You're reading: 25 top movies about Ukraine

Cinematography provides a vivid insight into Ukrainian culture, history and mentality. But while Ukraine’s filmmakers in Soviet times were faced by the constraints of Soviet censorship, in independent Ukraine budget restrictions made it difficult to get movies about Ukraine onto cinema screens.

Nevertheless, over the years Ukrainian filmmakers and filmmakers of other nationalities have made dozens of movies that reveal much about Ukraine, and are well worth a watch by both Ukrainians and students of Ukrainian culture. Here, the Kyiv Post reviews some of the most important and influential of these movies, and lists the 25 must-see films about the country.

Ideological control

Movie critic and TV host Volodymyr Voytenko told the Kyiv Post that the first Ukrainian directors were granted a measure of creative freedom only in the early years of the Soviet Union, in the 1920s. After that, from the beginning of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s reign of fear in the 1930s and until his death in 1953, the Soviet propaganda machine put strict control on Ukrainian movies.

“There was political and ideological control,” said Voytenko. “The director was allowed to make a movie only to socialist realism standards. The government formed a historical portrait of the Ukrainian nation as the one that played a secondary, less important role in the story of Soviet Union and the Russian empire.”

Ukrainian filmmaker Mykhailo Illienko agreed, saying that Russia’s leading position in the Soviet Union meant that Ukrainian characters were only allowed secondary roles in movie screenplays.

“It was impossible to make a movie with a strong Ukrainian hero in the times of the Soviet Union. Only a Russian could be the heroic protagonist, while Ukrainians had to be shown as silly, comical characters – or traitors,” recalled Illienko.

However, Illienko said that despite Soviet censorship, Ukrainian movie directors still managed to convey hidden messages.

Dovzhenko’s realism

The 1930 epic drama “Zemlya” (Earth) made by Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko, shows Ukrainian Soviet youths fighting against kulaks, or wealthy landlords, in 1920-1930.

“In fact it is a drama of Ukrainian villagers, forced to survive under the cataclysmic conditions brought about by the Soviets, several years before the tremendous holocaust (of the Holodomor, or Stalin’s artificial famine),” said Voytenko. In 1958, Dovzhenko’s “Earth” was voted one of the top 12 best films in history during an international cinema forum in Brussels.

Dovzhenko invented his own unique cinematic style of “film poem,” using symbolic frames and rhythmic editing. In his 1930 silent film “Zemlya,” Dovzhenko showed a nude figure the first time in history of Ukrainian and Soviet cinematography. That edgy realism earned the distinguished director the ire of Soviet cinema critics.

Carpathian Romeo, Juliet

Voytenko said that Soviet ideological pressure relaxed in the 1960s. Ukrainian and Soviet cinematographers returned to plots that included national and historical elements.

In 1964, Armenian director Sergei Paradzhanov’s “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” screened a movie adaptation of the Mykhailo Kotsubinskiy 1911 novel of the same name. It is a Ukrainian Romeo and Juliet story, set in a Carpathian Mountain village.

“This film shows all the beauty of the life, culture and customs of the inhabitants of the Ukrainian part of the Carpathians,” said Voytenko.

The film was a lightening rod for dissidents: During the film’s premier in Kyiv, Ukrainian writers Vasyl Stus and Ivan Dzyuba protested against political repression against the Ukrainian intelligentsia.

But the Soviet system soon struck back: In 1973, director Paradzhanov was arrested, accused of sodomy, and sentenced to five years in prison. Many said that Paradzhanov was the first openly gay person in Ukraine. In 1977, Paradzhanov was released following international pressure.

During Soviet times, it was impossible to raise money for a film without the support of the Communist Party. And if a director did manage to make and screen an unauthorized movie, the Soviets banned it.

Rebirth of cinema

With the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian filmmaking industry became freer, but also much poorer.
The financial drought lasted into 2010. Now the State Film Agency gets between Hr 100-300 million every year.

A scene from the 2014 film “The Guide” by Ukrainian director Oles Sanin. (Courtesy)

“The new technologies gave extra possibilities for independent filmmakers, because they made the movie-making process faster and cheaper,” said Voytenko.

The technological revolution in film-making made it practical in recent years for independent directors to document Ukraine’s fast-paced political developments.

“Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” was an Oscar finalist in 2015 in the documentary category. It was directed by Evgeny Afineevsky, an American of Russian origin, and depicted the EuroMaidan Revolution that forced Viktor Yanukovych to flee as president on Feb. 22, 2014.

Other noteworthy recent contributions include “The Tribe,” a 2014 feature film by Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy about love, crime and hate in a Ukrainian boarding school for deaf teenagers.

The resurgence in the industry has also seen some bigger-budget movies hit the screens: “Unbroken” in 2015, which was screened in Russia as “The Battle for Sevastopol,” is a $5 million biopic about the exploits of Ukrainian sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko in World War II. It has since become a Ukrainian-Russian blockbuster.

“The only problem Ukrainian cinematographers have now is the U.S monopoly on the business. It is still rather hard for Ukrainian movies to compete with U.S-made blockbusters at the box office,” said Voytenko.

25 Top movies about Ukraine and some interesting facts about them