Swan Lake. The Zone

Director: Yuri Illienko

1989 / 96min / 35mm

Released in the year of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, with the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union laying just just ahead, Illienko’s adaptation of stories written during incarceration in the 1970s by the director’s onetime collaborator Sergei Parajanov depicts the repeated and increasingly desperate attempts of a prisoner (Viktor Solovyov) to escape his hellish confinement. Filmed in the same Ukrainian prison where Parajanov—who was dying of cancer during the production of Swan Lake. The Zone—had been held in the 1970s, Illienko’s bracingly tactile, dialogue-sparse work of allegorical realism is both a tender goodbye to Parajanov and a wary welcome to an uncertain future.

35mm print from Yuri Illienko's personal collection

Q&A with Pylyp Illienko moderated by Dr. Yuri Shevchuk (Columbia University) on Sunday, November 16th