Documentary film "Osovets. Fortress of Spirit": reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Fortress of spirit, courage and heroic self-sacrifice of the Russian soldier were reflected in many works of art, however, unfortunately, the theme of the feat of a soldier of the Russian Empire during the First World War was not often used by creative people as a source of inspiration when creating art works.

Osovets. Fortress of spirit

The feature-documentary film about the battle for the Osovets fortress, released in 2018, not only restored this historical injustice, but also became proof that the First World War is a period little studied in terms of creativity, which definitely deserves the attention of cultural figures.

Historical events

Cinema “Osovets. Fortress of the Spirit is dedicated to the events that took place during the third stage of the First World War, when German troops stormed the Osowiec fortress in Poland.

Osovets was erected by the Russians after the third partition of Poland as a stronghold and hadstrategically important destination. Not far from the fortress was the village of Osovice, from where the garrison received food and fodder.

During the offensive operation, the fortress was besieged by German troops, who repeatedly made active attempts to capture the structure. After the first two failed attacks, a third was undertaken, but this time the German command decided to spray poison gas on the positions of Russian soldiers, which is one of the mixtures of chlorine, before the attack.

The German command believed that the absence of gas attack protection kits from Russian soldiers should have ensured the success of the offensive operation and the capture of the fortress.

However, the Russian garrison of the fortress, numbering several incomplete companies, not only successfully repelled the attack of the German troops, but also continued to hold the fortress for some time, leaving it only after the official order of the command to retreat.

Design

The idea to make a film about this episode of the First World War came from the Rossiya 24 TV channel at the end of 2017. The head of the publishing department of Wargaming, which became the channel's filming partner, Andrey Muravyov, has repeatedly noted that the company took up the film adaptation of these events, because the First World War is not paid attention at all from artists of our time. The events of the Great Patriotic War are repeatedly filmed, even without changes in the scripts of fifty years ago, and the heroic deed of a Russian person in the First World War seems to be deliberately hushed up: nonot enough books on the subject, not feature films, not even computer games.

The filmmakers decided to restore historical justice and make a feasible contribution to the reflection of the heroism and strength of the spirit of the Russian soldier in the cinema.

History of Creation

A lot of historical evidence has been preserved about the First World War, most of which are memoir records that belonged to officers and soldiers of the Russian army. These memoirs, kept in the archives, have almost never been published in full, partly due to the lack of demand for this topic in historical circles and its unpopularity among artists.

For a long time, company employees studied historical reality, devoting a lot of time to getting acquainted with historical documents, eyewitness accounts, graphs and drawings of those years.

Shooting

The filming took only two months, including pre-production. Due to the presence of a large number of experienced specialists in computer graphics and software modeling, the documentary film “Osovets. Fortress of the Spirit received excellent special effects, highly acclaimed by critics.

Most of the battle scenes were filmed using motion capture technology, as well as with the active use of computer graphics. During editing, several scenes from a real surviving historical chronicle were included in the film. Frames from the last millennium have undergone serious video processing, as well as consistent colorization of each frame. This required additional work on the film's overall color scheme.

It is worth noting that professional actors did not take part in the creation of the film. All roles were performed by company employees. For many of the project participants, this was the first experience in working on a work of art in the field of cinema.

The music for the film was created by Wargaming's in-house composer Viktor Sologub, also known as the composer for many episodes of World Of Tanks.

Prominent experts on the history of Russia, the history of Germany, as well as world militaristic history took part in the work on the documentary part of the film, who not only expressed their opinion and voiced the facts, but also became consultants in shooting battle scenes.

Storyline

Film “Osovets. The Fortress of the Spirit tells about real historical events that took place on August 6, 1915. Thanks to careful work on the script and everyday details, the filmmakers managed to reproduce the events of that day almost verbatim accurately.

The authors of the short feature film skillfully focused not only on the historical event itself, but on the characters of the story. Each character is unique, has its own history and character revealed in the work. Much attention was paid to the everyday side of the Russian and German armies: weapons, uniforms, types of equipment, military ranks. Historians note that all this was reproduced with reliableprecision and incredible care.

The documentary part of the work was also excellently done: a large number of experts were involved in the analysis of the battle, detailed information was given on the number of dead, methods of battle, participating army units, etc.

Reviews

Reviews about the "Fortress of the Spirit" were not long in coming. Immediately after the online premiere of the short film, rave reviews from viewers began to appear on the sites. A little later, some authoritative critics in the world of cinema expressed their positive opinion about the new video from Wargaming. Gradually, the film began to spread on the Web, receiving more and more enthusiastic reviews.

All the people who expressed their opinion about the "Fortress of the Spirit", first of all, note the historical accuracy of the film, the careful attitude to the events that took place, the attentive attitude of the project authors to household and military details.

The film's atmosphere, cast and soundtrack also received high marks.

"Osovets. Fortress of the Spirit" has become a kind of monument to the heroic deed of the Russian people, reflecting the courage and valor of the Russian soldier.