Mykhailo Illyenko’s film “Toloka” will be released on March 12. The film was based on Taras Shevchenko’s ballad “That Kateryna has a house on the platform…”, and its plot covers 400 years of Ukrainian history.
On this occasion, the film team announces the start of a joint project with the Come Back Alive Foundation. Seven hryvnias from each ticket for the movie “Toloka” will be transferred to help the Ukrainian army.
Director, screenwriter and co-producer of the film Mykhailo Illenko said: “At the beginning of the war, I often traveled with my previous film and fragments of “Toloka” to the soldiers in the East: from Happiness to Mariupol, showed the film in dugouts, in the open air, where there is no cinemas Therefore, for me, defenders of Ukraine are not strangers. The Come Back Alive Foundation is helping them and the movie Toloka also wants to get involved and help.”
“For me, this film sounds like an anthem of Ukrainian volunteerism. Therefore, if you once helped the army and the Maidan, or participated in historical events in any way, you will be able to feel that he is about you. I guarantee that this movie will not leave you indifferent. And that’s why we agreed to cooperate with him,” emphasized Vitaly Deinega, the founder of the Come Back Alive Foundation.
According to the director’s plan, the first viewers of “Toloka” were military personnel and civilians in the area of the Joint Forces Operation (JOF). Mykhailo Illenko and the actors of the film visited more than twenty cities and towns of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The pre-premiere tour of the painting in the OOS zone took place in the fall of 2019, with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.
Synopsis: Taras Shevchenko has a ballad about how three Cossacks fell in love with Kateryna. Kateryna entrusted her choice to fate: she promised to become the wife of the one who frees her brother from captivity. Two of the three Cossacks died trying to fulfill the terms of the contract, the third managed to save her brother, but Kateryna’s brother turned out not to be her brother, but her lover… Kateryna will have to wait for her “brother” in the plot of the film for more than a century, without aging and without losing hope. This story, like a parable, flies through the history of Ukraine, reproduces its dramatic and heroic episodes. Every test destroys Kateryna’s house. But she stubbornly, like many generations of Ukrainians, raises it from the ruins again and again.
Genre: Romantic Ballad
Director: Mykhailo Illenko
Author of the script: Mykhailo Illenko
Operator: Oleksandr Kryshtalovych
Composer: Roman Vishnevsky
Production designer: Roman Adamovych, Mykola Kishchuk
Producers: Mykhailo Illenko, Pylyp Illenko, Marianna Novikova, Andriy Rizol, etc.
Sound director: Artem Mostovy
Starring: Ivanna Illenko, Dmytro Linartovych, Bohdan Benyuk, Oleg Primogenov, Serhiy Romanyuk, Myroslav Gai, Dmytro Rybalevskyi, Vasyl Kuharskyi, Kostyantyn Voytenko, Tetyana Nagirnyak, Yevgenia Konyukh, and others.
Cameo roles in the film were performed by the stars of Ukrainian cinema, music and television: Akhtem Seitablaev, Oleg Skrypka, Serhii “Foma” Fomenko, Oleg “Fagot” Mykhailiuta, Ivan Lenyo, Galya and Lesya Telniuk, Taras Kompanichenko, Dmytro and Vitaly Kapranovy, Anna Zakletska , Roman Kolyada and others.
Company: “Illenko Film”
Running time: 116 min.
Distributor: UFD Company
Television partner: ICTV channel
With the support of the State Film Agency of Ukraine and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine