Volodymyr Denysenko

Volodymyr Denysenko (1930-1084) was a Ukrainian screenwriter and director. Born outside Kyiv, he was in the middle of his studies at the city’s Theatre Institute when he was arrested in 1948 and imprisoned for five years for “bourgeois nationalism”. Liberated and rehabilitated upon Stalin’s death in 1953, Denysenko returned to his studies, including a stint in Moscow where he worked under the great Oleksandr Dovzhenko. It was back in Kyiv that he established himself as a screenwriter, director, and lecturer of renown. His war drama Conscience (1968) was banned by Soviet censors before being rediscovered as a lost classic in the 1990s. He is also known for Reapers (1978), which won Ukraine’s prestigious Shevchenko Prize.