About the film
Andrei Sokolov had a home, a wife and three children before 1941. Then came the front, captivity in German camps, escape and the loss of everyone he loved.
After the war, he adopts a homeless orphan and tells the boy he is his father. Bondarchuk, in his first film as director, plays Sokolov himself with enormous restraint.
Fate of a Man was one of the first Soviet films to show prisoners of war with sympathy, and it remains deeply moving.
Did you know?
- It was Sergei Bondarchuk's debut as a director.
- It won the Grand Prix at the first Moscow International Film Festival in 1959.
- Sholokhov's story was based on a real man the writer met after the war.
