Writer-director Natalka Vorozhbyt’s new film, Demons, will have its world premiere at the 79th Locarno Film Festival on 13 August. The film uses a developing relationship between a Russian drifter and a Ukrainian woman as a metaphor for Russia and Ukraine, framing political conflict through a surreal rural drama.

Slavik, a homeless Russian man with an unclear past, arrives in a remote central Ukrainian village and is taken in by Nina, an older, independent woman representing post-Soviet Ukraine. Their initially unlikely companionship turns to betrayal amid a setting where witches and the dead coexist with villagers; the trailer includes borscht, a flying vehicle, blood and graves. The cast includes Ruslana Pysanka, Aleksey Mitin, Tatiana Stepanova, Ruslan Garmash and Mykola Ponomarenko, while Celluloid Dreams is handling international sales.