Bitter Harvest (2017 film)

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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 Chad Barager 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	B&H Film Distribution Company Ukraine, D Films Canada, Arrow Films UK.Pandastorm Germany,Becker Films Australia,Shaw theaters Asia,and numerous other countries.
Release date	February 24, 2017 (2017-02-24) (United States)
Running time	103 minutes
Countries	Canada United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$21,000,000 (US) [1]
Box office	$19.043.990 (Worldwide sales)[2]

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 known as the Holodomor, a period of massive famines that killed millions of mostly ethnic Ukrainians. The film stars Max Irons, Samantha Barks, Barry Pepper, Tamer Hassan, Lucy Brown and Terence Stamp.

The film was directed by George Mendeluk and was written by Canadian screenwriter-actor Richard Bachynsky Hoover, based on his own Holodomor research. Filming took place in Kyiv.

Plot[]

The Ukrainian Cossack Ivan Kachanuik defends his family in the Central Ukraine Cherkashyna region farm village near Smila.

Years later, in 1932, Ivan's artist grandson Yuri 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 collectivisation campaign sends the Soviet 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 Yuri's, condemning its expression of Ukrainian cultural identity as anti Soviet. Yuri storms out in disgust.

During a memorial in a pub for a friend who committed suicide, a drunk Soviet captain insults the Ukrainians folklore, music, songs, and dance, starting a fight during which Yuri stabs the captain. Yuri is locked up in a brutal Soviet prison with farmers and nationalists and others whom Stalin deems "Enemies of the Soviet People". During his imprisonment the artist witnesses daily mass executions and is in line for execution himself when the prison commissar director Medved demands he paint his portrait in return for his life. Yuri is sure the prison director will have him killed as soon as the portrait is completed and during a second sitting Yuri stabs his commissar subject with his paintbrush, killing him. Yuri escapes the prison in dead Medved's uniform enduring a snow blizzard which covers his footprints while being hunted by the Bolshevik soldier guards.

Meanwhile, back in the Cossack farming village Smila, Yuri's wife and family are enduring the terror of farm director Commissar Sergei Koltsov. He attempts to rape Natalka and uses food as a weapon to control her but Natalka poisons his borscht with wild mushrooms. He survives as Natalka flees to joins the other peasant women. She plans a revolt which backfires and they are overpowered by the Bolshevik attack. Yuri's family and the villagers are imprisoned and tortured in the local church that becomes a makeshift 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 to guide them through the forest to a cattle train stop towards Smila. That evening they are joined at their camp by the Kholodnoyarska 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.

Yuri and Lubko survive and continue their journey towards Smila by sneaking aboard a cattle train full of starved to death Ukrainian corpses. Travelling on foot and train they witness the massive diabolical death and decimation of their people on the roadsides and dumping pits. Far from Smila, they hijack a loaded truck loaded with grain and its Bolshevik soldier driver who later sympathizes with Yuri and for Ukraines terror famine inflicted by Stalin and joins Yuri's rescue mission, bringing grain to Yuris family and the villagers and defending them in a skirmish where he is shot by his own Bolsheviks.

Watching their village burn Yuri, Natalka, and Lubko escape; others of the family starve or are murdered by Koltsov's forces but grandfather Kozak Ivan faces a sword battle with Koltsov ,but both die in the church during its burning. The three are pursued onto another cattle train full of Ukrainian starved corpses on their way to be dumped into fire pits. Finally jumping the train they are chased to the Soviet border, forced to dive or die in the cold and turbulent Zbruch River. They dodge bullets under water crossing to Polish-controlled West Ukraine to get to the city of Lviv, with aims of hoping for help from the brave compassionate Ukrainian Greco Catholic Bishop Andriy Shyptitsky the rescuer of many Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, who were homeless or targeted victims by soviets and later during world war two hunted down in west Ukraine by the Nazis.The dream and incredible struggle lies ahead for the three Ukrainians for the vast rich pastures of Ukraine for the open prairies of Manitoba, Canada waiting to be seeded with Ukraines grains and sunflowers later to be Harvested like Yuris father and Mother and Grandfather wished to live and find freedom far from the Kremlin Moscow Stalin controlled Bolshevik terror.

Cast[]

Production[]

Researching his father's Ukrainian heritage and roots, and reading many books about Ukraine's history, Bachynsky Hoover decided to visit the country in 1999, 2000 and in 2004 after his mother Ada had passed away from her battle with brain cancer. He joined the half million protesting activists in the Orange Revolution that year. He thought that Stalin's 1932 -33 Holodomor famine, that had been waged across Ukraine, had to be dramatised in an English-language feature film, in order for the world to acknowledge the tragedy.^[1] He passionately rough drafted the screenplay over several years and in 2010 sought financing from the Ukrainian Government and various Ukrainian oligarchs, who were not interested.^[1] In 2011, he approached and pitched his story idea and rough draft script to fellow Ukrainian Canadian investor Ian Ihnatowycz, who believed in the writer actors talent and vision decided to kickstart Richards' screenplay research and its further development and eventually in 2013 feeling the writer had achieved his aim, he committed to financing the $21 million film in its entirety and credited the writer as the films Ukraine executive producer for putting much of the project together single-handedly hiring crews locations, Cossack soldiers, stunts, harvesters and folklore reenactors, singers, musicians, dancers, and attaching the film projects director the writer also acted in a film with fourteen years prior in a Toronto gangster film shoot as a hitman with Indy film star Michael Pare.^[1]

Filming began on location in Ukraine by November 15, 2013,^[3] under its original title The Devil's Harvest.^[4][5] Attempting to uncover parts of Kremlin history, producer Ian Ihnatowycz stated, "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."^[4][6]

On February 5, 2014, Variety reported that the shoot had just ended in Kyiv.^[4] Several local crew including Richard Bachynsky Hoover took part in the concurrent Euromaidan demonstrations.^[1]

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

Release[]

The film was acquired by Roadside Attractions, an Indy arm of Americas Lions Gate Films Corp., for a 1st quarter 2017 US release.^[7] Roadside Attractions released the film in the US on February 24, 2017. "D" Films Canada launched Bitter Harvest on March 3 in Canada. Many other film distributors bought the rights for the film in major countries globally and launched the film during the first quarter of 2017.

Reception[]

Box office[]

The final global box office sales were $904,399. Its widest release was in 127 theaters but screened in various venues in more than 100 countries in 2017/18.^[8]

Critical response[]

Bitter Harvest received generally negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 15% approval rating, based on 61 reviews. The consensus states, "Bitter Harvest lives down to its title with a clichéd wartime romance whose clumsy melodrama dishonors the victims of the real-life horrors it uses as a backdrop."^[9] Sheri Linden of the Los Angeles Times called the film "utterly devoid of emotional impact".^[10] Several reviews agreed that the film would raise awareness, but did not accurately depict the subject matter,^{[10][11][12][13][14][15]} with Peter Debruge of Variety stating that "there can be no doubt that the events deserve a more compelling and responsible treatment than this."^[16]

Michael O'Sullivan wrote for The Washington Post, "The Holodomor – an early 1930s famine in which millions of people in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, are said to have died when their foodstuffs were confiscated by the central Soviet government under Joseph Stalin – could have made for a tale of great, stirring tragedy on the silver screen. 'Bitter Harvest,' alas, is not that movie."^[17]

In 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."^[18] The Sydney Morning Herald called the film "a rousing tale with political pertinence".^[19]

See also[]

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

References[]

External links[]

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