Set between the two World Wars and based on true historical events, Bitter Harvest conveys the untold story of the Holodomor, the genocidal famine engineered by the tyrant Joseph Stalin. The film displays a powerful tale of love, honour, rebellion and survival at a time when Ukraine was forced to adjust to the horrifying territorial ambitions of the burgeoning Soviet Union.
When Vlada Koza, a mature Ukrainian woman, intrusive and caring, becomes a grandmother for the first time, she drops everything and travels to Sicily from her home in the Carpathian mountains to join her daughter... without warning! But the girl does not appreciate her mother's suffocating attention, so she puts her at the door without much hesitation. Thus, Vlada finds herself alone and penniless in the Sicilian hinterland. An unexpected car accident makes her become the unlikely governess of Don Fredo, boss of the Laganàs: a dysfunctional mafia family struggling to survive in the modern world. The irrepressible intrusiveness of Vlada, who loves feeling useful, taking care of others, fixing things and giving advice, seems to bring a hint of palpable well-being within the walls of Villa Laganà... At least until the day she finds out who Don Fredo and his children really are!
Ukraine, 1990s. Young Vova, cruel and tenacious, struggles to find his place among the ruthless members of the underworld in a city where crime and corruption reign.
As Carpathian legend has it, Oleksa Dovbush was a heroic outlaw with excellent fighting skills and a gift to predict the future. He was left an orphan as a small boy after a local lord murdered Oleksa's mother. After spending his childhood in exile in the mountains, he returned as a grown man to avenge his mother's death. Oleksa gathered followers to begin a crusade against the lord, but destiny made other plans for him.
In the early eighteenth century, foreign rule means dark times for the Hutsuls of the Carpathians. The two Dovbush brothers become opryshkos - mountain outlaws. But the two brothers become enemies - one cares only about money, the other - Oleksa - fights for his people. The Carpathians are convulsed with a wave of uprisings. The aristocracy uses its military might to try to kill Dovbush and destroy his legend. But Dovbush outwits them. The desperate lords devise a devious plan and attack the invincible outlaw's Achilles heel - his love for his childhood sweetheart, Marichka. Who will be the assassin to attack the Opryshko whose immense strength and bravery inspired folk tales? Will the lords' treacherous plan destroy the hero before he can lead his people to freedom?
Petro is a modest farmhand living in an impoverished village in some unspecified long-ago era. He wants to marry the lovely Pidorka, but her stern father won't hear of it. The mischievous demon Basavriuk, offers a deal, enticing Petro into crime for the sake of fortune. Based on Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Eve of Ivan Kupala” (“St John’s Eve”) and Ukrainian folk tales.
In the rural Ukraine, in a ghostly world where fantasy tears the veil of reality, life fiercely fights death every day and old values and vengeance reign over people's souls, Vitka, an imaginative and rebellious little girl, is the fascinated witness to the crazy love that Larysa, her teenage cousin, feels for Scar, a young criminal.
A seventeen-year-old village school graduate, a guy nicknamed Kazan, dreams of becoming a famous rapper and winning the heart of Sveta. For the sake of his dream, he is willing to risk everything, but circumstances steer his life in a different direction.
The new reality changes the usual life in the village of Babylon. Attempts to communize the small town are met with resistance from the rich people living in the town. The Red Army finally puts down the resistance. Amidst the resistance philosopher Fabian returns to Babylon and tries to prevent bloodshed, but he meets a tragic fate.
Mavka, a water nymph, loves Lukash, a country youth. Their brief happiness ends when Lukash is forced to marry the shrewish Kilina. The Spirit of the Forest turns Lukash into a wolf as punishment for his infidelity. The strength of Mavka's love breaks the spell, but Kilina curses the nymph, transforming her into a weeping willow. This beautiful and tragic story is based on a play written in 1912 by Lesya Ukrainka, a Ukrainian poet, writer and political, civil and female activist, and includes mythological characters taken from Ukrainian folklore.
The film is a psychological drama developing on the highlands of the Carpathian Mountains. Two helpless old men, brothers, desperately trying to keep up competition with each other in order to prolong their lives. Even though their bodies are decaying and both are sick the one still wants to outlive the other ... But one day a woman enters their remote dwelling...
The story of the "Hutsul Robin Hood" Oleksa Dovbush, an 18th century Carpathian Mountains outlaw who's a popular figure of Ukrainian legend.
"LIDA" takes place on the day of Lida's 70th birthday. This already special day is made more unusual by the recent arrival of her grandson, Lev, who had immigrated to the United States with his family in 2001. Returning to Ukraine for the first time as an adult, Lev documents his grandmother as she tends to the small homestead and prepares for the birthday celebration in the rural village in Ukraine. By capturing moments of arduous labor, as well as through personal conversation, Lev inquires into his grandmothers relationship to her home, land - and their family.
It is the early 20th century. Tevye the Dairyman lives in a small village in Ukraine. He is poor and believes that his daughters have one chance to escape poverty – a successful marriage. Tevye accepts a profitable proposition from a matchmaker, but his beautiful daughters have a different plan.
A simple-minded Ukrainian worker Levko inherits his uncle's flourishing mill business. The sudden and unexpected fortune consequently reveals Levko's furious crave for money. He starts with laying hands on the tavern of the missing Jew Yankel, who was snatched for cupidity by the devil Khapun. In the blink of an eye Levko becomes a village usurer, he fuddles peasants, he dilutes horilka, he wants and squeezes money from everyone. But the unruly desire to be rich leads to a complete loss of compassion, friends, and love. And the main question is how the hero's ordeals will end - will the real feelings triumph or will the greed prevail.
The film tells the stories of three protagonists, which are intertwined in one story about the Master: a rural school pupil who dreams of ballroom dancing – Makar, world champion in ballroom dancing – Alex Ivanets, and his first teacher – Petro Horhol, who lives in a small Ukrainian town of Poltava.
At a bus stop, provincial taxi driver Yura meets young beauty Svieta, and is hired to drive both her and her mother to Pryputni - a small Ukrainian village in the middle of nowhere. Seduced by a promised payment and Svieta's short skirt, Yura doesn't have a clue, that his visit to Pryputni is going to last a little longer than he expects.
This video documentary centers on the questions of civil liberties and cultural differences in a society beginning to open as one woman searches for her own ethnic roots, identity and family history in Ukraine. Issues of human rights, anti-Semitism, homophobia, feminism and a divided and economically-depressed country are encountered as Barbara Hammer, a feminist activist and pioneer of lesbian cinema, return to a “homeland” full of struggling as people search for a new post-glasnost identity.
While parents, people of traditional rural values, are cooking blood sausage for the visit of daughter-in-law, Andriy, their son, tries to communicate the fact his fiancee is Jewish.