Rhino

Ukraine in the 1990s. The Soviet Union is gone, the state has withdrawn, and crime has filled the gap. Vova, nicknamed Rhino, rises in that environment: merciless, tenacious, incapable of stopping. The film tells his rise and his fall with the same coldness and leaves no room for heroism. The director, Oleh Sentsov, was arrested by Russian forces in 2014 for protesting the annexation of Crimea and sentenced to twenty years on terrorism charges he denied. He was released in 2019. Rhino is the first film he made after prison. A co-production between Ukraine, Poland and Germany, it premiered on 9 September 2021 in the Orizzonti section of the 78th Venice Film Festival. Who it's for: Viewers who like Eastern European crime drama, narratives of post-1990s collapse, and hard realism. Who it's not for: The violence is dense and unrelenting. No identification with the lead is offered, which makes it difficult to sit with.