Bitter Harvest

Ukrainians have coined the term "Holodomor", roughly translated as "death by starvation", to describe the traumatic events of 1932-33, which form the backdrop to this English-language historical drama. Here, village lad Max Irons carries a torch for childhood sweetheart Samantha Barks, and while his ardour is undimmed when she marries another more eligible suitor, deadly famine is to prove an even greater test of their combined courage. The film-makers are obviously calculating that the central love interest will draw us into greater appreciation of Stalin's brutal implementation of his collective farming policy, when Ukrainian grain fed the rest of the Soviet Union while the farmers who grew the crop went hungry, and the death toll reached millions. However, the surrounding horrors - in part inflicted by Tamer Hassan's cruel party functionary - soon overwhelm the rather syrupy romance, in a film that's filled with good intentions but whose clunky dialogue and high cliché count indicate a fundamental lack of skills in the storytelling department. Hard to sit through, but sadly for the wrong reasons.