A Portrait on the Background of Mountains

Vasyl is a former ski jumper, who now works as a coach at the ski jumping school for children in the Carpathians. He is a loner, and sports is his whole life. Zhenya is Vasyl's favorite trainee. For five years he spent lots of energy making her a champion. With her success, his dreams can come true. When the girl grows up, she decides to try in another area of life not connected to sports. Vasyl's work seems to no longer make sense. But he finds the strength to start all over again.

People in a Southern Ukrainian city come out to commemorate an important national holiday. Old and new symbols mix in their quest for identity and common understanding. Despite living on neighboring streets, the distance between them is growing. This is a portrait of people who demonstrated on the main square of a city in a country to which war has returned. The film was shot on Victory day on May 9th in Mykolaiv. The flagship city of Russia’s Imperial and Soviet shipbuilding, the city which during Soviet times was considered completely pro-Russian, suddenly reveals its Ukrainian essence. Discussions, various symbols, the battle between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Soviet, red poppies and St. George’s ribbon… In its search for a new self and place in modern day Ukraine, it hurdles itself from one extreme to another.