The life of Yuri, a young courageous artist, who after knowing that Stalin prepares for getting rid of Ukrainian through the policy of Holodomore, a program that is set to make people die from starvation, has been turned upside down, as he goes in a dangerous mission to save his lover.
It's not Zhivago. The big picture is drawn a little too hastily for that. But it is a rousing tale with political pertinence, given the current state of relations between Russia and the Ukraine.
Almost inevitably, approaching the Holodomor via a standard-length dramatic feature risks reducing the cataclysm's enormity to a trivializing size and emotional impact.
It seems like Mendeluk and his writer Richard Bachynsky Hoover were striving for something sweeping and old-fashioned, but the end result is claustrophobic and comically out-of-touch.
Given the scope of the early-1930s atrocity, the most shocking thing about director George Mendeluk's new dramatization is how utterly devoid of emotional impact it is.
While "Bitter Harvest" will undoubtedly serve to raise awareness, there can be no doubt that the events deserve a more compelling and responsible treatment than this.
In reality, more than seven million people likely died on Stalin's orders. (The final numbers remain unknown.) Don't they deserve a better epitaph than this?