The Lost Letter

In the Ukrainian countryside of Gogol's Dikanka tales, the cossacks Vasyl (Ivan Mykolaichuk) and Andriy (Fedir Stryhun) set out for St. Petersburg with a letter from their leader to the Russian empress. Borys Ivchenko turns the long road into a run of songs, village feasts and supernatural trouble. Under the jokes sits a plain idea: a promise made to your own people is the one thing worth carrying a very long way.