Ivan the Powerful

Ivan Firtsak was born in 1899 in a Ukrainian village in Zakarpattia. At eighteen he joined a Czechoslovak circus and began travelling the world. He won championships in weightlifting and in bodybuilding, beat famous opponents in wrestling matches, and the American press called him the strongest man of the century. In 1937 he went home. Viktor Andriienko's Ukrainian film fits Firtsak's life into eighty minutes. The telling is not documentary; it runs in the shape of an adventure and builds the period largely out of costume and set. Dmytro Khaladgi takes the lead, with the real strongman Vasyl Virastiuk also in the cast. The film moves back and forth between making a legend of its hero and holding to the record.