Karuza

Karuza (2025) is a Russian wartime family drama you can watch online on iFILM, drawn from the true story of a boy and his dog during the siege of Leningrad.

Leningrad, the late 1930s. Young Mitya is given a puppy whose long, mournful howling earns it a name — Karuza. A couple of years pass and the war arrives. The blockade tightens, hunger creeps into every apartment, and the dog, sensing its family's suffering, slips out to forage straight across a minefield. Before long Mitya is crossing to "the other side" alongside it. Until the day a German patrol spots them both.

Director Ivan Kharatyan keeps the lens on the children and the animal instead of the front line, building a hushed story about loyalty and the cost of staying alive. Svetlana Ivanova and Ivan Kolesnikov co-star. Stream Karuza (2025) online on iFILM.