Atlantis: Ukraine New Cinema Festival–Symposium Screening and Moderated Discussion

Saturday, March 28, 2026
Screening: 10:00 AM

Location:
Humanities Quadrangle, L01
320 York Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Free admission. No registration required.

Directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych
Ukraine | 2019 | 108 min | Ukrainian with English subtitles

Set in a near-future eastern Ukraine following the end of the war with Russia, Atlantis imagines a landscape marked by environmental devastation, psychological trauma, and the slow, uncertain work of rebuilding. The film follows a former soldier struggling to reintegrate into civilian life who eventually joins a volunteer mission tasked with recovering the bodies of those killed during the conflict. Through long, carefully composed shots and minimal dialogue, Valentyn Vasyanovych constructs a stark and haunting vision of a society grappling with the aftermath of violence while searching for the possibility of renewal.

Premiering in the Orizzonti section of the 76th Venice International Film Festival, Atlantis won the Orizzonti Award for Best Film, establishing Vasyanovych as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Ukrainian cinema. The film has since received numerous international awards and has been widely recognized for its powerful visual language and meditative approach to themes of war, memory, and ecological collapse.

This screening is part of the Ukraine New Cinema Festival–Symposium at Yale, a culminating event of the Ukraine New Cinema series, which over the past year has presented major works of contemporary Ukrainian cinema including Klondike (dir. Maryna Er Gorbach), This Rain Will Never Stop (dir. Alina Gorlova), The Tribe (dir. Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi), and Stop-Zemlia (dir. Kateryna Gornostai). The festival expands the series through screenings, scholarly conversations, and discussions with filmmakers.

Official trailer:
https://youtu.be/ZyIe9_YgfDA?si=Kz8DK9KO2R1zfaub

Co-sponsored by:
Yale Ukrainian Program · Yale Ukraine House · Slavic Department · The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund · Razom for Ukraine · Yale MacMillan Center Program in Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies · European Studies Council · Film & Media Studies · Yale Film Society · Penn State University