Anton

Ukraine, 1919. The friendship of two boys, Anton who is Christian and Jacob who is Jewish, manages to survive the prejudice and hatred filling the minds of the adults after the First World War and the Russian Revolution. The film does not build the children’s world as a space apart from that of the adults; the violence outside comes into the house and the street. The account condemns no community as a whole and looks for no rescuer. What was happening in Ukraine at the time is not background but stands inside the children’s daily life. It was adapted from a book. The survival of the friendship is not offered as a solution. Nikita Shlanchak plays the lead in Zaza Urushadze’s hundred and two minute Ukrainian film, completed in 2021.