Storyline
Set between the two World Wars and based on true historical events, Bitter Harvest conveys the untold story of the Holodomor, the genocidal famine engineered by the tyrant Joseph Stalin. The film displays a powerful tale of love, honour, rebellion and survival at a time when Ukraine was forced to adjust to the horrifying territorial ambitions of the burgeoning Soviet Union.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Barry Pepper, Paul Hickey, Terence Stamp, Tamer Hassan, Dominic Borrelli, Max Irons, Richard Brake, Jane Thorne, Rod Hunt, William Beck, Michael Jenn, Richard Ashton, Aneurin Barnard, Samantha Barks, Edward Akrout, Tom Austen, Gary Oliver, David G. Robinson, Denis Khoroshko, Marat Khairoullin, Lucy Brown, Nicholas Aaron, Jack Hollington, Malcolm Freeman, Joey Price, Kevin Hudson, Kathy Kiera Clarke, Adam McNamara, Jocasta Anderson, Tim Charles, Kane Ogieva, Rob Mitchell-James, Ostap Stupka
Trailer
Reviews
50
Slant Magazine
The film is an awkward mix of swashbuckling love story and polemic, painted in very broad strokes.
50
Bitter Harvest never amounts to more than a colorful misfire, a picture with much of the pageant of the period, but little of the roiling passions that dominate politics in the Breadbasket of Europe, even today.
50
As the film darkens, it intensifies its focus on tragedy and atrocity and begins to do some justice to one of the largest and least known genocides in history.
42
Even if it weren’t about an atrocity, this training-wheels Doctor Zhivago would still be lame.
40
Village Voice
A subject like the Holodomor demands something more than a TV-movie aesthetic and pitched battle scenes featuring a couple dozen combatants.
