Directed by:
Larisa ShepitkoScreenplay:
Larisa ShepitkoComposer:
Alfred SchnittkeCast:
Борис Плотников, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Lyudmila Polyakova, Mariya Vinogradova, Larisa Shepitko, Sergey Yakovlev, Aleksandr Pyatkov (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, Larisa Shepitko’s final film won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late-Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belarus. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory. With stark, visceral cinematography that pits blinding white snow against pitch-black despair, The Ascent finds poetry and transcendence in the harrowing trials of war. (Criterion)
(more)Awards
- Winner
- Nominations
Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival)
- 1977 - Larisa Shepitko (Golden Bear for Best Film)