A young man named Yuras, having served eight years for hooliganism, is released from prison. He finds himself back in his home village—but now in an independent Ukraine, where a radio broadcasts the unwavering voice of the first president promising Ukrainians the right to a dignified life, and young people in clubs “dance non-Muscovite, independent, sovereign rock-n-roll.” The young man tries to find his place in this new world order and even starts a relationship with a Latvian girl from Moscow. The air is filled with the scent of freedom and international friendship. But just as he is lost in dreams and full of hope for a new life, the militia’s enforcement service brings him back to earth—operating like a long-established and well-tuned repressive machine.

In the cinema of the early 1990s, release from behind bars frequently served as a metaphor for liberation from the USSR as a “prison of nations.” It is telling that the protagonist is Ukrainian-speaking. The film legitimizes the living vernacular of central Ukraine’s inhabitants—surzhyk—spoken by most of the characters, while all representatives of the disciplinary service speak pointedly correct Russian, emphasizing their exclusive status and authority. Russian is also the language in which the protagonist’s brother writes a letter home to their mother; at the time, he is on a military deployment in Lithuania, where he is suppressing unrest and fighting “fascists.”

The film features what may be one of the earliest attempts to portray Ukrainian village life as it actually is — without romanticization or mystification, yet with its traditional rituals and celebrations. The villagers’ already eclectic calendar is now joined by a new holiday: Independence Day, celebrated with no less solemnity than Victory Day, Easter, or hrobky (the traditional grave commemoration of the deceased).

The film’s soundtrack features songs by Rutenia, a band that achieved cult status in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and which participated in—and received a diploma at the first locally legendary Chervona Ruta festival in 1989.

English subtitles are created and provided voluntarily by woodworm.