Directed by Volodymyr Denysenko • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine

Volodymyr Denysenko’s searing partisan drama is a neglected masterpiece of Soviet Ukrainian cinema. Recounting a partisan attack on a Nazi officer and the brutal recriminations that follow, Vasyl Zemliak’s quasi-autobiographical script draws on his own experiences in occupied rural Ukraine during World War Two. Denysenko renders Zemliak’s existentialist drama of conviction and sacrifice in starkly poetic visuals, accompanied by the discordant score of Krzysztof Penderecki. Conscience was shot as a diploma project in an effort to evade the censors, but was still denied a release and only screened in 1989. Reminiscent of Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent, it is less celebrated than its contemporaries in the Ukrainian “poetic cinema” movement, but remains a clarion call of anti-war filmmaking.

CONSCIENCE • СОВІСТЬ
Directed by Volodymyr Denysenko
Written by Volodymyr Denysenko and Vasyl Zemliak
Cinematography by Oleksander Deriazhny
Music by Krzysztof Penderecki, Jozsef Bakki, Myroslav Skoryk
Starring: Anatolii Sokolovsky, Valentyna Grishokyna, Mykola Guzd’

In Ukrainian and German with English subtitles