Synopsis
Trial on the Road (1986) is a Soviet war drama by Alexei German Sr. — watch it online on iFILM. Completed in 1971, it spent fifteen years on a shelf before glasnost allowed its release. The setting is the winter of 1942 in German-occupied northwestern Russia.
A partisan unit captures Lazarev (Vladimir Zamansky), a former Red Army officer now wearing a German uniform. He says he wants to switch sides and make amends. Commander Lokotkov (Rolan Bykov) is inclined to believe him; political officer Petushkov (Anatoly Solonitsyn) is not. German shot the film without a score and without heroic framing — mud, cold and the problem of trust under impossible conditions.
The censors who shelved it objected to the film's grey, unheroic portrait of war. That restraint is precisely what makes Trial on the Road one of the most honest Soviet films about the conflict. Stream it online on iFILM.
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