About the film
Dmitry Olenin is young, rich and already tired of Moscow society. He leaves for the Caucasus as a cadet and is posted to a Cossack village on the Terek river.
There he discovers mountains, hunting, simple strong people, and Maryana, a beautiful Cossack girl. He wants to become one of them, but can a man like him ever really belong?
Based on Tolstoy's early novella, the film is full of open landscapes and big, likeable characters, especially Boris Andreyev as the old hunter Yeroshka.
Did you know?
- Tolstoy based the story on his own army service in the Caucasus in the 1850s.
- The script was written by Viktor Shklovsky, a famous literary critic.
