Olivier Sarbil, himself a veteran war cinematographer bearing the scars of conflict, immerses us in the life of Viktor Korotovskyi, a deaf man in Kharkiv whose dreams of militancy are thwarted by his hearing loss. His arms instead hold a camera and a katana, borrowed symbols of samurai myth and honor imparted by his late father.
Rendered in monochrome, the film shapes Viktor’s world through contrast and essential textures: his camera clicks where gunfire should roar, shadows and light carry his resolve, and the world beyond speech is shaped by vibrations, silhouettes, absent echo. Sound design, crafted by the team behind Sound of Metal, ractures and coalesces, guiding the audience into Viktor’s perceptual field as he makes images that speak louder than words.
Critics at TIFF and other festivals hailed Viktor as “a truly singular experience,” a “piercing indictment” of how war becomes spectacle, and a meditation on masculine absence and presence. It elevates war reportage into art, an elegiac act of witnessing, empathetic and urgent, anchored by one man’s search for belonging through the frame of his lens.
