Earth

The final film of Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," and his last silent film. Earth follows a Ukrainian village through the upheaval of collectivization: the arrival of the first tractor, the resistance of the kulak landowners, and the murder of the young communist Vasyl by a hostile neighbor. Dovzhenko was commissioned to make propaganda for Stalin's farm policy, but what he delivered is a lyrical, almost pantheistic meditation on birth, death, and the soil. The film is built from images, apples in the sun, a farmer's face against the sky, a body laid out in the orchard, that have been quoted by filmmakers for decades. It was banned by Soviet authorities nine days after release. At the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, a poll of critics named it one of the twelve greatest films ever made. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.