Shchors

Shchors (1939) is Alexander Dovzhenko's civil-war epic, free to watch online on iFILM. It follows Nikolai Shchors, a Red commander leading peasants and workers across the Ukrainian countryside toward Kiev in the spring of 1919.

The enemies close in from two sides — Petliura's units and General Dragomirov's advancing troops. Yet Dovzhenko cares less about battle logistics than about the land itself: sunflowers, folk songs, the weathered faces of his fighters held in close-up. Yevgeni Samoylov plays Shchors as young and fiery, almost a figure stepped out of legend.

Dovzhenko took the project on at Stalin's personal request, which fixed its place in the canon of Soviet classroom cinema. Watch it now for a different reason — the painterly eye of the director of Earth and Arsenal, turning a state commission into something close to visual poetry. A rewarding watch for anyone studying early Ukrainian and Soviet film. Stream Shchors (1939) online on iFILM.