Bitter Harvest (2017 film)

Bitter Harvest is a 2017 period romantic-drama film set in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. The film is the first English language feature film depicting Ukraine's 1932–33 famine genocide, Holodomor, a period of massive famines the Soviet Union leader Stalin engineered that starved to death millions of mostly ethnic Ukrainians. The film stars Max Irons, Samantha Barks, Barry Pepper, Tamer Hassan, Lucy Brown and Terence Stamp.

Bitter Harvest
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	George Mendeluk
Screenplay by	Richard Bachynsky Hoover
Story by	Richard Bachynsky Hoover
Produced by	Ian Ihnatowycz Richard Bachynsky Hoover Stuart Baird Peter D Graves Dennis Davidson
Starring	Max Irons Samantha Barks Barry Pepper Tamer Hassan Lucy Brown Terence Stamp Jack Hollington Richard Brake
Cinematography	Douglas Milsome
Edited by	Stuart Baird Lenka Svab
Music by	Benjamin Wallfisch
Distributed by	Roadside Attractions (US) D Films (Canada)
Release date	February 24, 2017 (2017-02-24) (United States)
Running time	103 minutes
Countries	Canada United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	US$21,000,000
Box office	US$5 million approx. (worldwide sales)

The film was directed by George Mendeluk. The story and screenplay were written by Canadian screenwriter-actor Richard Bachynsky Hoover, based on his own Holodomor research. Filming took place in and around Kyiv, Ukraine, including the Pirohova original timber homes and church heritage outdoor museum.

Plot

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 scores of Ukrainian Kurkili simple farmers coined by Stalin as Kulak (Strong Fisted or greedy) to use as a pretext to target them as Enemies of the Soviet state as well Ukrainian nationalists are locked up with them and any others whom Stalin deems as the communist Soviet resistors, Rebels or "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 underwater 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.

Cast

• Max Irons as Yuriy
• Samantha Barks as Natalka
• Barry Pepper as Yaroslav
• Tamer Hassan as Sergei
• Terence Stamp as Ivan
• Aneurin Barnard as Mykola
• Tom Austen as Taras
• Lucy Brown as Olena
• Richard Brake as Medved
• Edward Akrout as Professor Temchuck
• William Beck as Stefan
• Richard Ashton as Father Ostapovich
• Malcolm Freeman as Molotov
• Jack Hollington as Lubko
• Gary Oliver as Joseph Stalin
• Ostap Stupka as Boiko

Location

Filmed in Pyrohiv Kyiv district outdoor museum, Ukraine, the film depicts Kyiv and its Ukrainian hamlets and farm land, and doubles for the century ago village outside Smila with its timber and 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 Ian Ihnatowycz, who became the backer and top producer with Hoover as Executive Producer doing writing. British actor Terence Stamp and Canadian actor Barry Pepper were cast as Holodny Yar Cossacks. The film, set in a Cossack family environment, also showcases the old city outskirts of Smila Ukrainian farming countryside where Richard's son Yevhen was born in 2008, raised as a toddler with his Ukrainian mother Alona Nianchenko.

Production

Member of ACTRA Richard Bachynsky Hoover, being half Ukrainian on his father's side, visited Ukraine in 1999 with his first wife, Sofia, whom he met in Toronto from Lviv. He was compelled to return to Ukraine in 2004 to take part as an influencer of Democracy and as a protester in the second vote rerun due to fraudulence by the Yanukovych party during the Viktor Yushchenko versus Viktor Yanukovych Orange Revolution. He decided to draft the first English screenplay based on the topic. He unsuccessfully sought financing from the Ukrainian Government and Ukrainian oligarchs. In 2011, he was tipped off at a Ukrainian church bake sale by a Ukrainian lady he recalls as "Irena", who wrote down a well-known investor's name. The writer approached Ian Ihnatowycz on a telephone pitch call; he later took an interest in Richard's rough screenplay and agreed to fund his research and development before committing in 2013 to financing the US$21 million film in its entirety.

Filming began in Ukraine on November 15, 2013, under the working title "The Devil's Harvest". 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."

The shoot ended in Kyiv on February 5, 2014, concurrent with the 2013 Euromaidan and 2014 Revolution of Dignity demonstrations, in which Bachynsky Hoover and several local crew members took part as protesters on the front lines with the former President Yanukovych's government security forces snipers. Bachynsky Hoover witnessed the fight from 30 meters away under the Institutska Bridge via deck, taking cover as he assisted in the fight. The writer actor himself was also injured by a chemical grenade that exploded beside him, thrown by Yanukovych's horde of Berkut and government-controlled police, as medics assisted his burning eyes and skin at the Hrushevsky Street.

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 the SFX teams worked on the film in post-production.

Release

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

Reception

Box office

Global box office sales were approximately US$1 million. It was screened in various venues in more than 100 countries in 2017/18.

Critical response

Bitter Harvest received some negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it had a negative approval rating based on 61 reviews. The consensus states, "Bitter Harvest lives down to its title with a clichéd wartime romance, whose melodrama although honors the victims of the real-life horrors it uses as a backdrop." Sheri Linden of the Los Angeles Times called the film "utterly devoid of emotional impact." Peter Debruge of Variety stating that "there can be no doubt that the events deserve a more compelling and responsible treatment than this." The New York Times, in review, wrote, "The topic is worthy, but the execution is a bit heavy-handed."

Film critic Godfrey Cheshire gave Bitter Harvest 3 stars out of 5. In review, he wrote, "Unfortunately, 'Bitter Harvest' [sic] can't even claim the virtues of a superior dramatic feature. Born in Germany of Ukrainian descent, Mendeluk has spent most [of] his career as a director of Canadian TV movies, which this film unsurprisingly resembles. [...] Its narrative and visual approach almost suggests a compendium of the clichés one should avoid in a film like this."

In other positive reviews, Adrian Bryttan of The Ukrainian Weekly praised the film's direction and storytelling, calling it the "world-class Ukrainian art film of our time." The Sydney Morning Herald called the film "a rousing tale with political pertinence". Several reviews agreed that the film would raise awareness, and did accurately depict the subject matter.

See also

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

External links

• Bitter Harvest at IMDb
• Bitter Harvest at Rotten Tomatoes
• Bitter Harvest at Metacritic
• Bitter Harvest at Box Office Mojo