At Great Cost

The Ukrainian film revival of the 1960s had a number of influences. Besides the political liberation of the Thaw era, there was also the rediscovery of Ukrainian modernist and realist literature of the early twentieth century, particularly the writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi. Before Sergei Parajanov used his work in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Mark Donskoi adapted At Great Cost, another great story of tragic love and escape. Odesa-born Donskoi was among the most gifted Soviet directors of his generation, but in the middle of his career, he was blacklisted at the central film studios in Moscow and forced to relocate to “the periphery” of the Kyiv studios.