The first film of Dovzhenko’s silent trilogy which sealed his reputation as a leading Ukrainian film director sparked a heated debate about the national cinema.

Through centuries, a grey-haired old man guards bloodstained treasures of Zvenyhora. Before his eyes, as if in a dream, one historical period follows another – from the arrival of the Varangians and the Haidamak movement through to World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. A “gold rush” creates fantastic visions in the heads of treasure hunters and possesses the old man’s elder grandson Pavlo.
(His younger grandson Tymish trades his grandfather’s archaic world of nature to “rabfak” (remedial school for workers) and industrialisation. The brothers meet on the enchanted mountain for a final battle.)

The magic tricks of early silent cinema, the gloomy mysticism of the German expressionist films of the 1920s, Chaplin-like irony, avant-garde montage are all combined by Dovzhenko in his lyric-epic film.