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A Ukrainian platoon’s mission: traverse a heavily fortified mile of forest to liberate a strategic village from Russian forces. A journalist accompanies them, witnessing the ravages of war and the growing uncertainty about its conclusion.Read More »
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Yuri Illyenko, the master Ukrainian cinematographer who shot Sergei Paradjanov’s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and directed the long-banned A Spring for the Thirsty (1965) and The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (1968), based this striking 1990 allegorical film on stories by Paradjanov that were inspired by his long sojourns in prison. The film was shot at the prison where Paradjanov was confined, using contemporary prisoners as extras, and it might be said that the documentary and poetic-symbolic aspects of this movie are equally germane to its overall impact. Three days before his sentence is to end, a prisoner (Victor Solovyov) escapes and hides out inside a giant hammer and sickle that borders the prison grounds, where he is discovered and nursed back to health by a beautiful woman (Liudmyla Yefymenko, Illyenko’s wife) who becomes his lover. One of the first independent Soviet productions, partially financed in Sweden and Canada, the film tells its story with a minimum of dialogue and very striking imagery. – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago ReaderRead More »
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The young peasant, Petro, falls deeply in love with the daughter of his employer. Though she reciprocates his affection, her father staunchly opposes the idea of her marrying a simple laborer. Overwhelmed by grief, Petro seeks solace at a local tavern, where he encounters Basavriuk, a figure believed by many to be the devil himself. Basavriuk presents Petro with a chilling proposition, one that could enable him to win the girl he yearns for.Read More »
An absurd and strict dystopian society is suddenly disrupted when its leader is overthrown.Read More »
Ukraine, 1996. 5 months before the moratorium on the death penalty, two old friends, a police detective and a forensic psychiatrist, investigate a murder of their colleague.Read More »
A filmmaker returns from Kyiv to his rural village to marry the love of his life. He is expected to marry the Rabbi’s daughter, which disrupts the balance of the whole town. In one unflinching shot, this film presents a day in the life of a Jewish village before it disappears. SHTTL is the story of the inhabitants of a Yiddish Ukrainian village at the border of Poland, 24 hours before the Nazi invasion, known as Operation Barbarossa. Today, there are no such villages in existence; the production fully reconstructed a traditional ‘Shtetl’ outside of Kyiv. Following the filming, the set was to be turned into a museum but has since been destroyed in the ongoing political crisis between Russia and Ukraine.Read More »
Mykola and Vasya go in search of their father, who left them when they were children, after they come to know that he is dying in Luxembourg. Kolya considers him a hero, while Vasya thinks he is a scoundrel.Read More »
The small town of Vavilon hears of the recent Russian Revolution, but attempts to communize it are met with resistance from the rich people living in the town. The Red Army finally puts down the resistance.Read More »
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Locals emerge from their shelters, corpses are lying in the streets of Bucha. The trauma is clear to see. But life needs to go on. At first, all is despair-But these Ukrainians reveal their resilience.Russians bombarded Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin and other cities in the region following their invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. By the time they retreated a month later, the damage was huge: buildings had been destroyed and there were corpses lying in the streets. Filmmakers Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz went in immediately, in time to film local people emerging from their shelters, but never showing the actual atrocities. That wasn’t necessary, as the trauma of war is clear to see on everyone’s faces, including those of the volunteers who rushed in from far and wide to help. Read More »