Next month, the Ukrainian film «DIAGNOSIS: DISSENT» will be released. According to the authors, this is the first feature film in world cinema whose characters face the so-called «punitive psychiatry», one of the most cynical and cruel inventions of the USSR KGB, which was used against those who disagreed with the communist party’s policies.
The story takes place in the USSR in the 1970s. At that time, in order to punish those who disagreed with «the party’s policy», an artificially invented diagnosis «sluggish schizophrenia» was used. This diagnosis became the main tool of the so-called «punitive psychiatry» and was actively used to suppress any resistance.
The story centers on a freedom-loving young man named Andriy Dovzhenko. His thirst for freedom and his belief that every Soviet person has the right to vote drives him into the grip of a brutal system of enslavement. He finds out that most of those accused of certain crimes are sent not to prison but to special psychiatric hospitals, receiving a diagnosis of «sluggish schizophrenia», invented in the offices of the KGB. Andriy finds himself in a real hell of punitive psychiatry, where they tried to break people’s will to resist with large doses of psychotropic drugs, torture and humiliation. He faces a difficult choice – to cooperate with the KGB and return to his family or to challenge the system by taking the path of fighting against it.
Each of the film’s characters is a collective image of real people. That is why the authors emphasize that the film «is based on real events». To recreate the historical reality, the film’s authors used archival sources and engaged consultants, one of whom was Semen Hluzman, a psychiatrist, former political prisoner and dissident, head of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association and a member of the American Society of Psychiatrists, and the other was the film’s producer Valeria Ivanenko, who for many years was friends with well-known dissidents Valeria Novodvorska and Volodymyr Bukovsky, documenting their stories about their experiences in Soviet torture chambers.
The film «DIAGNOSIS: DISSENT» is the feature debut of director Denys Tarasov. The script was written by Ksenia Zastavska. The roles in the film were played by film and theater actors: Kostyantyn Temlyak («Taste of Freedom», «And There Will Be People»), Natalia Babenko («The Best Weekend», «Pulse»), Irma Vitovska («My Thoughts Are Quiet», «Goat Nostra. Mom is leaving», «Taste of Freedom»), Andriy Mostrenko («Shchedryk», «Father»), Ostap Stupka («Kruty 1918», «Cossacks. An Absolutely False Story»), Vitaliy Saliy («I Work at the Cemetery»), Anastasia Pustovit («Between Us»), Viktor Zhdanov («I Work at the Cemetery») and others.
The world premiere of «DIAGNOSIS: DISSENT» took place on October 13 at the Warsaw International Film Festival. The film received the Special Mention Award in the 1-2 COMPETITION section. The film will be released in Ukrainian cinemas on April 17, 2024.
