Poem of the Sea

Because of a dam project, old Ukrainian villages are to be left under water. Conflict breaks out between the engineers and the villagers who do not want to move. A general returning to see his village learns that the place he grew up in will soon be gone; the former neighbours gather to say goodbye and each of them tells their own memory. The screenplay was written by Aleksandr Dovzhenko, but when he died in 1956 his wife Yuliya Solntseva completed the film. The account holds progress and loss inside the same scene. The language of the film does not resemble ordinary storytelling either; the scenes are built like poetry and the speeches are addressed straight to the viewer. The ninety five minute Soviet film was completed in 1958.