Bitter Harvest (2017) on Netflix
R20171h 43mDramaHistoryRomance
In 1930s Ukraine, artist Yuri marries Natalka, his childhood sweetheart. Stalin's collectivization sends Bolshevik troops to requisition the harvest, and communist instructors censor Yuri's art.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.0/104,366 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes15%
Trailer
Plot summary
In central Ukraine, outside Smila, the Cossack Ivan Kachaniuk defends his family on farmland sown with wheat and sunflowers. Years later, in 1932, his grandson Yuri, an artist, marries Natalka, the girl he grew up with, and studies at the Kyiv Art Academy. The family farms their own land as kurkuli, independent Cossack growers of grain. Joseph Stalin's collectivization campaign sends the Bolshevik army to take most of Ukraine's harvest. At the State Art Institute, communist instructors replace the art teachers and condemn Yuri's paintings, which express Ukrainian identity, as anti-Soviet. Yuri walks out.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bitter Harvest (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filming on Bitter Harvest ended in Kyiv on 5 February 2014 during the Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity demonstrations, and screenwriter Richard Bachynsky Hoover and local crew members joined the protests. Bachynsky Hoover was injured by a chemical grenade.
- Bitter Harvest was the first English-language feature film about the Holodomor. Financier Ian Ihnatowycz said the famine had been covered up by the Kremlin regime and that this chapter of history needed to be told in English on the silver screen for the first time in feature film history.
- During post-production in early 2014 at London's Pinewood Studios, the film's underwater scenes were shot using the James Bond tank.
- Bitter Harvest was filmed at the Pyrohiv open-air museum in Kyiv, which doubles for the village outside Smila of a century ago. Screenwriter Richard Bachynsky Hoover was inspired to make the film after visiting the museum in 1999.
