World War II · Film · 2019
T-34
A young Soviet tank lieutenant captured outside Moscow is forced, years later, to crew a T-34 as a live target for SS tank cadets, and plans an escape with the tank itself.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 3 places.
Stop 1: Western approaches to Moscow
With a single damaged T-34, Ivushkin ambushes a column of panzers in a village to buy time for the defence of Moscow.
Stop 2: Camp and training ground in Thuringia
Key location
Chosen as a target crew for Panzer training, Ivushkin and three prisoners secretly stash live shells found in their captured tank.
Stop 3: Klingenthal, Saxony
Racing for the Czech border, the fugitive tank runs into an ambush of Panthers in a small town and fights its way through the streets.
What really happened
The opening duel is set during Operation Typhoon, the German drive on Moscow in autumn 1941, when single Soviet tanks and small ambush groups were used to delay panzer columns on the roads west of the capital. Of the roughly 5.7 million Red Army soldiers the Germans captured, more than 3 million died in captivity.
The escape itself is fiction, loosely inspired by stories of Soviet prisoners who seized vehicles to flee; the film plays like an action movie, with slow-motion shell hits and a chivalrous tank duel that owes more to westerns than to the war. Its T-34-85 and Panther tanks, though, are largely real or faithful replicas.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- T-34
- Directed by
- Aleksey Sidorov
- Countries
- Russia
- Languages
- Russian, German
- Released
- 2019
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front
- Themes
- Combat
- Prisoners of war
