JUNe 18, 2024
Olesya (played by Sarah Krndija) is a young mother from Ukraine who has seen the face of the Second World War and now wants to leave all of this behind her. Therefore, she started a new life with her husband in Australia, far from the chaos unleashed in Europe during WW2, in a remote place where the word of the day is peace. Everything seems perfect in her life at the moment, but the phantoms of the past are still haunting her greatly. Whilst in the middle of the war, she had a young boy, and as we can see, one day they were playing in the forest, and the boy got shot by a Nazi soldier, saving the lives of his mother and father. Now, Olesya is pregnant, and she cannot focus on her new journey as the scars of the past are way too painful to avoid.Olesya (played by Sarah Krndija) is a young mother from Ukraine who has seen the face of the Second World War and now wants to leave all of this behind her. Therefore, she started a new life with her husband in Australia, far from the chaos unleashed in Europe during WW2, in a remote place where the word of the day is peace. Everything seems perfect in her life at the moment, but the phantoms of the past are still haunting her greatly. Whilst in the middle of the war, she had a young boy, and as we can see, one day they were playing in the forest, and the boy got shot by a Nazi soldier, saving the lives of his mother and father. Now, Olesya is pregnant, and she cannot focus on her new journey as the scars of the past are way too painful to avoid.
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Eva Justine Torkkola’s short film stands out through incredible scenery, fantastic camera work, and perfectly constructed characters that raise the value of the whole narrative. Olesya is a mother that knows what pain is and wants to do everything possible not to feel it again.
But the pain comes back in different forms, and to get away from it, she is ready to do anything possible, even though some things may not be highly moral, especially in that day and age. The house perfectly represents the inside prison we all live in. There is a scene where Olesya sleeps with her husband in a place outside that has only the contour of a house, without walls or a roof; that is the mental prison we all live in, and Torkkola wants to point out the importance of finding the courage to step through the invisible wall.
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‘Something has Died in the Forest’ goes on our ‘must watch list’ for everyone interested in films that have several keys of interpretation.
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Review written by Vlad A.G