Introduction to the film by the CinEast team in English | about 10’



Slovo House. Unfinished Novel 

Budynok Slovo. Neskinchenyi roman Ukraine 2021 | Taras Tomenko | vostEN | 120’ | digital | Cast : Dmytro Oliynyk, Vyacheslav Dovzhenko, Stanislav Suknenko

Set in 1930s Kharkiv, the film follows young ambitious poet Vladimir Akimov as he moves into the Slovo House – a cooperative building established by Stalin’s regime to house prominent Ukrainian artists in order to foster a new Soviet cultural identity. As Akimov becomes entangled with the regime, the film explores artistic repression and the tragic fate of intellectuals during the Holodomor. Through Akimov’s moral struggles and the collective fate of his fellow writers, the film powerfully portrays the suffocation of artistic freedom and the devastating impact of totalitarianism on Ukrainian intellectual life.

« A tribute to our executed poets and writers. » (Taras Tomenko, director of the film)

« An introspection on the eternal theme of the relationship between authority and power, the potency of cultural genocide and the determination of a people to survive. » (I Will Tell Film Festival)