Sony to release Fedor Bondarchuk's “Stalingrad” World War II epic

PanARMENIAN.Net - Sony Pictures Releasing International will release Fedor Bondarchuk's World War II epic Stalingrad, the first Russian-made feature made in IMAX 3D, in Russia, the distributor said. It will present a teaser trailer for the film at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Wednesday, April 17, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

The 1942-43 siege of Stalingrad resulted in the deaths of almost 2 million and looms large in Russian memory.

"The film, Russia's first (probably the world's first) 3D retelling of the historic clash of titans on the banks of the Volga, has been made with an attention to detail unparalleled in recent WWII movies," Moscow film journalist Nick Holdsworth tells The Hollywood Reporter. "A simple story of a love triangle is employed to tell the story of battle in human terms. Two men, one woman. A German officer, Russian soldier and a Russian woman. Love across the lines."

"To shoot the movie the producers used the river Volga -- not in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), but on its upper reaches near St Petersburg," Holdsworth adds. "They built an entire backlot there. Stalingrad can only bear comparison to Nikita Mikhalkov's two updates on Burnt by the Sun, which although panned by critics and war veterans as too sentimental, did seek to achieve historical verisimilitude."

Bondarchuk's first film, the Afghan war drama The 9th Company, was the most profitable Russian movie of 2005 and won seven Golden Eagle awards.

Stalingrad is produced by Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov for Non-Stop Production and Dmitry Rudovsky for Art Pictures.

Stars include German actor August Diehl, who beat his Inglourious Basterds co-star Til Schweiger for the part. The composer is David Lynch favorite Angelo Badalamenti and screenwriters are Iliya Tilkin and Sergey Snezhkin.