Afghan break

The film begins with a scene in which the son of engineer Gulakhan is circumcised. In the next scene, a bearded dushman in a turban calmly cuts the throat of a shell-shocked Soviet soldier. Joint - Soviet Mi-24 helicopters attack enemy positions, land troops. Cruelty breeds retaliatory cruelty. The paratroopers shoot the wounded, marauding and cursing, calling Dushmans assholes and complaining about the lack of Japanese TVs and VCRs that they hope to bring from the war. Sergeant Arsenov brutally beats the prisoner, pushes him into a pickup truck and undermines it with dynamite .

The lyrics are not alien to the film either: a love triangle is being developed between the major Mikhail Bandura, nurse Katya and the regiment commander at a military base.

Returning from the assignment, Major Bandura meets a young newcomer, senior lieutenant Nikita Steklov, under whose supervision he is entrusted with a regiment. On the way, they come across a drunken club in a vest who has already begun to mark the beginning of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan (the exact date is indicated in the film: Friday , May 13 ) ^[1] . Steklov regrets that he will not be able to fight, but at the same time he doubts the expediency of this war, referring to criticism that appeared in the newspapers. Steklov is the son of a senior military man , dreaming of a scarce Vidic . Bandura is ready to help the novice officer get the " Red Star " and offers the command to smash the village of field commander Adil (local " Chapaya ").

The regiment does not share Bandura’s fighting spirit and orders him to hand over boxes of weapons and 10 bags of flour to Adil to leave without loss. The broker of the transaction should be an engineer Gulakhan, a graduate of a Soviet university. Before this, Pandora is allowed to go to Dukhan for gifts. Women from the base are also riding in a truck with soldiers, singing a song by Alla Pugacheva. An unpleasant incident happens on the market when Private Ivanov, standing on a watch, kills an eccentric dwarf merchant. An angry crowd gathers around the Soviet people, but Major Bandura manages to take people to the base without losses, putting a grenade to the deceased.

In the evening, Bandura and Katya, a nurse, invite Steklov and Tatyana, Katya’s girlfriend, to visit. At the table, guests reflect on life in the Union. The frame includes a bottle of Teacher's Highland Cream whiskey, Fanta Bank and a Vladimir Vysotsky poster with a guitar. Steklov, as a newcomer, talks about the closure of Beryozka stores and the ecological crisis in the Baltic states. After the feast, Steklov goes to accompany Tatyana and enters into an intimate relationship with her. Katya is jealous of Bandura for his wife who remained in Moscow and, in tears, leaves for the night to lieutenant colonel. Meanwhile, bullying is flourishing in the barracks, which is why Private Ivanov nearly commits suicide, while drunken officers compete in shooting flies. The Peshawar people come to Gulakhan and, under the threat of death, demand information about the movements of the Soviet troops.

In the morning, the column of the regiment unloads boxes of weapons and flour for the Dushmans, but on the way back it is ambushed by a detachment of Peshawars in pacs in order to substitute Adil. Bandura shows excellent courage: he pulls out a wounded soldier from under the shelling, then, running through the shooting areas, gets to the head tank and pushes the wrecked fuel trucks into the abyss - now the convoy can move on. Steklov, wanting to excel, is trying to raise a soldier in a meaningless attack, while he runs out of the picture because of cover and falls, struck by an automatic burst. Tankers fire at enemy positions, a detachment of Dushmans is completely defeated, one of their commanders is killed, the second is wounded and gets to Adil. He forces the Peshawar to share bread with him, which symbolizes reconciliation between them.

Steklov was seriously wounded, the military base was hastily evacuated. The lieutenant colonel reports to Bandura and threatens him with a tribunal . The regiment’s leadership is developing a plan of attack on the village: one group isolates the Peshawars, separating them from the Adil detachment, which remains neutral, the other must destroy the Peshawar leaders. After receiving the approval from the division commander, the paratroopers take off the sentries on the outskirts of the village in the early morning and break into the house in which the Peshawar commanders defend themselves. At the same time, Adil accidentally ends up in this house, after which his detachment attacks the Soviet soldiers. The paratroopers shoot back, and combat helicopters smashes the whole village into chips, resulting in dozens of civilians, including children.

After the operation is completed, Bandura, under stress from the experience, walks along the destroyed village and stumbles upon the miraculously surviving boy, the son of Gulakhan, clutching a Kalashnikov assault rifle in his hands. The major, without turning around, passes by, thereby condemning himself to certain death. A shot sounds, and the main character of the film, writhing on the ground from pain, dies in agony.

• Michele Placido - Major Mikhail Bandura (voiced by Oleg Yankovsky )
• Tatyana Dogileva - Katya, nurse
• Mikhail Zhigalov - lieutenant colonel Leonid, regiment
• Alexey Serebryakov - Sergeant Arsenov
• Philip Jankowski - Senior Lieutenant Nikita Steklov
• Nina Ruslanova - Tatyana
• Yuri Kuznetsov - helicopter pilot
• Victor Proskurin - Simakov, Head of Club
• Ivan Krasko - Colonel Viktor Nikolaevich
• Andrey Krasko - staff
• Viktor Bychkov - Staff
• Mikhail Trukhin - soldier
• Anastasia Melnikova - episode
• Sergey Isavnin - Sedykh, a soldier
• Alexander Rosenbaum - cameo , performs at an army club
• Muso Isoev - Adil

• Script writers: Leonid Bogachuk , Alexander Chervinsky , Mikhail Leshchinsky , Ada Petrova
• Director: Vladimir Bortko
• Operator: Valery Fedosov
• Composer: Vladimir Dashkevich
• Artist: Vladimir Svetozarov

The film contains songs by Alexander Rosenbaum (Waltz-Boston and Black Tulip) and Alla Pugacheva ( Old Clock ).

The film was shot in the winter of 1990 in Tajikistan . Since February 11, the film crew was at the center of the riots in Dushanbe , as a result of which the administrator of the picture, Nikita Matrosov, was killed and the film crew was evacuated to Tashkent by military transport ^[2] . In this regard, the shootings were urgently transferred to the Crimea and Syria ^[3] .

• According to some critics, this film is one of the best about the Afghan war ^[4] .

• Brotherhood (film, 2019)

• "Afghan break" on the site "Encyclopedia of domestic cinema"