Vasyl Symchych

Andrei and Tanya love each other, which is why frequent partings are so difficult for them: Andrei is a test pilot, and Tanya works on television, and both are constantly on business trips. They have two sons — twins. For eight years of marriage, they cannot count a total of three when they were together. And yet they are happy...

The story of the life of the Podolsk village and what the inhabitants of the village had to go through during the years of Soviet power. Through the fate of the heroes, the film tells about the events of collectivization in the village, where for centuries, everyone used to work only on his own farm, about the war years, when many quiet people showed miracles of heroism, and universal favorites became nazi puppets.

Beginning in 1943. year. The tragic story of the prisoners... partisans and others who were found in a prison in Montenegro at the time when the Chetniks and the occupiers at all costs they want to crush the uprising in Yugoslavia.

Trofim Bessarab has been working as a house painter for all his life. He is a pensioner now and it seems that he can let himself have a rest. But idleness is not for Trofim. His nature is to be a working man and he looks for the way to apply his irrepressible energy, he possesses despite his age.

A family struggles to survive in an area that was claimed as part of Rumania, Poland and the Ukraine, all within a short span of time. When World War II comes, various family members choose different masters; some even choose to work for the Soviets. War, struggle, marriages, births, deaths--all these events punctuate the story of this large family.

This film is a romantic story of love between a Hutsul girl and wounded Soviet guerrilla Andrii whom she rescues from certain death. The events unfold against the backdrop of WW2 presented with many obligatory falsehoods of the imperial Russian historiography: heroic Soviet guerrillas, poor and backward Hutsuls, rich Hutsuls betraying their own people and collaborating with the enemy, Ukrainians incapable of their own agency. Crude and mendacious as it is, this ideology is relegated to the narrative background, and the viewer's attention gets quickly captivated by the artistic fortes of the film: riveting stage presence of Kostiantyn Stepankov, Ivan Mykolaichuk, Boryslav Brondukov and the debuting Ivan Havryliuk; gorgeously atmospheric photography of Mykola Kulchytsky, beautiful faces, language, and dress of the Carpathian Ukrainians, and a faithful presentation of Hultsul folk culture devoid of typically condescending Soviet colonial slant.