THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO - Ukrainian Film Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO takes Gogol’s folk tale and turns it into a fever dream of desire, superstition, ritual and punishment. Yurii Illienko, who had already helped define the look of Ukrainian poetic cinema as cinematographer on SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (screening twice later this week) pushes even further here into abstraction and visual excess.

The story follows Petro, a poor young man who wants to marry the woman he loves but lacks the wealth her father demands. His desperation opens the door to a Faustian bargain with dark forces, pulling the film into a world of temptation, fire, flowers and folk belief. Illienko fractures the story into image, rhythm and atmosphere, making the film feel like a nightmare remembered in fragments.

For audiences who know Alejandro Jodorowsky, THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO shares that same appetite for surrealism, ritual imagery and wild colour, but its roots are entirely Ukrainian: Gogol, village superstition, poverty, desire, faith and punishment. It’s a folk tale pushed into the realm of hallucination.

Made in the late 1960s, the film belongs to the same restless Ukrainian cinematic tradition as Parajanov and Dovzhenko, where folklore becomes a way to speak through image, rhythm and symbol. The village is not a picturesque setting. It’s a place where poverty, fear, faith and desire turn everyday life into something unstable and dangerous.

Screening after EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA, THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO closes Thursday’s Cossacks and Devils program by taking Gogol somewhere darker.