The ninth company
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The ninth company |
| Original title | 9 рота |
| Country of production | RUS / FIN / UKR |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | 2005 |
| length | 130 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Fyodor Bondarchuk |
| script | Yuri Korotkov |
| music | David Yevgenidze, Ivan Burlyayev |
| camera | Maksim Osadchy |
| cut | Igor Litoninsky |
| occupation | |
| |
The Ninth Company ( Russian 9 рота ) is a film by Fyodor Bondarchuk from 2005. The film is about the training and the war effort of the Soviet Ninth Airborne Company, which is deployed in Afghanistan in the fight against the Mujahideen .
action
The film begins in 1988 against the background of the nine years of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union and the mujahideen , who are fighting against the establishment of a socialist state in Afghanistan supported by the Soviet Union .
The plot can be roughly divided into two parts: Part 1 shows young recruits who are trained to be soldiers in the Uzbek Ferghana Valley by the brutal drill of their trainer - an Afghanistan veteran deeply influenced and traumatized by the war - for combat deployment in Afghanistan . The soldiers, who initially do not understand each other, develop a feeling of camaraderie during their training.
In part 2 of the plot, the recruits are finally sent to Afghanistan; some of them are assigned to the "Ninth Company". As soon as they arrive at Bagram Airfield , the newcomers are confronted with the cruelty of the war for the first time when a plane full of returnees is hit by a missile and destroyed shortly after takeoff. They spend the subsequent time mainly with patrols, escorting and securing supplies as well as smaller skirmishes with isolated mujahideen.
When they are finally supposed to secure a remote hill, the camp is attacked by the mujahideen. In the course of the hour-long struggle, radio contact with the base was lost and the camp was ultimately overrun. Reinforcements in the form of Mi-24 attack helicopters only arrive when only one soldier remains. The commander explains to this last survivor that the radio contact was broken off because the Soviet army was withdrawing from Afghanistan and the war was thus over. The survivor then collapses. In the final scenes, in which the surviving soldier ponders the upheaval in the Soviet Union, the relocation of his training camp and the decline of the garrison town, it becomes clear that the Ninth Company had been forgotten on the hill during the precipitous retreat from Afghanistan, which is why it became withdrawn late.
reception
The film was very well received by the audience. It also achieved extraordinary success commercially. In the first five days he made $ 7.7 million in revenue. The film has been criticized by veterans' associations for distorting the true events of the Ninth Company Battle by 32/34. Out of 39 soldiers in the company, 6 were actually killed and 28 wounded, while in the film all but one die.
Facts of the Battle of Hill 3234
The Battle of Hill 3234 began, unlike in the film, at 3:30 p.m. the previous day and lasted until the morning of January 8, 1988, while the attack in the film did not begin until the early morning of January 8. There was also continuous radio contact with the headquarters of the 40th Army during the roughly 20-hour battle ; this sent support in the form of heavy artillery as far as possible, with a lieutenant broadcasting the targets of enemy heavy machine-gun and mortar positions. In addition, ammunition and some members of the 345th Airborne Division were sent by helicopter and the wounded were transported away.
The artillery saved the hill from being overrun, and the attackers withdrew after massive losses on the morning of January 8, without having achieved their goal of conquering the hill. Only with the support of the headquarters was it possible for the 9th Company to kill around 200 of the 250 attackers, with only six of their own dead. Hill 3234 remained under Soviet control until the end of the war and was only abandoned when the last Soviet units withdrew from the region. For this, all surviving members of the 9th Company received several high awards, two of the fallen were posthumously honored as "Heroes of the Soviet Union".
Awards
In 2006 the film was awarded the Golden Eagle of the Russian Academy of Cinematography. The film was proposed for the best foreign film at the 2006 Academy Awards , but was not nominated.
Web links
- The Ninth Company in the Internet Movie Database (English)