By Dennis Hartley

As Elton John sang, it’s lonely out in space. Especially if there’s no Earth to come home to. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is the pilot on a garbage scow loaded with nuclear waste destined for disposal on one of Jupiter’s moons (it’s just his job, 5 days a week).  When he gleans that the world’s entire population has been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, he’s saddled by the realization he may be the last living human in the universe.

Considering that there is an ample yet finite supply of food on the ship, Andriy has calculated he can survive for a while, but obviously not as long as he would have expected, had the Earth not been destroyed. His growing sense of existential despair is kept somewhat in check by the presence of his onboard AI technical assistant/personality-enhanced companion Maxim, which at least gives him “someone” to interact with.

Then, one day, out of the vacuum, a glimmer of hope. He receives a voice-only communication from a Frenchwoman named Catherine, who tells him she’s the sole occupant of a space station on a collision course with Saturn (she figures she only has a couple weeks before there’s an earth-shattering kaboom). Andriy now has a raison d’être; he immediately sets course for a rescue mission (despite Maxim’s dire warnings about his ship’s limited power reserves).

While this may be familiar territory (with shades of 2001, Solaris, Silent Running, and Miracle Mile), Ukrainian director Pavlo Ostrikov’s film (which was in the midst of wrapping production in Kyiv in 2022 as Putin began sending salvos of missiles into the city) is armed with a smart script, tight direction, a nuanced performance by Kravchuk, and a beautiful statement on love, compassion and self-sacrifice-adding up to one of the best genre entries I’ve seen in some time.