Anatoli Papanov

In 1953, the year Stalin died, many prisoners (some political, but mostly common criminals) were released from the Soviet Gulags. This is the story of a remote settlement which was under attack by a bunch of these recently-released blood-thirsty thugs in the summer of 1953, and the townspeople, along with a two political prisoners, who try to stop them.

A Russian war correspondent is drafted into the war and finds himself in the middle of battle. When he loses his party card, however, he is treated as a deserter until he finds help from a kind man. This Soviet war feature was considerably outspoken for the time as it addressed issues such as anti-Stalinism, Siberia and the inhumanity of war. Adapting his screenplay from a book by Constantin Simonov, Alexandre Stolper was responsible for writing as well as directing.