Single mom Irina (Vita Smachelyuk) is in Ukraine to get the documents for her Czech citizenship when her son is badly injured on the staircase of their apartment in the Czech Republic. “Were they white?“ she asks her son during their first conversation with the police in the hospital. He shakes his head. Due to her racist sentiments and because she is fighting with her Roma neighbor (Claudia Dudová), Irina believes that her son was one of the culprits. “A Ukrainian is beaten up by a Roma“ is the headline now. Igor‘s case attracts the attention of Nazis who want to exploit him. When the 13 year old suddenly tells a different version of the story, the ball has already been set in motion. Irina, who is fighting for her right of residence, is swept along.

In the prefabricated building, water is dripping from the ceiling and the plaster is peeling off the walls. In VICTIM, the feature film debut of Slovak director Michal Blaško, every image is painted with bleached out colors. Blue and yellow, the Ukrainian national colors, is a recurring motif, from Irina‘s clothes to the varnish of a rail. From a polite distance, but very persistently, the camera follows Irina, who Vita Smachelyuk embodies with restraint and intensity. Even though she rarely talks about her feelings, fear and sadness follow her at every step. The perspectives of others who are harmed due to her actions can only be seen in the margins. Most of the people in VICTIM evoke ambivalent feelings, especially the protagonist, who is a refugee herself and is discriminated, but has privilege as a white person; who acts egotistically and forgets her humanity when in distress. When she realizes what she has triggered, she tries to reduce the harm, but has to realize that there are some things that can‘t be easily undone.

Eva Szulkowski

Translation: Elinor Lewy