EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA: Ukrainian Film Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA turns Nikolai Gogol’s Ukrainian village folklore into a bright, comic winter fantasy full of devils, courtship, mischief and moonlit superstition. Set on Christmas Eve near the village of Dikanka, the film follows the blacksmith Vakula, who will do almost anything to win the affection of the proud and beautiful Oksana.

The problem, naturally, is the devil. Gogol’s world is full of bargains, tricks and strange interruptions from the supernatural, but the tone here stays playful rather than frightening. Rou stages the story as folk spectacle, with painted skies, theatrical sets, village songs, comic villains and a deep affection for the rituals and rhythms of rural life.

The film belongs to a long tradition of Soviet fairy-tale cinema, but its source material is unmistakably Ukrainian. Gogol drew heavily on the language, customs, humour and beliefs of the Ukrainian countryside, turning village life into a place where ordinary human vanity sits very close to the supernatural.

Screening after our HOW THE COSSACKS… animation block, EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA continues Thursday’s Cossacks and Devils program with a lighter kind of folk magic before the night turns stranger with THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO at 21:00.