The Guide

Ukraine, 1932. Peter is the son of an American engineer who came to work in the Soviet Union. The father is killed over documents that came into his hands, and the boy runs. On the road he meets Ivan, a blind kobzar. The kobzars were blind minstrels who went from door to door in Ukraine singing epics. Peter becomes his guide and Ivan hides him. As the two cross the villages the famine has already begun. In the same years the kobzars are being hunted too. Oles Sanin directs the Ukrainian film; two hours, with Anton Sviatoslav Greene as Peter and the singer Jamala in the cast. It was Ukraine's entry for the foreign language film Oscar. The background it describes is documented: the famine of 1932 and 1933, and the destruction of the kobzar tradition in those same years.