About the film
Chervona Ruta (Russian: «Червона рута», romanized: Chervona Ruta, from Ukrainian: Червона рута, lit. 'red rue') is a 1971 Soviet musical film written by Miroslav Skochilyas and directed by Roman Oleksiv, starring Sofia Rotaru and Vasyl Zinkevych alongside popular Soviet Ukrainian ensembles.
Regarded as one of the first modern Soviet musical films, and the first modern Ukrainian musical filmed in Bukovina and the Carpathian mountains in the Ukrainian SSR, Chervona Ruta features short dialogues combined with legendary pop-folk songs in the Ukrainian language and characteristic Western Ukraine dances in modern pop choreography. The film was released in both a Ukrainian and a Russian language version, though in both versions all but one of the songs are in Ukrainian.
In 2016, BBC News Ukrainian wrote that Chervona ruta "popularised Ukrainian songs in a time of Brezhnev's Russification".
