This film tells what it was like to live in the USSR with brutal reality. A convict is forced to hide within a model of a hammer and sickle. Here a tragic romance ensues between the convict and woman worker; which is spoiled by the woman’s jealous young son. The convict is then forced to undergo a tragic bid for freedom which ends with the beauty of swans contrasted with the imprisoned convicts and the hopeful but ultimately tragic wait by the woman for her lover. —IMDb
Considered one of the Ukraine’s leading filmmakers of the 1970s and 1980s, Yuri Ilyenko is also a noted cinematographer, best known for his award-winning photography of Sergei Paradjanov’s Teni Zabytykh Predkov/Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964). As a director, Ilyenko’s best-known films include Bily Ptakh Z Chornoyu Oznakoyu/White Bird With a Black Spot (1970), which many critics consider one of the era’s best. Ilyenko graduated from Moscow’s VGIK in 1961 with a major in cinematography and worked as a lighting director at Yalta Film Studios. In 1963, he moved to Dovzhenko Film Studios and two years later made his directorial debut with Rodnik Dlya Zhazhdushchikh. —allmovie guide
