Ukrainian Rhapsody

The Second World War separates Oksana and Anton. Anton is taken prisoner by the Germans. Oksana leaves her studies at the conservatory and becomes a nurse at the front. The war years throw both of them somewhere else entirely. In spite of everything their paths cross again. The film tells the war from inside a story of separation. Music holds a place of its own within the account. This is one of the early works of Sergei Parajanov. The eighty eight minutes are spread over several years. The account follows not the front itself but the mark the front leaves on the two of them. Olga Reus-Petrenko and Eduard Koshman appear in Parajanov’s Soviet film, completed in 1961, with Nataliia Uzhvii also in the cast.