Black Raven

Ukraine in 1922: the Russian empire has broken up and no new state has taken its place. In that gap a great many people tried to build independence with their own hands, and the film follows one of them. Ivan Chornousov, known as Black Raven, is a man who cannot turn away from what is happening in his own region, and with the people he gathers around him he goes into armed struggle against Bolshevik rule. The account puts a love story beside the fighting and shows that the two cannot be carried on at the same time. The film was adapted from the novel of the same name by Vasyl Shkliar. Taras Tsymbaliuk plays the lead in Taras Tkachenko’s hundred and ten minute Ukrainian film, completed in 2019.