The present volume on the cinema of Soviet Ukrainian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko is being completed at a time of war between Russia and Ukraine, which began with the Russian army’s invasion of Ukrainian territories on February 24, 2022. As of the writing of this introduction in the spring of 2023, the war continues to rage on with no clear end in sight, bringing death, destruction, dislocation, and suffering to millions of Ukrainian citizens. In the meantime, it has become impossible to ignore calls from journalists, artists, academics, and Ukrainians across the globe to confront and grapple with the history of Russia’s imperial ambitions and consciousness before, during, and after the Soviet period. In a March 2023 article, The New York Times reported on how such an historical reckoning might transpire, describing recent efforts by museums to acknowledge and accurately label as Ukrainian those artists and works that had been previously designated as Russian or Soviet. A failure to do so would amount to “stealing a heritage,” making it ever more difficult for modern-day Ukraine to account for its historical lineage and protect a shared cultural memory. The process is anything but simple, given the extreme ethnic diversity of the territories of Russia, the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union; the shifts in borders over centuries; and the history of colonization, annexation, and population resettlements. Furthermore, Moscow’s longstanding role as an epicenter of opportunity, drawing and appropriating talent from the surrounding territories, complicates attempts to assign clear ethnic and national alliances and identities.