‘La Palisiada’ Review: Elliptical Ukrainian Drama Set in 1996 Is a Disquieting Provocation

variety.com:

Manuel Betancourt History, when told well, is a muddy, muddled thing. There are no neat narratives or happy endings. Philip Sotnychenko “La Palisiada” takes that truism and braids it into a suitably complex form: This 1996-set noir of sorts chronicles a pivotal moment in Ukrainian history by focusing on a murder investigation.

But as its two leads burrow themselves in the hunt for a guilty party, their journey turns out to be as dirtied and disorienting as the very systems from which the former Soviet country was weening itself, just a few years after their independence.

A murder opens “La Palisiada,” though it’s not the one with which Sotnychenko’s film is concerned. Instead, the shocking gunshot that precedes the film’s title card sets the table for a flashback to the past.

Here is a tale not just of violence but the root of that violence, and its continued consequences. So it makes sense that Sotnychenko asks audiences to travel back to 1996, where we are witness to a police investigation over the murder of a colonel.