Bitter Harvest

Bitter Harvest (2017)

Set between the two World Wars and based on true historical events, Bitter Harvest conveys the untold story of the Holodomor, the genocidal famine engineered by the tyrant Joseph Stalin. The film displays a powerful tale of love, honour, rebellion and survival at a time when Ukraine was forced to adjust to the horrifying territorial ambitions of the burgeoning Soviet Union.

Date of release
2017-01-31
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (90)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
War, Drama, History, Romance
Director
George Mendeluk

Casting

Interesting facts

Bitter Harvest is a 2017 period romantic-drama film set in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. The film is the first English language feature film depicting Ukraine's famine, the 1932–33 Holodomor. The film stars Max Irons, Samantha Barks, Barry Pepper, Tamer Hassan, Lucy Brown and Terence Stamp.

Production

Canadian Half-Ukrainian Richard Bachynsky Hoover first visited Lviv and Kyiv Ukraine in 1999 then in 2004 to protest the Yanukovych party during the Orange Revolution. He drafted the screenplay and approached Ian Ihnatowycz, who agreed to fund research and development before committing in 2013 to finance the US$21 million film in its entirety.

Filming began in Ukraine on November 15, 2013, under the working title "The Devil's Harvest". Ihnatowycz said, "Given the importance of the Holodomor, and that few outside Ukraine knew about this man-made famine because it had been covered up by the Kremlin regime, this chapter of history needed to be told in English on the silver screen for the first time in feature film history."

The shoot ended in Kyiv on February 5, 2014, concurrent with the 2013 Euromaidan and 2014 Revolution of Dignity demonstrations, in which Bachynsky Hoover and local crew members took part. Bachynsky Hoover was injured by a chemical grenade.

Post-production continued in early 2014 at London's Pinewood Studios, using the James Bond tank to film underwater scenes.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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