Like restoring an old photograph, only in sound: Filatov and ONUKA have redone “Chervona Ruta” for the screen

The legendary “Chervona Ruta” has been redone for the screen, and the man behind it is Yevhen Filatov — the same one who records as The Maneken. The choral part in the new version is sung by ONUKA.

Filatov described the work on the track to the outlet MUZVAR.

The song appears in “Potyah Chervona Ruta”, which opened in cinemas on 20 August. It was produced by Prototype Production and FILM.UA Group.

Not a cover but a restoration

Filatov deliberately did not rewrite the song in his own image. The task, he says, was to keep it recognisable: he replayed every part as close to the original as possible, leaving the melody and the arrangement where the listener remembers them. What changed was not the music but the quality of the recording.

“The main change is the quality of the recording. You could compare it to restoring an old photograph,” Yevhen Filatov said.

He is just as restrained about the idea itself: “We met with the production team and decided to revive the legendary composition in a way that keeps all its bright colours while adding contemporary ones.” In other words, this was never a remix or a reinterpretation — it was about making a song from 1989 sound in a cinema the way it sounds in the heads of the people who remember it.

A first appearance on camera

The second half of the story has nothing to do with sound. “This is my first cameo in a film,” Filatov says: he appears on screen as himself, and it is his debut in front of a camera. His voice is also in the chorus alongside other artists.

For ONUKA the project sits in the same line as the rest of her work with Ukrainian musical heritage: the choral part here is not decoration but the layer that holds the whole new version together.

As ONE//FM reported, “Potyah Chervona Ruta” is in cinemas, with Iryna Bilyk, Ponomariov and Mohylevska playing themselves.