Steve Hoover: Almost Holy
A week ago I was in Mariupol with Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, whose ”Mariupolis” made a big impression on me. And now I have returned to the city in Ukraine with American director Steve Hooper, who is here in Riga and with whom I have tutored filmmakers for the Baltic Sea Docs 2016. His film had an equally strong impact on me. And it has been a pleasure to meet the young director from Pittsburgh.
Full house in the K-Suns cinema in Riga, a long Q&A after the screening of a film, that has already had a long festival career and has been theatrically released in the USA and in the UK.
It’s an action film in the best American sense: Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a pastor in Ukraine who rehabilitates homeless children at his center, Pilgrim Republic, is a charismatic character, who is taking matters in his own hands. Who does what the authorities should do but do not do, or are not able to do because of lack of resources. He picks up kids in the streets, takes them to his place, works on getting them out of their drug addictions – or try to get them back to a normal life and/or reunited with their parents. If they are alive or if they are capable of being parents.
It is amazing how close Hoover and his crew have been able to come to the kids and youngsters. You see tragic fates, you follow some of them along the film, where Gennadiy is almost constantly in the picture. Yes, he is a hero, an amazing man, a documentary version of Bruce Willis, full of love for the victims of the social reality in this part of Ukraine that is close to the war, actually part of the war as the film demonstrates. There are touching scenes, there are scenes where you want to close your eyes, there are scenes where Gennadyi talks directly to the camera, there are images that you will not forget at the end of the film, where Gennadyi swims in the sea with the steel factory behind him, and on shore, as the director put it in the discussion after the film, makes ”a pillow” for himself in the sand.
Small objections from a critic who likes the film a lot – it is a bit too long, I felt some repetitions. It has – mostly in the beginning – a ”nervousness” in the editing and camerawork, which might have to do with the fact that Hoover jumps in time from beginning of 2000 forward and back again. Was that necessary? And the sound score, did it have to be so strong, could there have been more silent sequences? And yet, it is an action film…
USA, 100 mins., 2015.
