A pre-release screening of the film Jacob's Ladder was held in Kyiv. The main charachters of the documentary are three classmates - the former head of the UGCC Lubomyr Husar, the son of UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) commander Yuriy Shuhevych, and a medic Borys Bilynsky.
In 1944 they studied in the same class of the First Lviv Gymnasium. And after the school year, their fates diverged.
Lubomyr Husar emigrated with his parents to Austria, and from there to the USA. Then he moved to Rome, where he became a cardinal and archbishop. Borys Bilynsky became a famous oncosurgeon in Lviv. The third hero, Yuriy Shuhevych, whose father was the commander of the UPA, spent 31 years of his life in Soviet camps.
The classmates met after 70 years in Lviv cafe on the roof of an old house where they reflect on the fate of Ukraine in the light of their lives.
"Their fate is so radically separated, it's just amazing. They cover the entire range of three fates of Galician intelligentsia of the time. I wanted to make a film about the generation of our parents' generation... And I think it is undervalued, misunderstood and was not given proper attention in society," says the director of the film Lesya Kharchenko.