World War II · Film · 2015
Battle for Sevastopol
Bitva za Sevastopol
A history student from Kiev becomes the Red Army's deadliest woman sniper at Odessa and Sevastopol, and is then sent to America to be the face of the Soviet war effort.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Kiev State University
A new history student, Lyudmila shows such accuracy at a shooting range that the army recruits her for sniper training.
Stop 2: Odessa
Paired with a veteran sniper on the Odessa perimeter, she makes her first kills and is wounded as the front collapses.
Stop 3: Sevastopol
Key location
In the besieged naval base she fights a day-long duel with a German sniper and is carried aboard one of the last submarines out.
Stop 4: The White House, Washington
Sent abroad as a propaganda star, Lyudmila befriends Eleanor Roosevelt and learns to speak for herself on American stages.
What really happened
Lyudmila Pavlichenko volunteered in June 1941 and was credited with 309 kills, the highest score of any woman sniper, during the siege of Odessa (August–October 1941) and the siege of Sevastopol, which held out from October 1941 until 4 July 1942. She was wounded and evacuated in June 1942, shortly before the city fell.
In the late summer of 1942 she toured the United States, stayed at the White House as a guest of Eleanor Roosevelt and told a Chicago crowd that they had been 'hiding behind my back for too long'. The Russian-Ukrainian co-production invents her romances and compresses events, but follows the main line of her memoir.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Bitva za Sevastopol
- Directed by
- Sergey Mokritskiy
- Countries
- Russia, Ukraine
- Languages
- Russian, English, Ukrainian
- Released
- 2015
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front, The Americas
- Themes
- Combat
- Biography
- True story
