The next stage in Pavlichenko’s life is far from the horrors of the frontline. She then falls for a fellow sniper and the couple plan to marry, but she is devastated when he too is killed.įinally she gets injured and is evacuated from Sevastopol, soon before the Nazis captured the strategic city in 1942. She finds love in the arms of a tough commander, who is killed soon afterwards.

In graphic battle scenes with blood spurting and shells exploding, she shoots to kill without flinching. “They don’t deserve an easy death,” she says. She vows to “kill 100 enemies”, hugging her rifle, and upbraids a fellow sniper for firing a shot to finish off a Nazi dying in agony. In Russian, the title “Battle for Sevastopol” resonates with the patriotic fervour generated by Crimea’s annexation in March last year, while the Ukrainian name “Indestructible” hints at the national spirit as government forces battle a pro-Russian uprising in the country’s east.Īs played by Yulia Peresild, the film’s heroine is unsmiling and unremittingly tough. The differing titles for the film highlight some of the bitterest divisions between Russia and Ukraine. “The faster, the better, because later, it may not be possible.” “I thought we can’t stop filming, whatever happens,” Mokritsky recalled. The new biopic was shot on location in Sevastopol in November and December 2013 during the Maidan popular uprising in Kiev, shortly before the toppling of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Trained as a sharpshooter and sent to fight on the frontline in 1941, aged 25, Pavlichenko in less than a year was said to have killed 309 Nazis during battles in Odessa and the strategic city of Sevastopol on Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. The Russian-language film is about Ukrainian-born sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, nicknamed “Lady Death”, and comes out ahead of the 70 th anniversary in May of the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II.

Battle for sevastopol netflix