ORANGE WINTER
Pioneer Theater

On November 21, 2004, Ukrainian citizens went to the polls to cast their ballots in a run-off election for a new President, a right they had only enjoyed for eight years since their nation’s constitution came into being. True to historical form, the 2004 campaign had been both a close one and a dirty one. Challenger Viktor Yushchenko, a former Prime Minister and leader of the Our Ukraine Party, had suffered a near fatal dose of dioxin poisoning. His opponent, the incumbent Viktor Yanukovych, was long rumored to have ties to organized crime, and Orange Party loyalists naturally assumed that his followers had something to do with the chemical assassination attempt.

Mr. Zagdansky’s documentary shuffles a deck of images and footage showing history being made fast — both in the halls of government and in the street. And while he misdeals a few of his cards here and there, “Orange Winter” is a candid and exciting nonfiction account of a fascinating contemporary popular struggle.

Bruce Bennett (May 23)

FLANDERS
Cinema Village

It’s a scenario as old as film itself — heeding the call to glory, a country boy trades in his overalls for a uniform, leaves his sweetheart on the farm, and marches off to war. His will to survive is tested at the front and the girl’s love and loyalty are tested at home. But in Bruno Dumont’s subdued, lyrical, and violent new film, war and peace are each a level of hell.

Barbe (Adélaïde Leroux), the girl for whom Demester (Samuel Boidin) pines, isn’t really his. “We’re just friends,” the hulking farm boy tells a guy giving Barbe the once over in a local bar. Barbe uses sex to keep men physically close but emotionally distant, and her commitment-phobic ego and troubled soul won’t let her give her heart to the man who loves her.

B.B. (May 18)