The Ascent
Larisa Shepitko · 1977
Larisa Shepitko’s 1977 film The Ascent adapts Vasil Bykaŭ’s novel Sotnikov into a stark, black-and-white study of endurance and betrayal among Soviet partisans in Nazi-occupied Belarus. Starring Anatoly Solonitsyn and Boris Plotnikov, it follows two men captured after a failed mission, charting their divergent responses to torture and moral pressure. Shot in brutal winter conditions, with a dissonant score by Alfred Schnittke, the film rejects narrative convention in favour of sustained, embodied tension. It won the Golden Bear at Berlin and remains Shepitko’s final completed work.
