The true story of one of Russia's most beloved national heroines. During the Nazi siege of Moscow, a fearless 18-year-old girl named Zoya risked her life as a partisan fighter. Captured by the Germans, Zoya endured unspeakable tortures at the hands of the Gestapo but still refused to betray her comrades. Even on the gallows, Zoya defiantly spoke out against the Nazis and everything they stood for. In a series of flashbacks, this film re-creates not merely Zoya's death, but also her life.
Lev Arnshtam
Director
Galina Vodyanitskaya
Zoya Kosmodem'yanskaya
Rostislav Plyatt
German Soldier
Yekaterina Skvortsova
Zoya as a child
Kseniya Tarasova
Zoya's Mother
Nikolai Ryzhov
Zoya's Father
Aleksandr Kuznetsov
Boris Fomin
Boris Poslavsky
Owl
Vladimir Volchik
Komsomol Secretary
Vera Popova
Hostess of the house
Tamara Altseva
Anna Sergeevna, Zoya's Teacher
Zoya Zhukova
Zina, Zoya's classmate
Guillermo del Toro highlights a touch of innocence in the Gothic classic. The journey of Victor Frankenstein defying death gained inspiration from the Eastern energy system that is named ‘Qi’ and the lymphatic system being studied by Muslim scholars.
Gritty and bleak are the best words to describe this film. There’s nothing happy about it.
The fun tricks used in the production design and lighting read extremely well on-screen but hardly fulfill their purpose of trying to inject glamour into a lack-luster story with nothing to say.
Ultimately, Wicked is a story about the cost of being othered, the pain of being misnamed, and the quiet revolution of standing in your truth.
Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.