The White Bird Marked with Black

Bilyy ptakh z chornoyu vidznakoyu

Soviet Union

1971

99 Min

Color

Ukrainian

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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SCR Yuri Ilyenko, Ivan Mikolajchuk

CAST Larisa Kadochnikova, Ivan Mikolajchuk, Bogdan Stupka, Yuri Mikolajchuk, Natalya Naum, Dzhemma Firsova, Aleksandr Plotnikov

Colourful ‘optimistic tragedy’ of a poor family in Ukraine, living in the Carpathian mountains near the Romanian border, during the Second World War. Five sons of the family make up the village band, but as the battles between the Nazi-supported Ukranian nationalists and the Soviets go on, their band loses one player after another. —IMDb

Director

Yuri Ilyenko

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