A 19th-century poetic story about poor Carpathian mountaineers. Its protagonist, Ivan, is an aging farmer who had sadly not been stripped of his poverty even by the title cross erected over his weakly fertile field. Ivan's family's departure to Canada for a better life is emotionally shared by the whole village as a traditional pannychis. The film, shot using rough black and white images, momentarily resembles a documentary report. In the last year's poll of the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre on the best Ukrainian film of all times, The Stone Cross ranked at 5th place.

Leonid Osyka

Along with Yuri Ilyenko and other Ukrainian filmmakers of the 1960s generation, he counts as one of the creators of the phenomenon of the Ukrainian school of poetic cinema partly shaped by Sergei Parajanov's works. His debut, The Stone Cross, is characterized by extraordinary black and white camerawork by Valery Kvas and unexpected switches between poetism and rough documentary styles.