Ukrainian director Yuri Ilienko is perhaps best known for his great cinematography for Paradjanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and for The White Bird with Black Markings, a film he directed five years after this 1965 shelved work. "Subtitled 'a film parable,' A Spring for the Thirsty offers an austere impression of the life of an old man and some members of his family on the edge of a desert. Splendidly shot in black and white, it is visually experimental to the point of abstraction. Dialogue is minimal. Life revolves around a well, where the occasional passerby comes to drink. A montage of faces shows all the people whose thirst has been slaked. During the war, a soldier is shot at the well. Later, a grim war memorial is erected. Film conveys an overwhelming impression of sadness. Ilienko's expressive images sometimes veer toward surrealism, at other times take on an almost documentary realism. Though practically a silent film, A Spring for the Thirsty uses sound inventively in contrast to the image." (Deborah Young, Variety)