The Biden administration had been warning for months that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. But when it finally happened, Ukrainians, right up to the country’s president, were shocked.

Even some of those accepting that it might happen carried on living. Some were even caught flatfooted, on vacation, when Putin made his move.

“Under the Volcano” embeds us with such a family, enjoying their time in the vacation hotspot Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The bottom drops out and their world is upended just as they’re about to board a plane for home.

As they grasp the stunning news, “trapped” in a much longer holiday than they’d planned, stresses and fractures in the family are exposed and their teenage daughter finds herself forced to grow up fast, almost as fast as her war zone schoolmates back home and the African refugee teens she meets on the island.

This grim travelogue, a quietly gripping drama about Ukrainians stranded, like those African refugees, in a Spanish possession, is Poland’s submission as its Best International Feature contender at the Oscars, due to its production and the filmmaker who conceived it.

Polish director and co-wroter Damian Kocur’s follow-up to his award-winning “Bread and Salt” is a study in characters under stress in a place billed as a break from stress and the worries of everyday life.

But enjoying the beach, the Spanish singers at the hotel, the festivals and the sights — and reveling in making social media posts about their “good times” — ends the moment they stare at the airport departure board, which is when they first get the news.

Spaniard show them compassion, with the hotel giving them back their room and telling them there’s “no charge” for the extra stay, or the meals they eat there. Tourist guides pitch them distractions — road trips and treks up the island’s famous volcano. African refugees still hustle tourist trap trinkets at every turn.

It’s all either of the parents (Roman Lutskyi, Anastasiya Karpenko) can do to go through the motions. Their little boy (Fedir Pugachov) may be almost oblivious. But as she facetimes with a friend back home, hearing of the trauma and fear everyone in Kyiv is experiencing, standoffish teen Sofia (Sofia Berezoska) finds herself shaken in ways the adults are not. She might be the one who “sees” the Africans in similar straits all around them, some of them selling, others just wanting to make a human connection.

Kocur uses only brief TV and cell phone glimpses of the war “back home” to rattle this family. We don’t see the cancellation notices at the airport, just the parents’ shocked faces.

Their dilemma makes all of them easily triggered — by fireworks, by not knowing how to respond to the hospitality and empathy their Spanish hosts show them and by rowdy, unconcerned (but guilty and somewhat ashamed, when confronted) Russian tourists.

Sofia, who looks to be about 14, had been tentatively observing and videoing vacationing Spanish teens as part of her social media version of her vacation. She dotes on her kid brother, but keeps the adults at a distance. We start to pick up on the family dynamics that contribute to that as Roman and Nastasiya bicker, lash-out and struggle with their dilemma and their relationship in a country that isn’t their own.

Kocur’s film is a tad too patient at times, dumping more “vacation” experiences on these hapless vacationers without a country. And the allegories folded into the story aren’t the easy fit he may have envisioned.

One subtext here is the illusion of a united Europe — with the family and many of those they meet speaking English and a little Spanish as the needs arise — whose fissures widen (brutishly bullying Brits) thanks to these severe tests of a European war on top of an ongoing refugee crisis.

But “Under the Volcano” can most easily be appreciated for allowing us to put ourselves in others’ shoes — a vacation interrupted by tragedy, the struggle to remain a family “team” while trying to reason one’s way out of a crisis, and the grim realization that the day you went to the airport might have been the last good day you and everyone you know will see for years and years to come.

Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Sofia Berezovska, Roman Lutskyi, Anastasiya Karpenko and
Fedir Pugachov

Credits: Directed by Damian Kocur, scripted by Damian Kocur and Marta Konarzewska. A Lizart/MGM production.

Running time: 1:44