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– CANNES 2021: Gymnastics and the Ukrainian revolution for the adolescent champion at the heart of Elie Grappe’s first feature film, which explores the contrasting facets of total devotion
Anastasia Boudiashkina in Olga
“We’ll see if you deserve this place.” In high performance sport as in revolutionary engagement, we are tested and we put ourselves to the test: difficult choices, perseverance and some risks are essential to pursue these ideals. This is the heart of the subject tackled in Olga [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the very physical and dynamic first feature film by the French filmmaker Elie Grappe, discovered in competition at the 60th Critics’ Week of the 74th Cannes Film Festival.
Jaeger, Tkatchev, magnesia, wrist straps, spectacular bar releases, pounded outings, but also heavy falls repeatedly in training before mastering the most demanding movements: at 15, Olga (Anastasia Boudiashkina) is an aspiring champion, among the best Ukrainian gymnasts and aiming for the European Championship. But her journalist mother’s investigation into the corruption prevailing at the highest state level in 2013 in Kiev poses direct threats to their lives. In order to protect Olga without having to give up her sporting ambitions, her mother sends the teenager (a very determined young woman: “the boss, it’s me!â€) To Switzerland, the country of her deceased father. Living with a host family a few meters from the training center of the Swiss national team, Olga will have to prove herself on the rigs (with her new trainer and surrounded by teammates not all happy with her arrival), but also resist the reality of exile at such a young age (talking on Skype with his mother and with Saha – Sabrina rubtsova – her closest friend and former teammate) and is considering giving up her Ukrainian nationality. This complicated gap for the teenager is suddenly amplified by the demonstrations which catch fire in Kiev, place Maïdan, a revolutionary fever against a power which defends itself violently, with the mother of Olga in the front line … The young gymnast absorbs intensely these explosive events. through interposed images (exclusively videos taken with telephones) in the great tranquility of the Swiss plateau where she has been training furiously since the Euro in Stuttgart is approaching …
A film centered on the bodies of gymnasts in action, with their rituals, their few words and the relentless quality of successes and failures, Olga captures, with an excellent sense of atmosphere, the paradoxes of adolescents perfecting total control over their emotions even as they bubble within them. There is a permanent underlying tension (perfectly inhabited by the protagonist) and an internal conflict that more intelligently echoes the play of dualities between Switzerland and Ukraine, where an external conflict takes place. These ideal mirrors correspond perfectly to one of Maidan’s revolutionary songs: “for our freedom, we will give body and soul”.
Produced by the Swiss of Point Prod and the French of Cinéma Defacto, Olga is sold internationally by Pulsar Content.
(Translated from French)
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