Awards : Prix de la meilleure réalisation au Festival national de l'URSS, 1964
Plot synopsis
Apart from Kira Muratova (see BRIEF ENCOUNTERS), Larisa Shepitko was the Soviet Union's preeminent female director. HEAT, her third feature, is a story of an idealistic high school graduate who goes to work on a state farm, only to clash with its authoritarian, tractor-driving leader. The impulse to volunteer manual labor to the countryside was one of the key tropes of the 60s mythology- a return to the "real spirit" of the first five-year plan- and the tyrannical Abakir is clearly coded as a Stalinist figure; not that HEAT isn't also, on some level, a bit of a cowboy showdown. Based on a story by Chingiz Aitmatov, the film took the award for Best Direction at the 1964 Leningrad Film Festival and won the Grand Prize at the new director symposium in Karlovy Vary.
Source : www.seagullfilms.com