“Rhino” waited five years for Oleh Sentsov to come out of the camp to be finished. The film is already in Polish cinemas

Oleh Sentsov is a director, screenwriter, as well as a former political prisoner and political activist. The international premiere of his film debut “Gamer” took place in 2011 at the Rotterdam festival. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Sentsov was arrested by the FSB, accused of planning terrorist acts, and then secretly transferred to Moscow. Despite the lack of evidence, he was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security labor camp.

“Rhinoceros” waited five years to be realized. Now it enters Polish cinemas

The global #FreeOlegSentsov campaign, in which the European and Polish Film Academy played a leading role, ran for five years. In prison, Sentsov wrote a novel and a collection of short stories, he also directed the movie “NUMERS” (Berlinale Special 2020) based on his own script. After five years in a labor camp, on September 7, 2019, he was released as part of an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine. He continues to work towards the liberation of all Ukrainian prisoners remaining in Russian prisons.

The “Rhinoceros” was appreciated by international audiences already in 2012, when the project was presented for the first time at various film festivals: it won awards in Sofia, Yerevan and Odessa. The film was supposed to start shooting in 2014, but the preparations were interrupted by the imprisonment of Sentsov on the basis of fabricated charges brought by the Russian government of occupation. Oleg Sentsov spent the next five years in a labor camp, and he could not return to making the film until 2019, when he was released.

The title Rhino is a young man. He is very strong and physically fit, but also has a lot of calmness and recklessness at the same time. We meet him for the first time on the streets of a small post-Soviet town, which has a key impact on the circumstances that shape its character. We watch the boy grow up and deal with various events in his family life, both good and bad. The rhythm of his life is determined by the pattern common to the Soviet era: eat or be eaten, beat or be beaten. The Rhino is brave and physically powerful, so he joins a local gang. He quickly rises in its hierarchy, and soon becomes its leader as well. He is making a so-called career, but also makes catastrophic mistakes.

Despite the delay in the production of “Rhinoceros”, the film has lost nothing of its relevance, and Sentsov’s difficult experiences only intensify the production’s message. After the screenings in the Orizzonti section at the 78th Venice International Film Festival and the International Competition at the Warsaw Film Festival, publications on “Rhinoceros” appeared on websites all over the world. Reuters, US News, Deadline, Cineuropa, Deutsche Welle, France24 and many others wrote about him.

Lorenzo Ciofani from writes: “The crime novel, constructed by Oleh Sentsov, is not pompous and lofty as ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’, but more ‘human’ – if you can put it that way – it means marked by a strict staging of characters”, and Anna Smith with emphasizes:

While the title character remains somewhat of a mystery, the movie ‘Rhinoceros’ is a compelling, visually ingenious portrayal of a specific and very dangerous world.

Ola Salwa reviews for the following: “It would be another simple gangster story, if not for the poetic pictures in the first chapter of the film, a strong performance by the debutant Serhiy Filimonov and the director’s decision to place the life of the Rhino in the context of social and political changes taking place.”

“Rhinoceros” was made in Ukrainian-Polish-German co-production with the support of the Eurimages Council of Europe Fund. On the Polish side, the co-producer is Apple Film Production, a company managed by Dariusz Jabłoński, Violetta Kamińska and Izabela Wójcik. For Apple Film it is the third project related to Oleh Sentsov.