Known for Acting
In the first half of the 17th century, the peasant Nazar Stodolya, sentenced to death by the Polish magnate Haletsky, is rescued by his friend Hnat. Later, Nazar and Hnat find themselves in the estate of the Ukrainian centurion Kichaty. The centurion, having invited a priest, persuades the fugitives to sign a paper stating that they have voluntarily been assigned to Kichaty's estate. Hnat does not sign the paper, and Nazar, falling in love with the owner's daughter Halia, easily puts his signature and thus falls into another bondage. Soon, Hnat leads the people's struggle against the oppressors, and Nazar and Halya join the rebels.
The life was cruel with Ivas. The landlord sent him at war, and his girlfriend – in the house of ill fame. In the troops an ordinary peasant gets acquainted with an ideological revolutionary and becomes inspired with the feeling of inequity to the existing social structure. And when the time comes to return to the native village, he will make the sir pays by his blood for all wrong-doings against the peasants. A film based on works and biography of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (1814 - 1861).
The film attempts to display an episode of the liberation movement in Ukraine - the uprising of Kolievs (serfs, artisans and fishermen) against the tyranny of the feudal lords and the Polish nobility, which ended with a brutal massacre performed by a Russian punitive expedition in 1768.
