Fantasy / Horror / Drama
This Ukrainian fantasy reflects the careful retelling of a folk legend about a beautiful sorceress and her young apprentice. The older witch initiates the younger into a magical world while two winged men observe them. The film is done without sensation.


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Five-year-old Vitka and her teenage cousin Larysa both yearn for a life beyond the archaic rules and restricting confines of their small, godforsaken Ukrainian village. Despite her family's staunch objections, Larysa falls wildly in love with Scar, a handsome ex-convict. Hoping to leave their troubled past behind, the two plot their escape. Scar agrees to take on a criminal job in the city. Larysa, meanwhile, fends off an arranged marriage and awaits his return.

Based on the novel of the same name by Oleksandr Dovzhenko. About the childhood of the famous Ukrainian film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who was born on the ancient lands of Chernihiv, along the banks the Desna. The film consists of two parts. The first is the world shown through the impressions of the six-year-old Sashko. The second is the recollections and reasoning of Sashko, now an elderly colonel who liberates his native village during the war.

It is evening, children are gathered around the fire, and the old miller begins to tell them a fairy tale. In his tale, Mykola, a bursak, goes to Mr. Adam to teach his daughter Khrystyna to read and write. But on the way to the manor, Mykola learns that the village has been invaded by evil spirits, werewolves, and air-breathers, and that Mr. Adam himself is in captivity. Mykola and Khrystyna decide to free the prisoners and the land from evil spirits, but they will have to go through many trials.

Mamay draws on traditional Ukranian and Tatar folktales for its Romeo and Juliet-like love story and parable about chivalry and the struggle for freedom. Hundreds of years ago, in the wild steppes of Crimea that form an uneasy border between East and West, Europe and Asia, nomad and farmer, the proud Cossack Mamay falls in love with the Tatar beauty Omai. The title, like the storyline, holds a variety of different meanings taken from different cultures. In Turkic languages, it means "no one," but it was also the name of a famous Mongol conqueror, the great grandson of Ghengis-Khan. In Persian legends, mamay literally means "the spirit of the steppes. "

Twenty-five-year-old Vadym earns a living recording and selling all kinds of different sounds; nevertheless, he’d rather exchange his life in Kyiv for a better future in far-flung Canada. Thus, when he gets a generous job offer which might help him realise his dream, he jumps at the chance; he soon sets off to record the sounds of animals indigenous to Ukraine and also a rare bird native to the Carpathians. The situation proves somewhat more complicated when Vadym’s companion on the trip turns out to be his mother… To the sounds of a synthesized music score, debuting Ukrainian director Antonio Lukich unfolds a visually creative road movie, in which he demonstrates a highly unusual talent for constructing tragicomic situations.

A music video featuring People's Artist of Ukraine Nina Matvienko. The film features a number of both well-known and little-known Ukrainian folk and original songs performed by a wonderful singer. The video sequence harmoniously complements the musical part of the film. Here are the vast Ukrainian steppes, clear blue stretches, flowering field grasses and the rustling of oak forests.