The Enchanted Desna

The Enchanted Desna is Yulia Solntseva's film from 1964, an intimate epic in the magic-realist vein made from a script by her late husband and creative collaborator. It draws on his memories of his childhood on the banks of the Desna River in Chernihiv Oblast, moving freely between pre-revolutionary bucolic idyll, the horrors of World War II, and contemporary-set scenes. The film won a Special Jury Prize at the San Sebastián Film Festival and was Jean-Luc Godard's favorite film of 1965; critic Jonathan Rosenbaum calls it "among the most ravishingly beautiful and poetic spectacles ever made."