A murder occurs in a village—the victims are two twin brothers whom the villagers have always regarded as a single person. Seized by fear that the Messiah has come to carry out the Last Judgement, the people commit even more crimes.

This is the first of two adaptations of Valerii Shevchuk’s fantastical prose filmed by director Natalia Motuzko at the Odesa Film Studio. “Miracle in the Land of Oblivion” not only continued the traditions of Ukrainian poetic cinema but also demonstrated the possibilities for its evolution and reinterpretation.

The source material for “Miracle in the Land of Oblivion” was the novella “Petro the Fugitive” from the novel-trilogy “Three Leaves Outside the Window.” Shevchuk’s fantastical prose has a genuine literary foundation: court archives from the eighteenth century. The eclectic space of the adaptation exists at the intersection of political and cultural epochs.

Following Shevchuk’s lead, Motuzko incorporates elements of magical realism and a detective storyline into her film. She speaks of metaphysical matters and of the traditional Ukrainian village—a space in which there is room even for ancient Greek tragedy. Filming in the Poltava region, the director—enchanted by the local landscapes—creates, in the tradition of Dovzhenko, yet another small ode to the Ukrainian land.

A new digital version of the film was created from a scan of a 35mm print by the Film Laboratory of the Dovzhenko Centre in 2024.