Despite being the first woman to win the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961 (a feat only recently matched by Sofia Coppola in 2017), and being highly respected by peers like Jean-Luc Godard, Yuliya Solntseva is still considered to be in the shadow of her partner, the Ukranian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko. This unfortunate oversight notwithstanding, Solntseva's oeuvre stands its ground as innovative filmmaking replete with daring sound design, innovative montage, and dreamlike story-telling verging on magic realism.

The Enchanted Desna is a perfect example of Solntseva's approach to cinema. Based on an autobiographical novella by Dovzhenko, the story delves into the childhood reveries of a Ukrainian soldier. As part of Solntseva's Ukrainian Trilogy, along with Poem of the Sea (1958) and Chronicle of Flaming Years (1961), The Enchanted Desna is a love letter to Ukraine and its pastoral landscapes.