Zvenigora

An anthology of Ukrainian folk myths, Zvenigora centers on a grandfather figure who stands for the spirit of the Ukraine. For Dovzhenko, Zvenigora “remained my most interesting picture for me. I made it in one breath—a hundred days. Unusually complicated in structure, eclectic in form, the film gave me, a self-taught production worker, the fortuitous opportunity of trying myself out in every genre. It was a catalog of all my creative abilities.” The old man believes that there is a treasure hidden in the mountains of Zvenigora. In the end, the real treasure turns out to be not gold or silver—it is the people, their intelligence and ambition, their harnessing of the land’s mineral wealth.