Halyna Demchuk

Documentary trilogy about the thorny path of the famous Ukrainian poet, translator, political prisoner Vasyl Stus. Filmed in 1989-1992, it describes the life of the poet, the story of the destruction of the dissident by the Soviet authorities, highlights his influence on Ukrainian society during life and after his death, records the testimony of witnesses, films the liquidated Kuchino camp, in which Stus was imprisoned, the reburial of Stus, Lytvyn and Tykhy in 1989. Consists of three parts: «Come back to me, my memory» (Верни до мене, пам’яте моя), «In the white cold the sun of Ukraine» (У білій стужі сонце України), «Crucified on a black cross» (Розіп’ятий на чорному хресті).

The script about loneliness, conformity and the impossibility of creative realization scared the editorial censorship at the studio, and then at Derzhkino. A lot of claims were made against him. The demands for amendments and endless additions and rewrites by the authors lasted for about a year. The original version of the title "Na pokhony!" ("To bow down!") was replaced by "To Dream and to Live". According to Pylyp Ilyenko, the director's eldest son, this name appeared "as a result of censor pressure." Censorship stopped the tape 40 times: at the stage of the literary script, director's, during film tests (the actors were not approved), filming, etc. The film catastrophically fell apart into fragments, into masterfully filmed, but unrelated scenes. The director called the finished version a "dead film".

Village boy Klimko, accompanying his father to the front, stays with his stepmother. In the occupied village, the hero cannot see his friends. Having survived hunger, injuries and loneliness, the boy enters a vocational school - nine kilometers from the village - and works with new friends for the front...

Successful film director Dmitry Pavlovich must fly by plane to Moscow and then to Rome. But the phone rings in his house and he is told that his old mother, who lives in Melovatka, his native village, has fallen ill. Dmitry Pavlovich hires a taxi and begins his “autumn journey to his mother.”