The Ascent
The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory. With stark, visceral cinematography that pits blinding white snow against pitch-black despair, The Ascent finds poetry and transcendence in the harrowing trials of war.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New selected-scene commentary featuring film scholar Daniel Bird
- New introduction by Anton Klimov, son of director Larisa Shepitko and filmmaker Elem Klimov
- New interview with actor Lyudmila Polyakova
- The Homeland of Electricity, a 1967 short film by Shepitko
- Larisa, a 1980 short film tribute to Shepitko made after her death by her husband, Elem Klimov
- Two documentaries from 2012 about Shepitko
- Program from 1999 featuring an interview with Shepitko
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by poet Fanny Howe
New cover by Century.Studio
Collector's Sets
Collector's Set
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New selected-scene commentary featuring film scholar Daniel Bird
- New introduction by Anton Klimov, son of director Larisa Shepitko and filmmaker Elem Klimov
- New interview with actor Lyudmila Polyakova
- The Homeland of Electricity, a 1967 short film by Shepitko
- Larisa, a 1980 short film tribute to Shepitko made after her death by her husband, Elem Klimov
- Two documentaries from 2012 about Shepitko
- Program from 1999 featuring an interview with Shepitko
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by poet Fanny Howe
New cover by Century.Studio
Cast
- Boris Plotnikov
- Sotnikov
- Vladimir Gostyukhin
- Rybak
- Sergei Yakovlev
- Village elder
- Lyudmila Polyakova
- Demchikha
- Victoria Goldentul
- Basya
- Anatoly Solonitsyn
- Portnov
- Nikolai Sektimenko
- Stas
- Maria Vinogradova
- Village elder’s wife
Credits
- Director
- Larisa Shepitko
- Producer
- Larisa Shepitko
- Screenplay by
- Yuri Klepikov
- Larisa Shepitko
- Based on the novella Sotnikov by
- Vasil Bykov
- Directors of photography
- Vladimir Chukhnov
- Pavel Lebeshev
- Art direction
- Yuri Raksha
- Editor
- Valeriya Belova
- Music by
- Alfred Schnittke
A scene from The Ascent
