Echo-Request
Original title: Эхо-запрос
Oleg and Yang roam the nuclear wasteland, find a vault entrance — and learn that in the wastes you cannot predict anything.
Echo-Request (Эхо-запрос) is the pilot of Sasha Poberailo’s Atomic Cafe project (also tied to Café of Broken Dreams in early posts): post-apocalypse fiction on the territory of the former USSR after nuclear war has wiped the superpowers, leaving only a ghostly reminder of empire. The public cut (43:49) is the “beta-music” version released in 2014. Plot spine from the release card: wanderers Oleg and Yang find an entrance to an ancient shelter; danger keeps them from exploring at once; wasteland chance (raiders / forced rewrite) changes the plan. Visually the film moves from a brief B&W constructivist prologue and empty landscapes into grey winter woods, campfires with a boiling tin, underground arches and bunker corridors (signage like «Б-7»), a green phosphor terminal («Искра 5654» / console «ГУОН-12»), hatch exits, knife-hand tension indoors, and a closing image of a body on cold ground. Intentionally not a Stalker Zone clone — tags and production notes lean Fallout / nuclear-wasteland grammar shot with Ukrainian DIY locations. Music: Nobody’s Nail Machine (beta track in this cut); sound: Valery Beskorsy; VFX: Vladislav Klevanskiy & Poberailo (YouTube card; some posts also list Nikolay Strukovtsev). Cast card: Max Lavrinenko, Kostya Chernysh, Maria / Sofia / Ulyana Kuznetsova, Anna Karika, Vladimir Ishchenko, Stanislav Yur’evich, Evgen Ostroverkh. End credits explicitly list children Sofia & Ulyana Kuznetsova. Early draft idea had both men enter the vault and only one leave; constraints changed the plan — no sequel for this vault story.
Facts
- 2014
- 44m (44 min)
- Feature pilot · Post-apocalypse
- Post-apocalypse, Sci-fi, Survival, Feature pilot, Independent, Ukrainian cinema
- Russian
- Ukraine
- Sasha Poberailo
One film, several cuts — pick the one you want to watch.
YouTube · beta music
YouTube · бета-музика
Public pilot cut (43:49) titled «Постапокалипсис фильм „Эхо-Запрос“» — the Atomic Cafe pilot with its beta music track, plot card, cast and crew.
Vimeo archive
Архів Vimeo
Archive mirror of the same pilot.
Themes
Beta cut as public master
The circulating YouTube file is openly a “beta-music” pilot — an unfinished master that became the film’s public form.
Empire as ghost
Nuclear war erases the USSR and the other superpower; what remains is architectural and terminal residue (bunker labels, Soviet-style console chrome) rather than living state power.
Vault as temptation and trap
Shelter is found, entry deferred, interior becomes corridor / console / hatch drama — safety underground is never free of risk or rewrite.
Plan vs wasteland chance
Release logline: in the wasteland you cannot predict anything. Campfire talk and careful approach collapse when force (raiders / violence) rewrites the day.
Anti-Stalker local myth (with genre tags)
Upload tags court Stalker/Fallout/Metro audiences, but production notes push a non-Zone Ukrainian wasteland imaginary — DIY ruins and woods instead of licensed lore.
Analogue future / dead interfaces
On-screen terminal «Искра 5654» / «ГУОН-12» green text turns Soviet computing aesthetic into post-apoc diegetic tech — echo of systems that no longer serve living users.
Characters
Oleg
Named in the official RU/EN description as one of two wasteland travellers. Leather/jacket survival kit, backpack walks through grey woods and rubble; participates in vault approach, interior tension, and the film’s physical endgame.
Yang (Ян)
Partner on the road in the release synopsis (spelled Yang / Ян; actor card Kosta Chenysh / Костя Черныш). Shares the vault discovery and the forced change of plan — same hinge of fear, curiosity, and contingency.
Woman in the field (Maria)
Early live-action beat: close-up of a young woman in a knit beanie among dry grass — tense, wide-eyed look that breaks the empty-landscape register. Cast card lists Maria Kuznetsova among the ensemble; treat spoken name on-screen as primary if it differs.
Children (ensemble)
End-credit card «дети» names Sofia and Ulyana Kuznetsova — next-generation presence in the Atomic Cafe world, not the road-pair leads.
Wasteland / vault ensemble
Anna Karika, Vladimir Ishchenko, Stanislav Yur’evich, Evgen Ostroverkh and others as human weather of ruin, bunker, and raid — faces that thicken the pilot beyond a two-hander.
- Sasha Poberailo
- Sasha Poberailo
- Sasha Poberailo
- Sasha Poberailo
- Sasha Poberailo
- Nobody's Nail Machine
- Valery Beskorsy
- Vladislav Klevanskiy, Sasha Poberailo
- Max Lavrinenko
- Kostya Chernysh
- Maria Kuznetsova
- Sofia Kuznetsova
- Ulyana Kuznetsova
- Anna Karika
- Vladimir Ishchenko
- Stanislav Yur'evich
- Evgen Ostroverkh
Echo-Request · Эхо-запрос · Atomic Cafe · Атомное Кафе · post-apocalypse · vault · bunker · Fallout · wasteland · pilot · beta music · Nobody’s Nail Machine · DIY · Ukrainian cinema · YouTube full cut
Scene map · 9
Prologue · constructivist ghost
Opening stretch uses stark B&W abstract / theatrical imagery (stairs, platform figures, geometric void) before colour live action — a dream or archival-style overture to empire and form.
Empty land / water
Wide misty landscape with water and hills — scale of a world after people, before the close survival grammar begins.
Face in the grass
Intimate close-up of a woman in a beanie among dry field grass — human stakes enter the wasteland frame.
Campfire & tin
Night fire, boiling metal cup, hooded figure watching flame — heat, food, and talk as the only infrastructure left.
Wasteland walk
Backpack figure through bare trees and rubble piles — grey daylight road that delivers the vault problem.
Vault arch / underground
Flashlight on stone arch and debris; later bunker corridors with painted room codes (e.g. «Б-7») — architecture of shelter as maze.
Console «ГУОН-12»
Green-on-black terminal: «Искра 5654 консольная ЭВМ» / «консоль ГУОН-12» — diegetic computer as relic of the dead state and as plot interface.
Hatch / knife / ruins
Body emerging from a concrete hatch; gloved hand with a knife in a dark interior; figures in brick ruins — the plan turns physical and hostile.
Woods · body on the ground
Bare winter trees; a man in beanie and leather jacket lies on cold earth — exhaustion or aftermath as the pilot’s closing human image before credits.
