‘Under The Volcano’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir: Damian Kocur. Poland. 2024. 102 mins.

The internal pressures of a blended family are put under further stress by war in Damian Kocur’s immersive and timely drama. Enjoying the last day of their holiday to Tenerife, Ukrainian dad Roman (Roman Lutskyi) and his new wife Nastya (Anastasiia Karpienko) are a typical middle-class couple, while Roman’s daughter Sofia (Sofia Berezovska) is a classically bored teenager, more interested in her phone than soaking up the sun with her parents and young brother Fedir (Fedir Pugachov). The everyday holiday woes of a parking ticket here and a bitten tongue there will soon be swept away by the news that Russia has invaded their homeland.

Likely to catch the eye of distributors

As with his first feature Bread And Salt, Kocur – re-teaming with writer Marta Konarzewska – uses inner turmoil as a mirror to the frictions of the wider world. Poland’s entry for this year’s Best International Feature Oscar, Under The Volcano premiered in Toronto and is already making its presence felt on the festival circuit. The hot-button nature of the material coupled with its strong family element is likely to catch the eye of distributors further along the line.

The sense of the family’s sudden insecurity is stoked by the normality around them. Although they can’t go home, the hotel immediately tells them they will waive the cost of bed and board, leaving them in a sort of luxury limbo as they watch their country being bombarded from afar. Just because there’s a war on doesn’t mean that peace suddenly breaks out in the family either. If anything, the news from back home only intensifies Sofia’s issues. Although it’s never overtly indicated, there’s a sense that she feels her family has been invaded by an unwanted power, too. Question marks hang over what happens even if they do go back – will Roman enlist and what will be the implications if he does?

The days unfold episodically. Roman and Nastya try to keep the holiday vibe going for the kids but their tempers are shortened. Under The Volcano also captures the way the world keeps turning; the other holidaymakers in the bar conga to ’Guantanemera’, while the news reports also show the latest tragedy to befall a refugee boat. There are moments of happiness and connection for the family as well, with perhaps the most horrifying message of all being that anything can become normalised.

Even as a tense exploration of difficult family relationships, in the manner of Aftersun, this would be gripping, but Kocur continually nudges at the bigger picture. The introverted Sofia often wanders off from the others, video chatting to her friend under fire back home in Kyiv or encountering local teenagers and a young African refugee, Mike (Mike Mensah). The inclusion of Mike also nods obliquely to Europe’s two-tier system of sympathy for refugees, depending on their country of origin.

The camerawork from Nikita Kuzmenko is sensitive to the shifting moods of the family, loose as it races around in a moment of joy with Fedir, more cool and collected as it stares, like Sofia, out to sea watching waves crash over rocks. The sound design from Serhii Avdieiev, particularly of the natural elements such as the waves and the wind, also subtly brings home a sense of isolation. Several of the family conversations involving young Fedir feel more improvised than scripted, with unexpected talk of dinosaurs or birthday gifts lending an authentic air to the dynamics.

At one point, Mike and Sofia chat about Titanic, sparring over who is in the cast. Mike tells her they have seen the same movie “with different eyes”. Kocur’s approach is all about the ambiguity of perspective, not just that of the family or those around them but the viewer as well, who understands that, more than two-and-a-half years later, the assertion “all this is going to finish soon” is a long way from the truth.