Plot synopsis

Nikolai Dostal'’s critically acclaimed 11-part television serial Penal Battalion redefines Russia’s last Soviet myth—the heroic myth of the Great Patriotic War. While challenging some received truths about the cost of the victory and soldiers’ motivation to fight for the Soviet fatherland, the serial never questions the war’s mythological status in Russians’ popular consciousness. The myth of the great victory is the last myth that unifies Russia as a community. To the question, for what kind of a community did Russians fight, the serial gives an answer that many contemporary Russians believe to be the truth about the war. For the filmmaker and his scriptwriter, Eduard Volodarskii, Russians fought and suffered for the Russian Orthodox spiritual community.[...]
Alexander Prokhorov, kinokultura.com

Commentaries

Comment sont regardés les films sur la Grande Guerre patriotique dans la Russie actuelle ?, Myriam DÉSERT, The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, 2011

The Self and the Other in Recent Russian Cinema, Birgit BEUMERS, kinokultura.com, 2010

Nikolai Dostal' : Penal Battalion (Shtrafbat, TV, 2004), Alexander PROKHOROV, kinokultura.com, 2006

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- War in contemporary Russian cinema, (kinoglaz.fr), 2025