Evhenii Slupchuk | Маєток (The Estate) / 2025

several centuries

by Douglas Messerli

 

Olexii Hladushevskyi and Evhenii Slupchuk (screenplay), Evhenii Slupchuk (director) Маєток (The Estate) / 2025 [9 minutes]

 

The handsome young Ukrainian soldier Tim (Ruslan Mirosnychenko) returns back home to his now almost abandoned and destroyed estate where his lover Makar (Vitalii Zelenvion) sits waiting, a glass of red wine in hand.

    It has been a long while since they have last seen one another, and when asked by his older lover what Makar has been up to, he describes it matter-of-factly as rather boring: “Netflix. Scrolling TikTock. Jerking off.” He has accomplished a new painting, but basically describes it as rubbish, and we never a glimpse of the work.

    The two begin kissing and soon after have intimate sex, Makar claiming that the soldier is “smelly.” However, there is little hot water and no working shower any more on the old estate, no longer any electricity. We get a quick glimpse of just how old the estate may be by a photo of the two, appearing to playing a landowner and his serf.

     The young lover, frustrated by the fact that it is almost time for Tim to leave again, seemingly exaggerates, suggesting he has now to wait another hundred years between their various encounters.

     Makar has found a piece of fresh meat in the street market, and has cooked it rare just as the soldier loves it. The blood runs out on the plate, as they both again pour themselves out fresh glasses of red wine.

    While the older takes a smoke on the front porch, the younger finds a large basin and fills it with cold water, ready now to bathe his lover, as he cups the water over his body. We see another of their past photos, this when the younger might have been a volunteer, or perhaps just wearing the elder, officer’s long overcoat.

     The lover dries the soldier off, and they return to the living room to engage in further love making. But this time, everything has changed. The elder immediately goes for the younger’s throat, displaying the teeth of a vampire, the young opening his mouth to reveal the same sharp canine teeth. And suddenly we realize than these are vampires, who have indeed lived hundreds of years through Ukrainian history, acting out the various forms of attempts for the people of Ukraine to obtain their freedoms. In their eternal lives and struggle, these two homosexual lovers stand for the entire of the history of Ukraine.

      This estate, outside of Kyiv may have fallen on hard times, but it is still standing, as is their eternal love. As the soldier moves on to return to the front lines, the young man again joins him for yet another photograph of a hundred years of struggles. They represent the history of their homeland.

 

 This film radically compounds the everyday struggles of the Ukrainians with their long history, brilliantly using the vampire myth to allow their gay heroes to represent the continued struggles.

 

Los Angeles, June 14, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).