The Ascent

During a freezing WWII winter, two Soviet partisans on a mission to gather food contend with the temperature, the occupying Germans, and their own psyches.

• Larisa ShepitkoDirector
• Yuri KlepikovWriter
• Larisa ShepitkoWriter
• Alfred SchnittkeOriginal Music Composer

• Boris PlotnikovSotnikov
• Vladimir GostyukhinRybak
• Anatoliy SolonitsynPortnov, collaborationist interrogator
• Lyudmila PolyakovaAvginya Demchikha, the mother
• Viktoriya GoldentulBasya Meyer, the girl
• Sergei YakovlevPetr Sych, village elder
• Mariya VinogradovaVillage elder's wife
• Mykola SektymenkoStas Gomenyuk, collaborationist policeman
• Leonid YukhinPartisan commander
• Aleksandr ZvenigorskiyGerman officer
• Vladimir RudyyGerman officer with black glasses
• Anatoli ChebotaryovGerman officer with glasses