Litvyak

Litvyak (2026) is a WWII biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM, tracing the combat record of Lydia Litvyak — the only woman to reach ace status in the history of aerial warfare. At 21 she flew fighter missions over the bloodiest sectors of the Eastern Front, downed twelve enemy aircraft, and was killed in August 1943. Her remains went unidentified for decades; Soviet authorities confirmed her fate only in 1979.

Director Andrei Shal'opa, who previously made 28 Panfilovtsy, spent over two and a half hours reconstructing her service with the same deliberate period precision that marked his earlier work. Polina Chernyshova plays Lydia; Yevgeny Tkachuk appears as pilot Alexei Solomatin, with whom she has a relationship between sorties. The film doesn't smooth over loss — it builds its drama around specific people, not military abstraction.

For anyone drawn to WWII stories centred on individual soldiers rather than generals and grand campaigns, this is among the most rigorous portraits Russian cinema has produced on the subject. Stream Litvyak (2026) on iFILM.