Matvei Lyarov

The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.

A Soviet propaganda film based on material from the Bolshevik coup. During the Russian civil war, the Whites, that anti-Communist force that fought against the Bolsheviks during that period, capture a Jewish Ukranian village; the gang commander threatens a pogrom, and will kill everyone in the village unless the inhabitants agree to give to the White Officers five virgin girls in wedding dresses. Under such terrible pressure, the Jewish council of the town decides, full of sorrow and despair, to sacrifice their daughters to the drunken officers but fortunately and just in time, a detachment of partisans that belong to the Red Army, comes and frees the village.

Algeria, run by the French administration. Tamilla is a cheerful girl whose father, a respected member of the Méziane community of Kabylians, is looking for a favorable marriage. Mezian promises his daughter to the old merchant Lakhrash. This does not prevent him from selling Tamilla almost immediately for the second time, this time to a young handsome man named Akli, with whom the girl experiences short-term happiness. But later, Akli thinks about another wife. At the same time, Meziane is scheming to lure more money from Akli and pay off Lakhrash. Having already given birth to a child with Akli, Tamilla finally falls into Lakhrash's hands. Everything ends in tragedy, and Tamilla is imprisoned by an unjust sentence of French judges who are insensitive to Berber problems. Although Tamilla will be released, she is already "damaged goods". The film premiered in Turkey 92 years later with a special screening at the 56th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

The owner of the gladiator school buys two slaves, the Thracian Spartacus and the Gaul Artorix. During the first fight in the arena, Spartacus wins over the Colloseum audience and his freedom. When freed from gladiator slavery, Spartacus calls slaves and Rome plebs for a rebel. The dictator Sulla dies. Spartacus and rebellious slaves lay out a camp near Vesuvius. The Roman commander Crassus is unable to take Spartacus’s camp by storm, so he lays siege to it. Spartacus is betrayed; he dies with his friend Artorix in a battle. The film is based on Raffaello Giovagnoli’s novel of the same name.

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.

It's the 17th century, when social antagonism is at its peak. The poverty of peasants and poor Cossacks is opposed to the lavish lifestyle of the Ukrainian and Polish noblemen, priests, and Cossack officers. Cossacks fight off Tatars’ attacks, however, they start to realise that the real enemy is much closer. Taras Triasylo raises Cossacks to help the rebellious peasants.

Smart Man Nassredin easily penetrates into Bukhara Emir inner circle posing as Wise Man from Damascus. He becomes Emir trusted advisor, and even convinces the tyrant to relax the rule and release a lot of political prisoners (because stars favor this arrangement).

The film adaptation of Taras Shevchenko’s biography of 1925 is the first Ukrainian biopic. At that time, it was one of the most expensive films, as for the first time experts in history, ethnography, and literary studies were involved in pre-production. Consisting of numerous short stories, the film that shows the life of Shevchenko as an adolescent, a soldier, a poet, was successfully demonstrated in Ukraine and abroad and became the most acknowledged cinema project of 1926.