Barks, whose stage credits include Les Misérables, Chicago, and Amélie, is joined in the film by Max Irons as well as Barry Pepper, Tamer Hassan, and Terence Stamp.

Director George Mendeluk co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Bachynsky-Hoover based on Bachynsky-Hoover’s original story.

“Based on one of the most overlooked tragedies of the 20th century,” Bitter Harvest, according to production notes, “is a powerful story of love, honor, rebellion and survival as seen through the eyes of two young lovers caught in the ravages of Joseph Stalin’s genocidal policies against Ukraine in the 1930s. As Stalin advances the ambitions of communists in the Kremlin, a young artist named Yuri (Max Irons) battles to survive famine, imprisonment and torture to save his childhood sweetheart Natalka (Samantha Barks) from the ’Holodomor,’ the death-by-starvation program that ultimately killed millions of Ukrainians. Against this tragic backdrop, Yuri escapes from a Soviet prison and joins the anti-Bolshevik resistance movement as he battles to reunite with Natalka and continue the fight for a free Ukraine.”

Dennis Davidson, Peter D. Graves, and William J. Immerman serve as executive producers. Richard Bachynsky-Hoover is the executive producer (Ukraine).