Zoya
About Zoya
Moscow schoolgirl Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya joins the partisans at the start of the war. Germans capture her near the village of Petrishchevo in November 1941 and execute her. The film tells that short life in flashback from the capture. She was later named a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Cast & crew
More about Zoya
Lev Arnshtam directed and wrote it with Boris Chirskov, from Margarita Aliger's poem of September 1942. Aleksandr Shelenkov photographed it and Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the score. Wikidata dates a release on 22 November 1944 and gives 95 minutes.
Themes
Background
The picture was made during the war about an 18-year-old partisan hanged by German troops outside Moscow in November 1941.
Look
Aleksandr Shelenkov photographed the capture and the schoolgirl flashbacks.
Music
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the score.
Preservation
A print is on Wikimedia Commons under the 1944 Russian title.
Notes
- Yekaterina Skvortsova plays Zoya as a child. Kseniya Tarasova plays her mother. Nikolai Ryzhov plays her father.
- Aleksey Batalov and Rostislav Plyatt are in the cast.
- The film was entered at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.
- Wikidata also lists 5 December 1944 and 14 April 1945 among release dates.
Scenes
- Germans take Zoya in the village.
- The story returns to her classroom life before the war.
Influenced by
- Margarita Aliger's poem Zoya (1942)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1944. Зоя.webm)
