Very Late Warm Autumn / Taka piznia, taka tepla osin

Once upon a time, a peasant from Bukovyna, named Rusak, left his native Carpathians and moved to Canada with his little daughter Orysia. Most of his life passed there, and it is there where he buries his daughter. After her death, Rusak decides to visit his homeland, and together with his granddaughter Orysia, he returns to his native village. While Rusak himself tries to recall the past and reestablish lost connections, Orysia falls in love with a local heartthrob. Through this relationship, she unexpectedly discovers her native land and her national identity.

This is the second film directed by the legendary actor Ivan Mykolaichuk. After Babylon XX, he once again addresses the painful issues at the time of national self-awareness. However, if Babylon XX was a direct continuation of poetic cinema, and Mykolaichuk himself was clearly inspired by the work of Sergei Paradzhanov and Yurii Illienko, in the film Very Late Warm Autumn, he gradually moves away from this influence. Drawing from poetic and ethnographic motifs, the director leans more towards realism. The film still contains the warmth and humor inherent in poetic cinema, but there is a certain critical detachment to the national theme. The latter, however, can also be explained by the pressure of Soviet censorship, which forced Mykolaichuk and his co-screenwriter Yurii Korotych to rewrite the script multiple times.

Ivan Mykolaichuk played one of the main roles in the film (the role of the village heartthrob Hryhir). The role of Orysia was played by the legendary actress Halyna Sulyma, who would later appear in a series of iconic Ukrainian films, including The Last Bunker (1991), Famine-33 (1991), Wedding with Death (1992), Fuchzhou (1993), and The Seventh Route (1997). The film’s operator was Yurii Harmash, with whom Mykolaichuk had previously worked on the film Babylon XX.