Stalingrad

Stalingrad is a 2013 Russian war film directed by Fedor Bondarchuk. It was the first Russian movie released in IMAX. The film was released in September 2013 in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and October in Russia before its international release in subsequent months (all releases were handled by the foreign-language arm of Columbia Pictures). The film was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. Stalingrad received the I3DS (International 3D and Advanced Imaging Society) Jury Award for Russia in 2014. The film is a love story set in November 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad, three months into the six month battle that caused nearly 2,000,000 total casualties (wounded, killed, captured) for the two opponents, including tens of thousands of Russian civilians. The story follows soldiers from both sides as they fight to survive while saving the lives of their loves, and struggle with retaining their humanity in the face of certain death and the unspeakable horrors of war. The plot seems to be somewhat influenced by Chapter 57 of Life And Fate, by writer and journalist Vasily Grossman, and therefore does have a literary antecedent. Plot The film opens in Japan in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. As emergency personnel work to reach some victims trapped underground, one rescuer tries to keep the victims calm by telling the story of how he came to have five fathers, all killed during the Great Patriotic War (World War II). The trapped victims are young German students and the rescuers are Russian. In 1942, after the initial attack on Stalingrad, a small group of Russian soldiers take cover in a large five story residential building that happens to provide cover for a Russian crossing point on the Volga River. Five of these soldiers become the five fathers in the story: Polyakov ("Angel") who had become embittered when his wife and daughter were killed in an air raid; Chvanov, whose hatred of the Germans comes from their cruel treatment and methodical murder of his family; Nikiforov, a talented tenor singer before the war, who had become a cruel and vicious fighter; Sergey, drafted into the war as a spotter; and Captain Gromov, a veteran and hero who leads the group after finding them. The soldiers encounter a young girl named Katya, living alone in the building after her family had been killed.