Stolen Happiness

A fantasy film on the theme of the early works of Nikolai Gogol, tightly interwoven with his personality and biography.

The film is set on an island in the Pacific where a hydrogen bomb is being tested. A group of local fishermen die from radiation sickness. The inventor of the bomb, American scientist Thomas Sherwood, also receives a large dose of radiation and is now terminally ill. Once he professed the theory of "redemption through his own suffering," but now, in the face of death, he realized that such atonement does not benefit anyone.

The film tells the story of people of a unique profession - rafters, or bokorash, as they were called in Zakarpattia, who floated timber down the Cheremosh River from the peaks to the valley. This profession came to an end in the early 1970s, and half a century later, the film is an invaluable testament to the history of the Carpathian region.