George Mendeluk

George Mendeluk (Ukrainian: Джордж Менделюк) (born March 20, 1948, in Augsburg, Bavaria) is a German-born Canadian film director, television director and writer of Ukrainian descent.

Throughout his career he has amassed a number of credits in film and television. His directorial television credits include Miami Vice, Night Heat, The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Young Riders, Counterstrike, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Highlander: The Series, Highlander: The Raven, Queen of Swords, First Wave, Relic Hunter, Romeo!, Odyssey 5 and among other series.

Since 2006, Mendeluk has focused primarily on directing television films namely Deck the Halls (2005) starring Gabrielle Carteris and Judicial Indiscretion (2007) starring Anne Archer and Michael Shanks.[1]

Mendeluk directed the 2017 epic romantic-drama film Bitter Harvest, depicting Holodomor, the man-made genocide in 1930s Ukraine that Joseph Stalin methodically planned to starve 5 to 10 million Ukrainians to death. The story and original script was written by Richard Bachynsky Hoover a Kingston Ontario raised Canadian half Ukrainian living in Kyiv Ukraine raising his young son Yevhen Nyanchenko born in Smila Cherkashyna which is portrayed as a tribute to his son and his mothers family as the Cossack farming village in the film where many thousands of Ukrainians had died of hunger in that region as well the river Tyasmin nearby where the film opens up with Yuri and Natalka swimming as children as Richards own son did with him and his sons family as a little boy raising him there his first few years . The writer Richard Bachynsky Hoover who was also the Executive producer credited for finding the film's financing investor and had Mendeluk attached and scouted most locations and casting and film crews in Kyiv for the project had later sent Mendeluk his script and had him hired as the film's director by his Toronto Canadian Ukrainian backer producer Ian Ihnatowycz. After reading Bachynsky Hoovers original screenplay material director Mendeluk was thrilled to direct the film for them.