Karina Razumovskaya and Marat Basharov in the military drama “Katyusha”

On May 9 at 10.10 pm on the Rossiya TV channel, the premiere of the serial military drama Katyusha directed by Ilya Kazankov (MUR-MUR, Doctor Richter) will premiere. The main roles in the film were played by Karina Razumovskaya, Pavel Kharlanchuk, Ekaterina Olkina, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Anna Balobanova, Marat Basharov, Andrey Levin, Igor Klyuchnikov, Ekaterina Shumakova and others.

1944, the Great Patriotic War. During the offensive, the forward detachment finds a wounded soldier on the front line: he is dressed in a uniform without insignia and remembers only his name – Yegor Petrov (Pavel Kharlanchuk). After checking in the Special Department, it turns out that Petrov is a major, a scout who returned alone after the task of the reconnaissance group. Egor is appointed commander of an engineering and sanitary company – in a simple way it is called “dog” because dogs and their instructors serve in it. However, the major will have to find a common language not only with his four-legged subordinates, but also with the commander of the girl’s platoon of the engineer company, Captain Ekaterina Golikova (Karina Razumovskaya), who perceives Yegor’s appearance with hostility. The situation escalates even more when reinforcements arrive at the battalion in the form of a platoon of pilots – “Swallows”, whose captain is Galina Klyueva (Ekaterina Olkina), and then Colonel Mukhin (Marat Basharov). The terrible secret that Katya is forced to hide has made her a stern fighter, ready to fight, but not to love. Galya, on the contrary, is open to feelings and sincerely wants to help Petrov get information about his past. Will Yegor be able to remember the forgotten details of his life? Will Gala succeed in getting his sympathy? Is it possible for someone to melt the ice in Katya’s heart and make her believe in love again? Or will the war cross out all plans for happiness?

Director Ilya Kazankov: “For a long time I refused to make films about the war, although I really love the Soviet films on which we grew up. But many modern films disappointed me: now everyone has “I” in their eyes, and then it was “we”, and this is very noticeable. But when I was offered this story, I thought, why not try to make a film about the war that I would like to see. For me, the atmosphere on the site is very important: it must not only be created, it must be constantly nurtured. And every shooting day we started with quotes from the books “One Hundred Days of War” and “The Living and the Dead” by Konstantin Simonov, his poems, which were in tune with the script and made it possible to feel the full depth of what was happening. And the artists supported me, they also came to the site with stories that they read in books, heard from someone. And thanks to this, I hope we managed to convey a piece of this “we” in the picture.

Karina Razumovskaya: “The project attracted me, of course, by working with dogs – before that I had no such experience. There were many four-legged artists, and even “several compositions” for one role. The absolute star of our project is a dog named Manya, who played the ward of my heroine. Manya is unique, a born artist. On her first day of shooting, she had to lie wounded in the hospital. The owner told her – pain, and she made an absolutely unhappy face, painfully extended her paw. We are all stunned! The most difficult scene for me was the scene where it was necessary to shoot into the air from the PPSh: you had to make sure that you did not close your eyes reflexively, and in general everything had to look familiar and automatic.

Pavel Kharlanchuk: “At one time I was very fond of the history of the Great Patriotic War, I studied it from different angles. And he always acted with pleasure in war films in memory of the fact that war is scary, and with a call that this should never happen again. Immersion in the theme of war is a test for oneself, and shooting in a war film is always close to extreme scenes. And there were a lot of difficult scenes. I had to climb up the drainpipe to the second floor, and learn how to ride a motorcycle, and in the winter lie under the rubble in bricks after the explosion for about three hours, and drag the dog behind me into the cockpit of an airplane … I heard very little about the service of dogs at the front. Therefore, before filming, I read a lot of different stories on this topic. And already in the process I talked with cynologists and worked with the dogs themselves. It was very interesting”.

Marat Basharov: “I agree to any proposal from Ilya Kazankov, a wonderful director and my good friend, without thinking, because I believe this director, we understand each other perfectly. My character is a military man, an officer, not a simple person, with his own problems. Not positive. But even in such a person I want to reveal his personal qualities, his soul and heart. And I tried to make it very versatile. Thanks to Ilya, we came up with many interesting things to justify the actions of my character, to show that he knows how to love for real, in Russian.

Most of the filming took place in Minsk and its environs – the scenery of the village, trenches were built there, all the battles, explosions of tanks and bridges were filmed. All airfield scenes and scenes with aircraft, including real flight footage, were filmed in the city of Mogilev. Filming also took place in Yalta and St. Petersburg – Sosnovka Park, Peterhof and Kronstadt.

While working on the scenes of tasks performed by fighting dogs, the authors of the film relied on footage from military chronicles, photographs and diaries. Also, cynologists who are fond of the history of the Great Patriotic War provided great assistance in recreating dog ammunition.

There were about 20 filming shifts with dogs. German shepherd Zara played Baikal, Alana – Malinois Mkad, Vilma – Malinois Armanda, or simply Manya. Manya very accurately felt all the ideas of the director and fulfilled all the tasks assigned to her from the first time.

Especially for the film, director Ilya Kazankov wrote two songs stylized for that time that sound from the gramophone and on the radio in the background: the march “Greetings to you from the rocks of Vladivostok” and the fishing one “Swinging, splashing on the tanks of a salty fishing boat …”. Both songs were performed by Marat Basharov.

Inna Shkarbanova.

Photo of the TV channel “Russia”