IMDb RATING
7.7/10
3.5K
YOUR RATING
American boy Peter and blind minstrel Ivan are thrown together by fate amidst the turbulent mid-1930s Soviet Ukraine.American boy Peter and blind minstrel Ivan are thrown together by fate amidst the turbulent mid-1930s Soviet Ukraine.American boy Peter and blind minstrel Ivan are thrown together by fate amidst the turbulent mid-1930s Soviet Ukraine.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 4 nominations
Aleksandr Kobzar
- Comrade Vladimir
- (as Oleksandr Kobzar)
Serhiy Zhadan
- Mikhaylo Semenko
- (as Sergiy Zhadan)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe American boy who flees from NKVD and becomes Ivan Korcherga's guide is played by Anton Sviatoslav Greene from Ann Arbor, Michigan, whose great-grandfather Mykhailo Soroka was a political prisoner of a Soviet labor camp. His Americanized Ukrainian language was an ideal fit for the part of the son of a US engineer.
Featured review
A very powerful commentary and an absolute joy to watch.
The director is tremendously talented. The style is reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. Despite the sadness of some of the events, you are immersed in a world of supernatural beauty. The journeys through nature have a ethereal transcendent quality to them. The blindness of a leading character adds to this. The death toll of Stalin's famine was estimated at 7-10 million. This was one of the worst cases of genocide in human history. In this movie your soul feels the weight of this tragedy, but the movie does not dwell on this. It is setting, not the main narrative thrust. Hope and tender moments of compassion fill the screen. When this movie shows tragedy it is ultimately contrasted with a resistance of a human spirit that refuses to die. This movie is also a powerful reminder. The false promises of communism, which merely pretends to be a collectivist philosophy while actually operating more like a mafia, are juxtaposed with the real promises of compassion and love for ones neighbor. We are also shown communist propaganda tactics that mask true intentions and create confusion. Similar spin tactics accompany the war today. This is the film that Ukraine needed to make in response to what is happening to it right now. But it is so much more than that.
helpful•5619
- ejf2161
- Dec 4, 2014
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $2,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $905,985
- Runtime2 hours 2 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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