A historical documentary film “Allies. With Good Faith and Fidelity”, timed for the 65th anniversary of the end of World War Two, has premiered in Moscow.
On the eve of the movie’s premiere, its director Sergei Zaitsev shared his thoughts on the ways the memory of fighting against Nazism is preserved today. The filmmaker spent a year in search of some documentary chronicles, putting down the recollections by WWII participants - veterans from the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia.
"Surely, we could not do without Russian cinema and photo archives, but I’ve also found unparalleled materials in the London-based Imperial War Museum and Washington’s National Archive. These documents have never been revealed in Russia before. Among them were the chronicles on the June 1944 Normandy Landings and shots made at the meeting between Russian and American soldiers at the River Elbe," says Sergei Zaitsev.
Veterans from across the world, who shed their blood in the war against Nazi Germany, display no enthusiasm when speaking about those hard times, Sergei Zaitsev found out.
Among other veterans of the Allied armies, we met with Jock Dempster, a British citizen, who served in the Arctic Convoys, also known as the Russian Convoys that carried supplies from the UK to assist people in the Russian ports of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. He said that recently his 55-year-old daughter has for the first time shown keen interest in those events.
“This is my fault, the veteran said, since I should have told my children much more about that war, even though they never touched upon it themselves.” This is an example of the so-called “dormant heart”, Sergei Zaitsev says, adding that the memory of the heart should be part of people’s heritage.
The filmmaker is sure that his conversations with the veterans helped recover a new layer of common history of the anti-Hitler coalition members.
Since the Russian documentary aroused great interest among various film festivals’ managers, its authors are also determined to introduce their work to all the Russian allies which fought against Nazism in the Second World War. The version with English subtitles has been already finished.
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