Original title: Khaitarma
Copyright: the ATR Television Company, 2013
Format: feature narrative, historical drama
Carrier: DVD
Color: yes
Length: 90 min.
Original language: Russian and Crimean Tatar
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Director: Akhtem Seitablaev
Script writer: Mykola Rybalka
Cinematographer: Volodymyr Ivanov
Production designer: Shevket Seidametov
Music: Serhii Krutsenko and Dzhemil Karikov
Sound director: Serhii Savchenko
Editing: Serhii Klepach
Costume designer: Nadiya Kudriavtseva
Producer: Ivanna Diadiura
General Producer: Lenur Isliamov
Produced by the ATR Production Studio, Symferopil, Ukraine.

Film cast:
Akhtem Seitablaev as Amet-Khan Sultan
Aleksei Gorbunov as the NKVD major
Valerii Shitovalov as Amet-Khan's father
Usniye Khalilova as Amet-Khan's mother
Yurii Tsurylo as NKVD general Vasiliev
Andrii Saminin as Vladimir Naryshkin
Andrii Mostrenko as François de Joffre
Dmytro Surzhykov as NKVD captain Trunin

Synopsis
This is the first ever feature narrative film made by the Crimean Tatar director and producer, based on a Crimean Tatar story, and in Crimean Tatar language (even though in part). Using a real life story of Amet-Khan Sultan, a highly decorated fighter pilot of World War Two, it tells the viewer about the genocidal expulsion of the entire Crimean Tatar people from their ancestral homeland, orchestrated by the Soviet regime under the pretext that they had supposedly betrayed their "Soviet motherland" and helped the Germans during WW2.
The plotline of the film is rather straightforward. In recognition of his combat exploits a fierce fighter pilot Amet-Khan Sultan is given three days off-duty to visit his family in Alupka, the Crimea, recently reconquered from the Nazis. In the course of his trip, he witnesses the savagery visited by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, on the entire Tatar population of the peninsular. In vain he and his two comrades try to defend thousands of old men, women, and children from deportation in cattle cars, and come face to face with the communist variety of industrial disposal of entire nations.
Khaitarma was released on May 17, 2013. After a limited run in a few Ukrainian movie theaters the film was practically shelved by its copyright ownwer in a move that is all too reminiscent of the distribution history or, better to say, distribution ban, imposed upon Yuri Illienko's film "Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" (2001), because the Kremlin considered it anti-Russian. The film was rejected by the Odesa Film Festival that totes the neo-imperialist Putin line. The owners of the film rights, contrary to the wishes of its director and ignoring its positive reception by the Ukrainian viewer, have largely withheld the film from the international festival circle and have been reluctant to allow third parties to screen it.
The film was publically attacked by the Russian Consul General in Symferopil, Ukraine, Vladimir Andreev, who declared that it "did not reflect the entire truth about Crimea Tatars' collaboration and "distorted the truth about the Great Patriotic War" (Stalinist term for a Soviet-Nazi period of World War Two). Elaborating on his initial "insistent recommendation" to boycott Khaitarma, Mr. Andreev said in a live broadcast of the ATR TV channel (which produced the film) that he considered it "to be obvious that the Crimean Tatars had en mass committed high treason during the Great Patriotic War" and that his view was "consistent with the official Russian position" on the issue.
The scandal around Khaitarma is yet another proof of how much Ukraine and its culture is influenced by the Kremlin.
As if anticipating the fierce attack, the film also fulfils an educational mission, deconstructing the racist view of the Crimean Tatars, that up until today has been unopposed by the many "internationalist", "anti-xenophobic", and "anti-fascist" organizations in Ukraine and outside. In particular it informs the viewer that more that 30,000 Crimean Tatars fought against the Germans in World War Two, seven were awarded the golden star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Stalin's combat honor. Within only three days (May 18-20, 1944) the entire Crimean Tatar nation was expelled from the Crimea, a total of 194,110 individuals. In the mid-1960s, some 238,500 expelled Crimean Tatars lived in Siberia and Central Asia. 205,900 of them were children, women, and old people. Some 109,956 individuals died of exposure, hunger, and disease as they were transported in 1944 to their designated areas of settlement. This is four times more than the number of Crimean Tatars killed in WW2. The Soviet and now Putinite propaganda coyly terms the genocidal resettlement "a special operation."