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Poster for Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

A New Kind of Ukrainian Film...acclaimed around the world at all film festivals

1965 · 1h 36m · N/A Drama, Romance
Directed by Sergei Parajanov

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Overview

In the Carpathian Mountains of 19th-century Ukraine, love, hate, life and death among the Hutsul people are as they’ve been since time began. Ivan is drawn to Marichka, the beautiful young daughter of the man who killed his father. But fate tragically decrees that the two lovers will remain apart.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
93%
Tomatometer
Fresh

It's one of the most unusual films I've seen, a barrage of images, music and noises, shot with such an active camera we almost need seatbelts.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh

Shadows was a leap in the dark like none other in Soviet film history, and a slap in the face of the officially sanctioned and artistically vacuous school of Socialist Realism.

John Patterson, L.A. Weekly
Fresh

As Parajanov's camera swirls vertiginously to capture harvest festivals and celebrations, you sense a linkage of past and present that's astounding.

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
Fresh

In this overwhelmingly beautiful movie, a sad, short, brutalized life is elevated to ecstatic myth.

J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Fresh

There are hallucinatory sequences in Sergei Paradzhanov's 1964 film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors when this eruptively colorful movie feels more like a folkloric tapestry sprung to life than a film about flesh-and-blood people.

Stephen Holden, New York Times

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