Our Own

Our Own (Russian: Свои, translit. Svoi) is a 2004 Russian drama film directed by Dmitri Meskhiyev. The film won the Golden George Award for Best Film at the 26th Moscow International Film Festival in June 2004. Meshiev also won the award for Best Director and Bohdan Stupka won the award for Best Actor.^[2][3]

Plot

We are writing the year 1941. Soviet Russia was already attacked and invaded by the Germans. The country started a total mobiliazation and began fighting back. The Great Patriotic War has already begun. It's October (1941) and the Germans have already occupied big parts of Soviet Russia, icluding Pskov Region. Only a little province is free. In this province an NKVD-Officer (Sergey Garmash) arrives by his motorcycle. He stops at the officers building and on the highest floor he salutes the other NKVD-Officers which are present. He speaks to another NKVD-Officer which seems to be a major. He overhands him the personal documents of the fallen Red Armists, while a simple seargant leeds a bookery about them. The main NKVD-Officer which is known as the "Checkist" eats porridge and drinks milk.

Time goes by and suddenly a German greande explodes near them. German special assault troops have already entered the building and killed the complete NKVD-Staff, icluding simple soldiers. "Checkist" and his NKVD-Comrade, a political instructor called "Livshits" (Konstantin Khabensky) make it to flee and to redress themselves in a local laundry, well knowing that the German troops shoot Red Army commanders, officers and political commissars. But afterwards they get cought by German soldiers which belong to a German motorized unit which has invaded the province and took many prisoners. (Red Armists and local civilians). The trail of prisoners gets led westwards to the local disclocation point of the German army group "North". After the first half of the march the Germans stop and allow the prisoners to make a lunch break. During it Livshits gets threatened by an easy Red Armist who takes his lunch away from him, threatening that he would give him up to the Germans, which would shoot him as a Jew and a politcommissar. But the Red Armist himself receives a throat cut from "Checkist" later with a trophy razor knife an dies from bleeding out. After lunch the prisoners march continues. Livshits, "Checkist" and the young Soviet sniper Mitya Blinov (Mikhail Evlanov) decide to flee from the German prisonership and do it. The three protagonists find shelter in Blinov's home village, called Blyany, where his father Ivan Blinov (Bogdan Stupka) lives. He allowes the three refugees to hide in his house shed. Everythung seems good but "Checkist" suspects Blinov Sr. to be a Nazi policeman, but Blinov Sr. himself admits to be a local village chief who is working for the Germans. In the following time arguments and conflicts appear between "Checkist" and Blinov Sr. But with the time the situation calms down and both men begin to cooperate with each other. According to the threat of being reported, found and arrested by the Germans, the three protagonists decide to kill a local Nazi policeman, called "Mishka" (A possible traitor). They sting him to death with a meat knife (made for slautering pigs) and push his dead body in a river and throw his bike in it, capturing his rifle (Soviet rifle of type "Mosin"). A week later they kill two German motorcyclists in a forest, five km away from Blyany, capturing a German MG 34 machine gun and French cognac. These actions capture the attention of the local police master Nikolai (Fedor Bondarchuk). He leeds a rade through all the five villages in his responsibility area and arrests a large number of people, among them Blinov Sr. daughters which get imprisoned at once by the Germans and the Nazi policemen together with the others and kept in a local province school in the near lying province. Blinov Sr. takes notice to this and drives to the province to the "Command center" for negotiatings with the police master, who is willed to set his daughters free. But only under one term: Blinov Sr. must give his daughter-in-law Katerina (Anna Mikhalkova) to him as a wife. The marriage shall find place in Blinov Sr.'s village. In case of a success his doughters would come free and his son Mitya would get his documents corrected. The refugees (Livshits and Checkist) must be given up to him. Blinov Sr. sees the negotiatings as failed and leaves. He returns to his village and arrenges with "Checkist" and Livshits to shoot the police master together with his men in the village on an upcoming weekend. As the weekend breaks on, the police master comes to the village with his men but gets under open fire and loses all his people killed. He survives and flees into the neighbor village Kurtsevo and calls a German hunter squad for help which arrives in the late evening. But the three protagonists see this and flee into the Eastern forests of Pskov region, passing Kurtsevo from afar and killing the police master himself. Later they get attacked by local Nazi policemen and the German hunter squad. Livshits is killed in action and "Checkist" is forced to go and to hide in the forests, followed by Blinov Jr. "Checkist" of course is sad and disappointed, because of his comrade's death and because of the snobbery and hatred which Blinov Sr, shows to him. He decides to let the NKVD-man behind himself and to become a partisan and a homeland protector and to pay out his fault to the easy Soviet people, hoping that one day they could forgive him.

Cast

• Konstantin Khabenskiy – Livshits, political instructor/politcommissar
• Sergey Garmash – NKVD-Officer a.k.a "Checkist"
• Ben Perino – Tank Commander
• Mikhail Evlanov – Mitya Blinov, the Soviet sniper
• Bohdan Stupka – Ivan Blinov, father of Mitya and village chief
• Natalya Surkova – Anna
• Anna Mikhalkova – Katerina
• Fedor Bondarchuk – Police master

References

External links

• Our Own at the Internet Movie Database