A young man nicknamed Rhino lives in an industrial town in the 1990s Ukraine. He used to be an aggressive delinquent, and now he’s a violent criminal. In the post-Soviet society, he rises quickly in the local criminal gang, but his journey is not without cruel losses. The more tense his life becomes, the stronger his inner moral conflict becomes. Can he redeem himself before it’s too late? A complex exploration of the darker side of human nature and a raw portrait of a man struggling to live with the burdens of his past.

Oleh Sentsov

The Ukrainian director is an AutoMaidan activist, for which he was also arrested and charged with terrorism. He explores the mafia milieu of the 1990s in Rhino, a new film that he began preparing in 2012 but he could not make it until eight years later after his release from a Russian prison. The film premiered in Venice in the Orizzonti section and won two prizes at the Stockholm Film Festival.