The Ascent

Yuri Leving, Princeton Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, will provide an introduction ahead of the screening.

Ukrainian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko crafted one of the most fully realized and powerful films of Soviet cinema with THE ASCENT. Set in WWII and featuring stark black-and-white cinematography, the film follows two Soviet soldiers looking for food in the harsh snow-swept landscape of Belarus. When they end up captured in Nazi-occupied territory, they must choose between betrayal or death. Shepitko paints a poetic and deeply spiritual story, becoming only the second female director to win the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival. In Russian and German w/ subtitles.

Yuri Leving is a professor i in the department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. His  areas of specialization are contemporary Russian literature and film, Eastern European cinema, the visual arts, and digital humanities. He has published books on Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Brodsky, and Osip Mandel’stam and has produced several documentary films.

Director Larisa Shepitko

Cast Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin

Country Russia

Language Russia (with subtitles)

Aspect 1.37

More info on IMDB ››