The historical drama Dovbush draws on the real story and legend of Oleksa Dovbush, ringleader of Hutsul brigands, the opryshkos, who robbed the rich and helped the poor, in Robin Hood-style, during the early eighteenth century in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine. In 1733, France, Spain, Austria, and Russia vied for control of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the death of King Augustus II. The destiny of Poland was being decided near Gdansk, where the Russian army had surrounded Polish troops. Enter Oleksa Dovbuzh (Serhii Strelnykov) and his band of opryshkos to save the Polish overlords. Instead of showing him gratitude, the Poles try to kill him. Such is the background of this spectacularly shot costume drama by Oles Sanin, whose previous film The Guide screened in more than 600 US movie theaters in forty-two states as part of the “Stand with Ukraine through Film” campaign.
The narrative interweaves several stories. One is the story of Dovbush's fight for his people's freedom from foreign oppression, another is a forbidden love story between Dovbush and Marichka (Daria Plakhtii). There is also the rivalry between the two Dovbush brothers: Oleksa stands for dignity and freedom, while Ivan (Oleksii Hnatkovsky) seeks self-enrichment and power. The film fully resonates with the dilemmas present-day Ukraine faces, with existence itself at stake: how to defeat an enemy who is much stronger, cunning and relentless; who does not recognize your humanity and would stop at nothing to destroy you. The tragedy of the Russian war against Ukraine rings throughout the epic tonality of this film, in its breathtakingly beautiful Carpathian landscapes (DOP Serhii Mykhalchuk), its powerfully haunting score (composed by Alla Zahaykevych and Oleksander Chorny), and its ruminative dialogues, evoking today's Ukraine: “I don't want to run,” says Oleksa: “I want to live here, freely on my own land.” Or as Dovbush's father laments, “The wealthy hide their sons in basements while simple people are sent to war like cattle to a slaughterhouse.”
The filmmaker, Sanin, was a student of Leonid Osyka, one of the most original representatives of Ukrainian poetic cinema and sometimes compared for his Stone Cross to Yasujiro Ozu. Dovbush is steeped in Hutsul folk culture, customs, superstition, and tradition. There are meticulously reproduced Carpathian costumes, folk dances, kolomyika songs, wailings, incantations, and the hypnotizing sounds of trembita and drymba, all woven into the myth of the indestructible Ukrainian avenger. The real in the narrative is often indistinguishable from the magical, stock-in-trade traits of poetic cinema. Sanin is clearly in conversation with his great predecessors Sarkis Paradjanian (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors) and Yuri Illienko (The White Bird with a Black Mark). Yet while the arthouse poetic cinema of the 1960s aimed at highbrow cineastes, Dovbush seeks to appeal to the widest viewership. And appeal it does, for almost overnight it became Ukraine's most talked about movie, often screening to full houses, even while air-raid sirens remain an everyday occurrence.
Another salient quality differentiates the film from most of its predecessors. Since 1991, dialogues in Ukrainian movies have been written either predominantly in Russian interspersed with Ukrainian or, more recently, in the socially stigmatizing mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, surzhyk, allegedly because the latter more closely reflects the “reality of life.” Dovbush is an exception to this Russifying practice. Its characters speak a lively vernacular uncontaminated by Russian, with a local Hutsul flavor and vibrance that delights Ukrainian viewers but is bound to be lost in translation.
Dovbush is a Ukrainian-Polish coproduction with an international cast that also features Polish actors Agata Buzek (Jablonowska), Mateusz Kostiukiewicz (Przeluski), Jerzy Schejbal (Hetman Potocki), and American Luzer Twersky (Besht). The film was released in Ukraine on August 24, 2023, Ukraine's Independence Day, and became a megahit garnering about $2 million. More than half a million Ukrainians have seen the movie, and it also received theatrical distribution in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Its budget of $3.3 million is the biggest of any Ukrainian film since 1991.
