Olga’s (Anastasiia Budiashkina, a real-life gymnast playing a fictional character) reason for leaving Ukraine has as much to do with realizing her dream of making the Swiss Olympic team as it does with personal safety. Ukraine doesn't allow dual citizenship, and the 15-year-old athlete is going to have to follow the path to naturalization in order to compete. (When asked what the Swiss are like, Olga replies, “Pretty proficient.”) The timing of Elie Grappe’s first feature couldn’t be more fortuitous. Set during Ukraine’s deadly Euro-Maidan Revolution, the film opens with an investigative reporter (Tanya Mikhina) and her daughter Olga being involved in a startlingly realistic hit and run that we later learn was engineered by Ukraine’s President Yanukovych to silence one of his most vocal critics. (Just one day after the crash, and there are no traces of the glass shards Olga plucked from her forearm.) With an opening as forceful as this, it’s a shame the mother- daughter relationship took a back seat to a few spins on the parallel bars. Gymnastics and politics make for strange bedfellows, as evidenced by the regulation sports drama that ensues. (2021) — Scott Marks
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