''Bastards'' () is a 2006 Russian

coming-of-age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can b ...

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about navy, naval, air force, air, or army, land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle s ...

Synopsis

In the Soviet Union, 1943, a group of teenage convicts are secretly trained for a guerrilla mission to stop the actions of a German army group called "Edelweiss".

Plot summary

The story is set in the Soviet Union during the Second World War in the year 1943. Colonel Vishnevetskiy is released from prison to organize a school of military training for saboteurs. Students,14–15 years old criminals, come from prisons and correction colonies. After harsh training they are sent to destroy a German oil depot deep in the Carpathian mountains.

Controversy

The film's release caused massive controversy in Russia, where some deemed it "state-supported anti-Soviet

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

". The plot for the film, written by Kunin, involved a story of teenagers with a criminal background who were caught by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

during the

Great Patriotic War The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...

, then trained as

saboteurs Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization, destabilization, division, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''sab ...

in special schools and thrown into the German countryside to face a certain death. After the film was shown in Russia, the

Federal Security Service The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation �СБ, ФСБ России (FSB) is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterin ...

responded with a press-release, stating that archives of security services of Russia and

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

do not have any documents confirming the existence of "kid saboteur schools", and that there are no archive documents about missions to send saboteur groups consisting of teenagers into the adversary's rear. They stated that archive documents evidence the use of kids in saboteur purposes by special services of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. While the advertising campaign of the film claimed it was based on real accounts, after the controversy arose both the writer and the director confessed the plot was mere fiction. While the film won the MTV Movie Awards, Russia for 2007, the famous director

Vladimir Menshov Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov (; 17 September 1939 – 5 July 2021)Умер Владимир Ме� ...

refused to hand over the award:

Dmitry Puchkov Dmitry Yuryevich Puchkov (; born August 2, 1961), also known as Goblin (), is a Russian media personality most known for his English-to-Russian film and video game translations as well as his Oper.ru web blog and, from 2008 until 2022, his epo ...

commented on the film making: Puchkov also sarcastically commented on the information that Russian school students were obligated to watch this film: "Have our children to know the history of the country? Well, now they know it: if anything happens, they would be caught and sent to face certain death."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bastards (Film) 2006 films 2000s Russian films 2000s Russian-language films Eastern Front of World War II films Films about the Soviet Union in the Stalin era Films based on Russian novels Films directed by Aleksandr Atanesyan Films set in 1943 Russian World War II films Russian coming-of-age drama films Russian action war films Russian action drama films Russian war drama films Russian-language action drama films Russian-language war drama films