Metrograph

Adapted from two short stories by the influential modernist writer Vasyl Stefanyk, Osyka’s best-known film—widely regarded as one of the supreme achievements of Ukrainian cinema—sets its scene against the backdrop of Ciscarpathia, the northeastern foothills of the Carpathians, at the end of the nineteenth century. A peasant, Ivan (Daniil Ilchenko), prepares to leave behind his life of poverty for a new start in Canada, but when a thief breaks into his house on the eve of his departure, he must decide his transgressor’s fate before a council of his unforgiving neighbors. A scrupulous recreation of the rites and rituals of a disappeared way of life, filled with close-ups of unforgettable, life-marred faces, The Stone Cross dedicates almost half of its runtime to Ivan’s farewell party, dynamically captured in a sequence of carefully choreographed, wheeling-and-wending sequence shots.

DCP courtesy of Dovzhenko Center