The Ascent

Two Soviet partisans leave their starving band to get supplies from a nearby farm. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.

Cast

Boris Plotnikov

as Sotnikov

Vladimir Gostyukhin

as Rybak

Anatoliy Solonitsyn

as Portnov, collaborationist interrogator

Lyudmila Polyakova

as Avginya Demchikha, the mother

Viktoriya Goldentul

as Basya Meyer, the girl

Sergey Yakovlev

as Petr Sych, village elder

Mariya Vinogradova

as Village elder's wife

Mykola Sektymenko

as Stas Gomenyuk, collaborationist policeman

Leonid Yukhin

as Partisan commander

Aleksandr Zvenigorskiy

as German officer

Reviews

CinemaSerf

This starts and finishes with the same shot - a freezing cold snowscape peppered with a few telegraph poles amidst a wilderness that the Soviet population were prepared to to die to protect from the invading Nazis. Two Red Army partisans are doing their best to frustrate their enemy whilst combating...

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