'Under the Volcano' (2024) is a really powerful piece of European cinema, a slow burn that hooks you in quietly and leaves its mark long after. The film follows a Ukrainian family stuck in Tenerife after the war breaks out, forced to watch their lives shatter while the world around them continues on like nothing's changed.
What makes this film brilliant for me is how it captures that feeling of everything falling apart while everyone else just carries on with their lives, almost as if nothing's happened, and you just can't comprehend it. It's so surreal, and I'm sure a lot of us can relate to it in one way or another. For me, a part of myself that I'll never get back has died during that time, and this film brought that feeling to the surface in a way I wasn't expecting. It's heavy, but so real. There's also an 'Aftersun' vibe to it - little memories that stay with you forever, like fragments of a time that you can't fully process but that stick with you, haunting in their simplicity.
