Bordering Poland and Slovakia, Stuzhytsya is a distant, sleepy village located close to the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine; it actually means “chilly place”. Inside the already tiny native inhabitants, there exists a gender imbalance: a lot of the males have left for higher job alternatives within the EU and elsewhere. Centring on the ladies who’ve stayed behind, Maksym Melnyk’s documentary is an intimate exploration of the hopes, goals and loneliness that swell in a spot seemingly forgotten by the skin world.
Initially observational in fashion, the movie introduces us to a charismatic trio of ladies. Nelya, a biologist, sweetly lights up every time she comes throughout a pile of animal excrement, wealthy with beneficial samples for her sadly underfunded analysis into the ecosystem of bugs. The shortage of presidency help additionally plagues Maria, Stuzhytsya’s solely postal employee. In command of distributing meagre pensions to the villagers, she is consistently anxious concerning the lack of stamps offered by the state. Such a scarcity would imply a delay in welfare help, which might be catastrophic for the residents.
The third of the trio is Hanna; she is extra superior in age than her neighbours and is a farmer who proclaims herself to be the saddest lady on the planet. Over the course of their blossoming rapport, Hanna lovingly prepares meals for Melnyk and his crew, and, in return, they bathe her with presents for her birthday and Christmas. Accomplished in 2019, earlier than the Russian invasion, the movie carries a sure political resonance concerning present affairs, however on the similar time there’s a rewarding sense of timelessness about Three Girls. It proposes a unique relationship between film-makers and topics – one which makes house not just for info alternate, but additionally for emotional connection.
