Synopsis
The Battalion (Батальонъ, 2015) is a Russian war drama you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Dmitry Meskhiev, it follows the real 1st Women's Battalion of Death, formed in the spring of 1917 as the Russian army was coming apart from within.
Maria Bochkareva, decorated in combat, receives government orders to build an all-female unit meant to shame male soldiers back into fighting. Maria Aronova plays Bochkareva in a physically demanding performance; Maria Kozhevnikova co-stars as one of the volunteers. The women come from every background — students, factory workers, noblewomen — and the training is brutal before they ever reach the front.
Meskhiev frames this less as a patriotic war epic than a study of conviction under collapse. The Provisional Government's gamble was overtaken by history almost immediately. The battalion lasted less than a year. Stream The Battalion online on iFILM.
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