Vasyl Kozenko

1914, Imperial Russia. A group of Ukrainian peasants searching for a better life in the Taurida steppe end up working at the landholding of the aristocratic Falz-Fein family. Friends Vustya and Hanna are courted by a revolutionary and the landowner's son, both rising their hopes and dreams.

The film tells the story of a bitter, hard life of laborers in Ukraine during the second half of the XIX century.

The owner of the gladiator school buys two slaves, the Thracian Spartacus and the Gaul Artorix. During the first fight in the arena, Spartacus wins over the Colloseum audience and his freedom. When freed from gladiator slavery, Spartacus calls slaves and Rome plebs for a rebel. The dictator Sulla dies. Spartacus and rebellious slaves lay out a camp near Vesuvius. The Roman commander Crassus is unable to take Spartacus’s camp by storm, so he lays siege to it. Spartacus is betrayed; he dies with his friend Artorix in a battle. The film is based on Raffaello Giovagnoli’s novel of the same name.

Year 1648. Ukraine under the oppression of Poland. Polish nobility committing outrage, burning villages one after another. Hetman of Zaporozhian Cossacks Bogdan Khmelnitsky gathers the army of defenders of the motherland...