Grief is a business in this 2022 Ukrainian-Polish drama, and Sasha has learned to run it without letting any of it touch him, until his own daughter shows up to collect.
What is I Work At The Cemetery about?
I Work at the Cemetery follows Sasha, who owns and runs a small firm installing tombstones for a local graveyard, dealing daily with families who arrive at the worst moment of their lives. Years of that exposure have hardened him into someone who treats loss as a transaction, cynical about the customers and detached from the sentiment his job trades in. That armor starts to crack when his fourteen-year-old daughter reenters his life after an absence, forcing him to face a relationship he had let go quietly cold in the same way he handles every other kind of grief around him. Director Oleksii Taranenko builds the film around small, observational moments at the edges of the cemetery rather than big confrontations, watching Sasha's guardedness against his daughter's persistence. The film's cast, led by Vitalii Salii, plays out this quiet reconciliation against the backdrop of a trade most people would rather not think about.
About the cast
Vitalii Salii takes on the role of Sasha, carrying much of the film's weight as a man whose profession has taught him to keep everyone at arm's length. Viktor Zhdanov, Andrii Isaienko, Oleksii Trytenko and Maksym Donets appear alongside Victoria Gorodetskaya, Olha Safronova and Olena Khokhlatkina, filling out the cemetery's staff and the family circling back into Sasha's world.
Context & significance
A Poland-Ukraine co-production released in 2022, I Work at the Cemetery holds a strong critical standing that has followed it since release, reflecting festival interest in its unusual choice of workplace setting. Director Oleksii Taranenko uses the cemetery trade as a lens on grief and emotional distance rather than as a morbid backdrop, giving the drama a dry, observational tone that sets it apart from more overtly sentimental family stories.
Watching I Work At The Cemetery on Ktime
The film is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, letting Farsi-speaking viewers watch it in either format. Browsing the page costs nothing, and streaming the film itself only requires logging into a K-Time account, on a platform built around the Farsi-language experience for Iranian audiences abroad.