Катерина Матейко

The Stone Cross

Leonid Osyka

Daniil Ilchenko, Катерина Матейко

Kaminnyi khrest (Stone Cross, 1968) told the powerful story of a proud farmer who decided to emigrate to Canada during the 1890s. The film captured moments shortly before the farmer set off for his voyage and had to say “good-bye” to his native village, friends and relatives. The internal conflict of the farmer in doubt about his decision became the central focus of the film. Like Vasyl Stefanyk’s novella that inspired it, the film is a meditation on the sense of one’s belonging, the sense of one’s own culture and what it means to abandon it.