It is a poetic film story about the events of collectivisation in Ukraine in the late 1920s, the creation of the first collective farms, class animosity…

Earth is the most famous Ukrainian film, recognised as a masterpiece of world cinema. Glorified in Ukraine after Dovzhenko’s death, the avant-garde film, banned 9 days after its release, gave rise to perhaps the largest number of controversial interpretations. Full of lyrical pantheism and, at the same time, utopian exaltation, it demonstrated the ambiguity of the Ukrainian civilizational choice of the 1920s, culminating in dramatic collectivisation.

Oleksandr Dovzhenko is, probably, the most prominent and yet controversial figure of the Ukrainian culture of the Soviet era. In his creative work, he developed a political and cultural project of Ukraine, far from dogmatic communism: this – conditionally avant-garde – project paradoxically combined futurism and traditionalism, utopianism and conservatism.

The ability to think mythologically, in a supertemporal manner, embracing entire historical eras and associating himself with his own people, makes Dovzhenko quite a heroic figure.