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Atlantis

Play trailer 1:21 Poster for Atlantis 2021 1h 46m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
97% Tomatometer 35 Reviews 68% Popcornmeter Fewer than 50 Ratings
A prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival and Ukraine's official selection for the 2021 Academy Awards, Atlantis is a gorgeous and visionary sci-fi drama. Eastern Ukraine, 2025. A desert unsuitable for human habitation. Water is a dear commodity brought by trucks. A Wall is being build-up on the border. Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to his new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming the past. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which they are also allowed to fall in love again.

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Atlantis

Atlantis

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Critics Consensus

With powerful imagery that's vividly affecting, Atlantis explores the chilling horrors of war with Herzogian existentialism while never losing sight of human perseverance.

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Critics Reviews

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Kathleen Sachs Chicago Reader 04/08/2022
Naturally the film has emerged as one to watch during the present-day turbulence; such timeliness is eclipsed only by its visual splendor, further reflecting the ability of art to transmit by way of form in addition to content. Go to Full Review
Leslie Felperin Guardian 05/03/2021
3/5
Instead of being numbingly dreary and depressing, given the economically depressed, horrifically polluted and landmine-strewn region, Atlantis is strangely upbeat, oddly hopeful even. Go to Full Review
Anna Smith Deadline Hollywood Daily 02/09/2021
Tonally, there are shades of Werner Herzog. But Vasyanovych's tone is distinct; not to mention timely. The crisis he depicts can be as dull as it is dramatic, making Atlantis an eerily topical watch. Go to Full Review
Alessandra Rangel InSession Film 03/21/2023
A
Atlantis works as a cautionary tale. Its haunting camera work offers too many scenes that invite reflection on the consequences of war and the way that its desolation cannot be avoided. Go to Full Review
Vadim Rizov Filmmaker Magazine 12/02/2022
It was nice to see an unrepentantly arty, tableau-based fest film that reminded me why the sub-genre was important in the first place. Go to Full Review
Carmen Paddock One Room With A View 05/10/2021
4/5
Oblique, unaggressively bold, and deeply hopeful. Vasyanovych's unique directorial and cinematographic vision does not undersell destruction on personal, national, or environmental levels, but its thesis insists on humanity's self-redemption. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Patrick C 11/09/2023 A hard movie to watch, it's slow but gripping, bleak and aesthetically powerful. Unsettling, bleak and prophetic. See more Ev 07/05/2023 Intense, minimalist, and bleak. Features long and beautiful shots throughout. Ultimately there is a tiny glimmer of hope See more dick n 02/05/2022 I did not mind the movie being "slow" it was a well made slow burner and my friends and i all enjoyed it! See more 09/24/2021 Well made but a bit slow movie. See more 02/07/2021 Nice cinematography but movie is slow and has many repetitive sequences. Not quite what I expected in an award-winning film... See more harris r 01/29/2021 Artistic visualizations within 106 minutes of boredom. They say there was a story here. If there was, it could've been told in a 1 page comic strip. Yes, the cinematography in this film was outstanding. The choice of colors and the sets made this film an artistic visualization. But 106 minutes of a goes-nowhere story makes you want to fast forward to the end, then replay it on mute with your favorite music blaring over the stereo. Critics are raving at writer and director Valentyn Vasyanovych's work, but are naive to the obvious; 90% of this film are simple far and wide still shots on a tripod. Woopty-doo... some real talent needed for that I guess. Anyone can put an iPhone on a tripod and start recording, even a 5 year old. Yes, the use of machinery and sets was well used, but how hard is it to find a steel factory in a war-torn poor part of the world as your setting? Unimpressed. Even the use of heat-signature video at the start and the end is lame, amateur and pointless for a story. CAT (the construction equipment company) has a cell phone that does that. Maybe that phone was used for those shots instead of the iPhone on the tripod. Again, woopty-doo. Then we have the 106 minutes of boring, illogical and convoluted story telling with no real beginning or end, as well as long dragged out pointless and unnecessary scenes. How was this film even classified as a sci-fi? Is the year 2025 an upcoming alien era we don't know about? I guess for those few that crave poetic art-house cinema may enjoy this, but I for one was zero entertained and very unimpressed with this one. I've seen and enjoyed many art-house films before, but they had a story, and thus I enjoyed them. I would've rather used that 106 minutes to organize my sock drawer with this sleeper. It's a very generous 3/10, all going to the cinematography - colors and use of the unique sets, and not to the laughably amateur tripod still shots. See more Read all reviews
Atlantis

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Movie Info

Synopsis A prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival and Ukraine's official selection for the 2021 Academy Awards, Atlantis is a gorgeous and visionary sci-fi drama. Eastern Ukraine, 2025. A desert unsuitable for human habitation. Water is a dear commodity brought by trucks. A Wall is being build-up on the border. Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to his new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming the past. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which they are also allowed to fall in love again.
Director
Valentyn Vasyanovych
Producer
Iya Myslytska, Valentyn Vasyanovych, Volodymyr Yatsenko
Screenwriter
Valentyn Vasyanovych
Distributor
Grasshopper Film
Production Co
Doco Digital, Ukrainian State Film Agency, Limelite, Garmata Film Production
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Ukrainian
Release Date (Theaters)
Jan 22, 2021, Limited
Runtime
1h 46m
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