Entering the Sea / Ta, shcho vkhodyt v more

Entering the Sea is a short poetic parable about the beginning of human life and a person’s place in the world.

From the multitude of human bodies on the sunny beach, one family comes to a focus. A little girl plays at the seashore, which unfolds before her like a free poetic feature of existence. Nearby are her parents, and their presence is as natural as water and sand. While somewhere not far away, everyday life bustles on.

Even in this brief sketch, Osyka’s search for a new visual language and metaphorical poetics is evident, the courage to move away from narratives and canons of socialist realism. For the first time in post-war Ukrainian cinema, the film addresses the theme of corporality, the exposed male and female bodies. Important elements of the film are touches and various textures, captured by the camera of Mykhailo Bielikov, creating a distinct sensory layer of the film.

This is the director’s first collaboration with composer Volodymyr Huba, who later worked on all of Osyka’s subsequent films and became one of the representatives of the Kyiv musical avant-garde.

Entering the Sea is Leonid Osyka’s diploma work at the Kyiv Institute of Cinematography (VDIK), which he shot at the Kyiv Film Studio. However, his diploma was not approved, and the film did not make it to the screens. The director was publicly accused of ‘existentialism,’ ‘decadence,’ and ‘borrowing from the New Wave.’ Nevertheless, according to composer Volodymyr Huba, the film impressed Sergei Pardzhanov so much that he jokingly suggested renaming the Kyiv Film Studio in honor of Leonid Osyka.