite Baba Prisa’s and Slava’s best effort to protect Vovchyk, he is seriously wounded when a group of poachers bully the boy.
      The Sheriff refuses to open a case: the poachers come from powerful families. There is no evidence of any wrongdoing — officially, Baba Prisa, Slava and Vovchyk don’t exist in the Chornobyl zone. Vovchyk’s injury gets worse by the hour. Baba Prisa pawns her Great Patriotic War medal of honor to get medicine for Vovchyk sending Slava to the city to buy it. With Slava gone, Baba Prisa prepares a ritual to take death away from her grandson. A frightened Sheriff interrupts her, explaining that he is looking for the now missing poachers who were searching for Baba Prisa “to make peace” but has only found their abandoned Hummer. With a knife to his throat, Baba Prisa attempts to convince the Sheriff to halt his investigation, or else. She then tries to persuade Death to take her life in exchange for leaving her grandson alive… Baba Prisa, Slava, Vovchyk and the Sheriff meet in the secret subway line connecting the Chornobyl zone with Kyiv as they recall the circumstances surrounding their own deaths.