Victim

As many people now know first hand, thanks to the Covid lockdowns, there are few things in life as distressing as being stuck at a distance when a loved one is in danger. As Michal Blasko’s film opens, traffic is moving at a crawl. The bus driver says it could be four hours before they reach their destination. Everybody is told to stay on the bus, but Irina (Vita Smachelyuk) refuses, getting her stuff and wandering down the road until she can blag a lift in a car going to the Czech Republic. Her son Igor (Gleb Kuchuk) is in surgery and she needs to be with him.

It’s a tense start to a film which will keep viewers on edge all the way through. Thankfully, when Irina arrives at the hospital, she finds Igor recovering. A friend explains that he was found by neighbours after being assaulted by three Roma youths. He’s been in surgery – a doctor will later explain that he has lost a kidney – and he’s exhausted, so doesn’t have much to say. A detective called Mr Novotny asks her some basic questions and assures her that he’ll be looking for the people who did this.

Over the next few days there are lots of offers of help from friends, neighbours, people she knows through her work as a housekeeper. She’s invited to go on television to put out a plea to possible witnesses, and though she’s hesitant, the thing takes on a life of its own. Somebody starts a Facebook event called March for Igor. Others raise concern about him and he assures her that he’s not a neo-Nazi, just a concerned citizen. Irina begins to realise how the situation could be exploited, but that’s not the worst of it, as it becomes increasingly apparent that there are inconsistencies in Igor’s story.

As the film proceeds, Irina finds herself increasingly out of her depth. On the one hand, the outpouring of sympathy and support – and cash – is extremely tempting given how exhausting her life heretofore has been as a single parent and as a Ukrainian immigrant struggling to get formal citizenship in her adopted country. On the other, those same circumstances mean that she’s terrified of being sent back to Ukraine. Public emotions are riding high and she’s aware of what could happen if they turned against her and her son. The arrest of a neighbour raises the stakes, and she tries to convince herself that somehow it will all blow over. Other people’s futures come to depend on the story that has been told, and as she struggles with her conscience, she begins to realise that no matter what she says or does, it may be impossible to undo what has been done.

The difficulties of defending the truth in the age of mass media are complicated here by questions about precisely how much value truth has when people want to believe something else. At the same time, Blasko examines the way in which receiving much needed aid has come to depend on having a politically convenient narrative. Placing responsibility is complex – Igor’s explanation is not unsympathetic – but Smachelyuk plays Irina as a haunted woman. It isn’t just the weight of her own conscience, which she tries to offload, but something terrifying in society which she has been made privy to and will never be able to unsee.

Blasko tells the story with a plainness which adds to its power, sometimes using news-style framing as if to remind us of the political moment which we’re living through. The tensions he’s addressing are ones which anyone in Europe or the US in the early 2020s will recognise. Grey skies and concrete buildings, small rooms and densely packed crowds create a sense of being in the belly of the beast. Irina has tried to ride it. Now it is all she can do to keep from being devoured.

Victim screened as part of the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival.