Quotation

"This international co-production is out to impress as Ukraine's Doctor Zhivago. It's set during The Great Famine of 1932-33, when Stalin's Soviets starved millions of Ukrainian farmers and their families with its genocidal policy of forced collectivisation. "But sitting at the centre of the tragedy is a love story between childhood sweethearts Yuri and Natalka, played by Britain's Max Irons (son of Jeremy) and Samantha Barks, who scored her screen breakthrough with her performance as Epomine, the young revolutionary in the Hugh Jackman-Russell Crowe film version of Les Miserables. "They're a beguiling pair but they're destined to spend half the movie apart. After a pastoral idyll shot in their village at harvest time with sunny backlighting and connotations of mellow fruitfulness, the Russians ride in and nothing is ever the same again." Source: Sandra Hall, "Bitter Harvest review: Beguiling pair in Ukrainian tilt at Doctor Zhivago, " Sydney Morning Herald, February 26 2017.