Crimea: The Source

Twenty years after the film was made, the drama of the Crimean Tatar nation is revealed even more.
The story of the Crimean Tatars - a nation that, after years of exile, returned to its homeland in the Crimea and rebuilds its identity in difficult conditions.
By order of Stalin, on May 18, 1944, the Crimean Tatars were expelled from their homeland overnight. Thousands of people were killed. Those who survived were deported to Central Asia, mainly to Uzbekistan. Unlike many other ethnic groups affected by similar repressions, the Crimean Tatars have never been officially rehabilitated, so the process of their gradual return to the land of their ancestors was treated as illegal and met with strong official counteraction. After the collapse of the USSR and the entry of Crimea into independent Ukraine, the situation of the Tatars improved only slightly.
Those returning found their lands and houses occupied by Russians who had settled here for years. This situation caused constant conflicts between national groups, additionally fueled by cultural and religious differences. The film was made in 2002 - even before the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014. It tells the extraordinary story of a nation that returned to its homeland after fifty years of exile.
The film shows the problem of deciding the fate of one nation by another nation, including the dramatic story of the Tatars subjected to ruthless and criminal acts of Russian violence. The film stars Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev, who spent fifteen years in Russian gulags.