83 Films & TV Shows Set In Russia During The 1940s
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Tomorrow Was the War
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sThis movie is based on a novel by Boris Vasiliev and describes life in a small Russian provincial town in 1940 - one year before Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The main characters of the film are ordinary Soviet high school students. They study in the Soviet school, try to be correct and ideological Komsomol activists. But not always the “correctness” suggested by the teachers coincides with the inner convictions of young souls - it is difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that their relatives and loved ones are suddenly “enemies of the people”.
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Trial on the Road
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sA Russian POW joins the partisan guerrillas and proves his loyalty fighting the Nazis. Filmed in 1971, but "shelved" until 1986.
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Come and See
🇧🇾 Belarus 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sA RELENTLESS MASTERPIECE... — The invasion of a village in Byelorussia by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
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The Unknown Soldier
🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sSecond silver screen adaption of the Finnish war book by Väinö Linna. The story is based on Linna's experiences as an infantry man in the Finnish army during the so called "Continuation War" (1941-1944).
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Bolero: Dance of Life
🇫🇷 France 🇩🇪 Germany 🇷🇺 Russia The 1930s The 1950s The 1960s The 1940sThe film is a musical epic and it is widely considered as the director's best work with Un Homme et une Femme. — The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.
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Siberiade
🇷🇺 Russia The 1960s The 1940s The 1930s The 1910s The 1900s The 1920s The 1950s The 1970s The 1980sThe history of Russia from the beginning of the century till early 80s. — The story about a very small god-forgotten village in Siberia reflects the history of Russia from the beginning of the century till early 80s. Three generations try to find the land of happiness and to give it to the people. One builds the road through taiga to the star over horizon, the second 'build communism' and the third searches for oil. The oil is found but the destruction of the old cemetry and everything the people of the village cared for followed to get the 'black treasure' of Siberia.
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Cross of Iron
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sCaptain Stransky, you are the rest of my platoon — It is 1943, and the German army—ravaged and demoralised—is hastily retreating from the Russian front. In the midst of the madness, conflict brews between the aristocratic yet ultimately pusillanimous Captain Stransky and the courageous Corporal Steiner. Stransky is the only man who believes that the Third Reich is still vastly superior to the Russian army. However, within his pompous persona lies a quivering coward who longs for the Iron Cross so that he can return to Berlin a hero. Steiner, on the other hand is cynical, defiantly non-conformist and more concerned with the safety of his own men rather than the horde of military decorations offered to him by his superiors.
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Mirror
🇷🇺 Russia The 1960s The 1940s The 1930sA dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
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They Fought for Their Motherland
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIn July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.
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Karafuto 1945 Summer
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sThe film is set in Karafuto after the radio broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War. On August 15, 1945, Soviet forces invaded Karafuto. On August 20, the postal telegraph office in Maoka suspended operations and nine of the twelve telephone operators committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide while the city was being invaded.
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Only Old Men Are Going to Battle
🇺🇦 Ukraine 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sAlexey Titarenko is very talented pilot and brave leader of "Singing group". He also must look after some new cadets and fight together with them against German Luftwaffe planes. Close to Alexey always are his friends, they are all from different parts of the country, but they all became real brothers.
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The Hot Snow
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIn November, 1942, near the Volga, Stanlingrad is under siege of Commander Friederich Paulus and his 330,000 men. The Russian high command unleashes an operation to protect the Mishkova River to avoid that about four hundred tanks join Paulus' army. The Soviet artillery soldiers protect their position with their lives in a bloodshed with few survivors.
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Sunflower
🇮🇹 Italy 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sAt the end of World War II, Giovanna, a war bride living near Milan refuses to accept that her husband, Antonio, missing on the Russian front, is dead. There's a flashback to their brief courtship near her hometown of Naples, his 12-day leave to marry her, ruses to keep from deployment, and the ultimate farewell. Some years after the war, still with no word from Antonio, Giovanna goes to Russia to find him, starting in the town near the winter battle when he disappeared. Armed with his photograph, what will she find?
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The Desperate Ones
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIn 1941, two Polish brothers escape a Soviet gulag. Their only escape route is through the impossible mountains of Afghanistan and the KGB is on their tail.
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Doctor Zhivago
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890sTurbulent were the times and fiery was the love story of Zhivago, his wife and the passionate, tender Lara. — The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
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The Alive and the Dead
🇧🇾 Belarus 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sA 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.
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Ivan's Childhood
🇩🇪 Germany 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIn WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
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Chronicle of Flaming Years
🇩🇪 Germany 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sOnce again, director Yulia Solnsteva directs a movie that her late husband Alexandre Dovchenko scripted but did not live long enough to shoot. In this wartime drama, the emphasis is on the heroics of both the civilians and the soldiers during times of severe stress in World War II. At the core of the action is one man in particular, whose sacrifices and heroics speak for a much larger group.
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Baltic Skies
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sBased on the novel of the same name by Nikolai Chukovsky. The end of August 1941. At night, a truck rushes along the last road not yet occupied by the enemy to Leningrad. In the back of two — civil aviation pilot Lunin and commissar of the air division Uvarov. Lunin, a man no longer young, experienced, but had not yet been in battle, was sent to the legendary squadron of fighter pilots under the command of Captain Rassokhin. This squadron fought from the first day of the war and has already lost most of its composition. The story of the harsh everyday life of the defenders of Leningrad, full of heroism and tragedy; about the heavy share of city residents who fell into the ring of an enemy blockade. In the center of the story is the fate of military pilots who had to fight in the sky over Leningrad and the Baltic.
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Ballad of a Soldier
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sFrom the very pages of life itself! — During World War II, earnest young Russian soldier Alyosha Skvortsov is rewarded with a short leave of absence for performing a heroic deed on the battlefield. Feeling homesick, he decides to visit his mother. Due to his kindhearted nature, however, Alyosha is repeatedly sidetracked by his efforts to help those he encounters, including a lovely girl named Shura. In his tour of a country devastated by war, he struggles to keep hope alive.
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Stalingrad: Dogs, Do You Want to Live Forever?
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIn the winter of 1943, against the background of battle scenes, a young German Lieutenant who increasingly distrusts the inhuman Nazi ideology struggles with the concept of war.
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The Doctor of Stalingrad
🇷🇺 Russia The 1950s The 1940sDr. Fritz Böhler is a prisoner of war doctor in the Soviet POW camp 5110/47 near Stalingrad. Despite the harshest conditions, he tries to help his fellow prisoners with the simplest means. But when his assistant Dr. Schultheiss falls in love with the Russian doctor Alexandra Kasalinskaja, Schultheiss not only endangers his own life - because Alexandra is the lover of First Lieutenant Markow.
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The Cranes Are Flying
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sThe compelling story of a girl's impassioned search for happiness. — Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris' family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.
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The Unknown Soldier
🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIt is the summer of 1941. An eastern-Finnish machine gun company receives an order to turn in their surplus equipment. The company is transferred to the front lines. The next morning the soldiers wake to the sound of guns - the war has begun. The Finnish troops attack and quickly move across the border. The young, nervous rookies of the company get their baptism of fire, and the men become familiar with death and the hardships of war. Under strength and badly equipped they fight a superior enemy. The lists of heroes and of the dead seem endless. Edvin Laine's epic interpretation of Väinö Linna's war novel "Tuntematon Sotilas" is an entire chapter in the book of Finnish movie history.
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The Battle of Stalingrad
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sA 1949 two-part Soviet epic war film about the Battle of Stalingrad, directed by Vladimir Petrov. The script was written by Nikolai Virta.
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