In one of the few surviving synopses of the film, its plot is described in just a few words: “The film highlights the relations between city and countryside around the food supply issue.” In fact, “Bread” aspires to encompass a far broader historical panorama. The action is set in 1920. Yet, as was typical of Soviet utopian narratives of the time, a single sowing campaign astonishingly contains an entire decade, including electrification and the collectivization of the countryside.

A demobilized Red Army soldier returns to his village. He actively sets about introducing the new order, ploughing up the boundaries of the kulaks and sowing their land with grain taken from the city. His father, a man of traditional views, does not believe that such grain will ever sprout.

The film-epic “Bread”, created by Mykola Shpykovskyi almost simultaneously with Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s “Earth”, forms a paradoxical ideological and aesthetic counterpart to it. However, whereas “Earth” long ago entered the cinematic canon, Shpykovskyi’s film remained unknown to wider audiences until recent times.

Completed in October 1929, “Bread” was released in the Ukrainian SSR on March 4, 1930, but was never approved for all-Union distribution. The film was reviewed twice by the State Repertoire Committee of the RSFSR, and both versions were rejected. Protocol No. 3430 of April 2, 1930 contained the following conclusion by the political editor:

“The film gives a distorted impression of the struggle for bread. The middle peasant is entirely absent from the picture. The period of recovery (restrictions on the kulak, relative economic strengthening of the kulak), the NEP [New economic policy, — Dovzhenko Centre], class struggle, the preparation of the political prerequisites for the liquidation of the kulaks and collectivization — all of this is absent from the film.”

After the “Bread’s” failure, Shpykovskyi made only one more film in Ukraine. He later moved to Moscow and stopped directing films altogether, working instead as a screenwriter.

In 2021, “Bread” ranked 25th in the list of the 100 best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema.
The film features a contemporary soundtrack by the band Zlypni.