Watching: Yushchenko Stole My Pants

Overview

Four punk friends from Alchevsk travel to a winter camp in Burshtyn, where they pull off a series of absurd prykoly – sawing apart a wardrobe, setting off a fire extinguisher, and dragging their friend Stepan’s bed into the bathroom. Assembled entirely from Sasha Chepeliev’s school-era video and photo archives (2005–2006) and woven together with a cycle of songs written by the director, the film becomes a funny and heartbreaking journey through adolescence, when cruelty went hand in hand with tenderness, and playing with political slogans still felt like nothing more than a game.