Mavka: The Forest Song (2023)

Mavka: The Forest Song arrives from Ukraine with the weight of national record books behind it, an independently produced 3D fantasy adapted from Lesya Ukrainka's play and steeped in Slavic folk mythology. The story concerns a forest nymph who falls for a human musician and must choose between love and her duty as Guardian of the Heart of the Forest, while a sawmill heiress schemes to seize the magical wellspring for herself. It is a handsomely mounted production, and the producers have been forthright that they wished to raise ecological questions. They did.

The film's cultural awareness is largely of the ecological and folkloric variety. The Enchanted Forest and its Source of Life stand against human extraction, and the antagonist is a woman of commerce whose greed nearly burns the world down, which lends the proceedings a mild anti-greed streak. Mavka herself is chosen as guardian over the objections of a skeptical water nymph, though the arc remains a conventional love-and-duty fantasy. The messaging arrives through song, folk dance, and story, which spares us the sermon. A firestorm in the third act makes the point well enough without a lecture.

Elsewhere the ledger is bare. There is no LGBTQ+ content, no engagement with racial identity, no body-positivity theme, no neurodivergent character, and no revisionist impulse, since the film adapts its source faithfully. The all-Ukrainian voice cast reflects national pride instead of a casting initiative. The remainder is a competent, sincere family fantasy with a green streak and a soft spot for the forest. It means well, and it says so gently.