Maksym, a boy from what might be called a “comfortable” and successful family, is in love with Masha. Masha, a girl from a boarding school, is in love with Maksym. This story might have ended in the expected marriage—but suddenly Susan, an American woman searching for her family roots, arrives in Kyiv, Ukraine. The straight line of love becomes a dramatic triangle.

“Wild Love” is a story told against the backdrop of the early years of independence—a time of free markets, freedom from Soviet censorship, open borders, exposed bodies, and corporate pioneers. At the same time, it is an uncommonly vivid portrait of the Ukrainian capital, in which numerous Kyiv streets and neighbourhoods are easily recognizable.

This transforms the film into a unique document of its era, and its narrative into a telling story about the 1990s—one in which parallels with the present are eager to be found.

One of the key directors of the Odesa Film Studio, Villen Novak dedicated the film to the memory of his daughter Ivanka, who died when filming was nearly complete. “Wild Love” became the Ukrainian box office leader of 1994. Three years later, Novak would make another commercial hit—the melodrama as well “The Princess and the Beans”—and go on to become arguably the most successful Ukrainian director of the decade.

A Ukrainian-language digital copy of the film was created for the first time from a scan of a 35mm print by the Film Laboratory of the Dovzhenko Centre in 2025.