Bitter Harvest (2017 film)

The Ukrainian Cossack, Ivan Kachaniuk, defends his family in Central Ukraine's Cherkashyna wheat and sunflower farming outskirts of Smila.

Years later, in 1932, Ivan's artist grandson Yuriy marries his childhood sweetheart, Natalka, and studies at the Kyiv Art Academy. His family are independent Cossack farmers, "kurkuli". They make a living from grain, sunflowers and other crops until Joseph Stalin's collectivization campaign sends his massive Bolshevik red army to requisition 90% of Ukraine's harvest.

The State Art Institute is forced to replace the art instructors with communist instructors who censor art such as Yuriy's, condemning its expression of Ukrainian cultural identity as anti-Soviet. Yuriy storms out in disgust.

During a memorial in a pub for a friend who committed suicide, a half drunk aggressive Soviet captain insults the Ukrainian folklore, music, songs, and dance, starting a fight during which Yuriy stabs the captain in self defense. The dreamy romantic artist from Smila winds up arrested and locked up in a brutal Soviet prison with Kulak farmers and various Ukrainian nationalists and others whom Stalin deems "Enemies of the People". Yuriy struggles daily in his cell witnessing daily mass executions outside his barred window, while knowing he might be one of them. Weeks later the sadistic prison commissar director Medvedev demands Yuriy paint his own portrait in return for more food and to save his life, but senses the director will have him executed as soon as the portrait is completed. During their second sitting, Yuriy distracts the director and stabs him in the throat with his paintbrush, killing him and takes his pistol and removes his Russian uniform and escapes wearing it during a blizzard while being hunted relentlessly by the Bolshevik soldier guards.

Meanwhile, back in the Cossack farming village Smila, Yuriy's wife Natalka and family are enduring the terror of farm director Commissar Sergei Koltsov who attempts to rape her and uses food as a weapon to control her, but Natalka poisons his borscht with wild mushrooms. Sergei eventually comes around searching for Natalka who fled the scene to join the other peasant women. She bravely plans a revolt, which backfires thinking Sergei was dead, they are overpowered on Sergei's orders to have his Bolshevik attack and put down the peasant Womens revolt. Yuriy's family and the villagers are imprisoned in the local church, which now transformed into their own torture chamber and prison cell.

While being hunted by the Bolshevik police and soldiers in the northern Kyivan forests Yuri comes across a hungry desperate boy named Lubko who asks Yuri to help him survive as he offers his help through the forest to a cattle train stop towards Smila. That evening they are joined at their camp by the Kholodnyi Yar (Cold Ravine) Ukrainian Cossack detachment. They plan an attack on the Bolsheviks and wind up in a bloody battle the next morning against the Bolsheviks Gatling gunning down the uprising. Both sides suffer heavy casualties.

Yuriy and Lubko survive and continue their journey towards Smila by sneaking aboard a cattle train full of starved Ukrainian corpses. They witness massive starvation and death of their fellow Ukrainians on the roadsides and in pits. Nearing Smila they hijack a loaded Soviet grain truck whose sympathetic Bolshevik soldier driver joins Yuriy's rescue mission, bringing grain to the struggling now artist warriors family and their neighbouring villagers.

Yuriy, Natalka, and Lubko escape, others of the family starve or are murdered by Koltsov's forces. They are pursued onto another cattle train of Ukrainian corpses on their way to be dumped into fire pits, and, jumping the train, are chased to the Soviet border, the cold and turbulent Zbruch River. They dodge bullets under water crossing to Polish-controlled West Ukraine to get to the city of Lviv, hoping for help from the priest Andrey Sheptytsky to exchange the vast rich pastures of Ukraine for the prairies of Manitoba, Canada.

Filmed in Pyrohiv Kyiv district outdoor museum, Ukraine. The film depicts the Ukrainian land, the village timber with thatched roof huts and the cabin homes with 18th century timber Orthodox churches. The concept and screenplay were created by Richard Bachynsky Hoover, a Canadian of Ukrainian descent. He was inspired to make the film after visiting the Pyrohiv museum in 1999 with his friend Sofia Karayim, who is from Lviv, Ukraine. They explored the area on white horses with a Ukrainian Cossack rider who rented a few horses for the tourists to ride, which he recalled the idea for a Ukrainian Cossack location for the movie several years later.

Hoover wrote the script in 2013. Later he received writing support from his Canadian-Ukrainian Ian Ihnatowycz who became the backer and top producer with Hoover as Executive Producer doing herculean work writing scouting Kyiv film locations and teams crews cast stubts etc. Notably, British actor Terence Stamp and Canadian actor Barry Pepper were cast as Holodny Yar Cossacks. The film, set in an idyllic Cossack family environment, also showcases the Ukrainian countryside where Richard's son, Yevhen was born in 2008, and was raised as a toddler with his Ukrainian mother Alona Nianchenko who now has a second son Avdiy from her later marriage .

First time Canadian screen writer and film actor member of ACTRA Richard Bachynsky Hoover being half Ukrainian on his fathers side visited Ukraine twice between 1999 and 2004 and took part as a protester in the latter year elections second rerun due to fraudulent vote rigging by the Yanukovych party during the Viktor Yushchenko vs Viktor Yanukovych Orange Revolution which Yushchenko won. Being inspired by the patriotism of Ukrainians and hearing their tragic stories of the Holodomor during his protesting three months he decided to take on a up hill struggle drafting the fiest English screenplay based on the topic. It took several years and was a work in process which he made many changes and being relentless he unsuccessfully sought financing from the Ukrainian Government and Ukrainian oligarchs there. In 2011 he was tipped off at a Toronto Ukrainian church bake sale by a Ukrainian lady he recalls as "Irena" who wrote down a potential well known investors name. The writer followed up and approached Canadian-Ukrainian Mr. Ian Ihnatowycz on a telephone pitch call. Ihnatowycz took deep interest in Richards rough screenplay and agreed to fund his research and development before committing in 2013 to financing the US$21 million film in its entirety.[1]

Filming began in Ukraine on November 15, 2013, under the working title "The Devil's Harvest".[3][4] Ihnatowycz said, "Given the importance of the Holodomor, and that few outside Ukraine knew about this man-made famine, because it had been covered up by the Kremlin regime, this chapter of history needed to be told in English on the silver screen for the first time in feature film history."[5][6]

The shoot ended in Kyiv on February 5, 2014,[5] concurrent with the Euromaidan demonstrations in which Bachynsky Hoover and several local crew took part.[1]

Post-production continued in early 2014 at London's Pinewood Studios, using the James Bond tank to film underwater scenes. Skyfall editor Stuart Baird and SFX teams worked on the film in post-production.

Roadside Attractions, an Indy arm of Americas Lions Gate Films Corp., released the film in the US on February 24, 2017.[7] "D" Films Canada launched Bitter Harvest on March 3 in Canada. The film was launched in other countries during the first quarter of 2017.

• Famine-33
• The Guide
• Russia-Ukraine relations

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