Ukraine, 1996. Five months before the moratorium on the death penalty, two old friends – a police detective and a forensic psychiatrist – investigate the murder of a colleague whose widow both of them loved when they were young. Immersed in memories of the past, they unconsciously create a future in which their children will have to live, reaping the fruits of their parents' lost hopes.

Ukraine’s 2025 Official Oscar Submission for Best International Feature, writer/director Philip Sotnychenko’s LA PALISIADA is a “visually compelling, formally inventive and challenging work” (The Film Verdict) that pulls viewers into the sometimes murky, always complex world of post-Soviet Ukraine.

DIRECTED BY PHILIP SOTNYCHENKO
UKRAINE | 2023 | UKRAINIAN, AZERBAIJANI AND RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES