This Ukrainian Romeo and Juliet story became a groundbreaking event for Soviet cinema. First, the film offered a new film language with colorful representations of otherness that challenged the didactic canons of social realism. Second, the film used the Ukrainian language, which was unofficially restricted in cultural use at the time. Finally, the screenings of the film were followed by scandals and dissident protests that transformed this rather apolitical film, based on a classic modern-literature text, into a political manifesto and an object of inspiration for a whole generation of filmmakers.