Voskhozhdeniye (1976)

Two Soviet partisans depart their starving band on a short march to a nearby farm to get supplies. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.

THE ASCENT is a story about a partisan group operating in the Byelorussian forest in the dead of winter in the German occupied Soviet Union. These bands were not only combat units but in fact movable villages which included women, children and the elderly. Their main protection is the forest itself with danger coming from the vicinity of the roads. The forest cuts two ways however, covered in snow it is sterile and inhospitable with little shelter and no food. They are attacked by a German patrol and manage to withdraw but loose their food supplies. Two men, the stalwart Rybak, who knows the area, and Sotnikov, a Jewish schoolteacher, are assigned the task of going to a small village to get food. They find the village burnt to the ground with nothing more than charred timbers and some foundations in which in one cubbyhole there is a children's mirror hidden. The two move on to a lager village where they enter the headman's house. He is a collaborator and the two soldiers take him out of the house to the sound or extremely high decibel protesting from his wife. It the headman who returns with blood on his hands. A lamb has been slaughtered to take back to their band. The German's arrive and the two partisans escape under fire. Sotnikov is hit in his foot and holds off the German's as Rybak gets away with the lamb. Sotnikov becomes so desperate that not to be taken alive he removes his boot in order to put a bullet into his head. Just then Rybak returns and drags Sotnikov out of the line of fire. Rybak drags Sotnikov through the forest, bloody meter by meter, all done in one long take. Each meter is an agony he pulls him trough deep snow, up ridges, across depressions, over black bush stumps which crack as they snap under the weight of the men. The partisans arrive at a farm house containing a woman with her small children. She is embittered by the scourge of war and barely hanging on with her children. The partisans come as if another curse of war, but one is wounded and she reluctantly helps them. They are barely rested when more Germans show up. They make their way to leave and are directed to the loft to hide.

Sotnikov's cough gives them away and when a German pops his head in to have a look and no one responds he threatens to fire across the loft and Rybak's nerves break and they are captured. The two partisans and the mother are trussed up and taken to a nearby town passing ominously under a wrought iron arch at the entrance. Taken to a nearby town they are interrogated by a turncoat Byelorussian. Sotnikov keeps his head during interrogation and torture and only asks what the interrogator's prewar profession was? He doesn't answer but from his ease standing behind a desk it can be seen that the likely answer was 'schoolteacher'. Rybak on the other hand begs for his life and even offers to join the police. The two partisans are thrown into a dark cell for the night. Also swept up in the German round-up is the tall, patriarchal bearded, village headman who gave them food, the flat faced mother of three who hid them, and a small girl, maybe 8 years old, who may be a hidden Jew. They are all scheduled to die the next day.