Soviet villagers put Nazis on trial instead of executing them—revolutionary or naive?
The German conquerors are above nothing, not even the slaughter of small children, to break the spirit of their Soviet captives. Suffering more than most is Olga, a Soviet partisan who returns to the village to bear her child, only to endure the cruelest of arbitrary tortures at the hands of the Nazis. Eventually, the villagers rise up against their oppressors-but unexpectedly do not wipe them out, choosing instead to force the surviving Nazis to stand trial for their atrocities in a postwar "people's court." (It is also implied that those who collaborated with the Germans will be dealt with in the same evenhanded fashion).
Direction
Donskoy's unblinking eye for casual brutality in occupied villages.
Acting
Nataliia Uzhvii's devastating stillness as Olena.
Director
Mark Donskoy
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released 1944, making it one of the first narrative films about Nazi occupation made DURING the war. Donskoy shot in recently liberated Ukrainian villages with survivors as extras.
SU
