A young American woman travels to Kyiv to make a gift for her mother — to film the places her mother once walked and from which she continued to receive letters for many years. As she discovers the city, the foreign tourist meets an eccentric guide and finds herself on a mysterious tour route dedicated to the life and work of an unrecognized poet, Danylo Prytulyak.

“The Seventh Route,” as the guide calls it, will wind through recognizable streets of the capital, picturesque suburbs, and even Chornobyl. This declaration of love for Kyiv was, against all odds, made during the period of total crisis in Ukrainian cinema in the 1990s. The screenplay was written by fourteen authors, among them students from Mykhailo Illienko’s directing workshop at the Kyiv State Institute of Theatre Arts named after I. K. Karpenko-Kary.

The film had virtually no theatrical release in the year it came out, and for the following 27 years remained without a proper digital restoration.

A new digital version of the film was created from a scan of a 35mm print by the Dovzhenko Centre Film Laboratory in 2024. It became an audience hit after its re-premiere at the KyivKinoFest.