Wings

After the war, a former fighter pilot tries to build a peaceful life on the ground. Now a school principal and a mother, she moves through meetings, classrooms, and everyday routines, while her memories of combat, loss, and freedom in the air refuse to fade. Caught between who she once was and who she is expected to be, she struggles to find a place in a world that no longer understands her past.

The film was one of the earliest Soviet works to show a female war hero as a deeply unsettled civilian, rather than a symbol of victory. It focuses not on heroic deeds, but on the quiet disorientation that follows the war.

Upon release, the film stood out for its uncomfortable honesty. It suggested that wartime heroism did not guarantee fulfillment, understanding, or even respect in peacetime society — a theme rarely addressed so directly in Soviet cinema of the 1960s.

Larisa Shepitko was still in her twenties when she made the film, yet it demonstrates an unusually mature reflection on memory, loss, and personal identity after war.

She studied at VGIK under Alexander Dovzhenko, whose influence is evident in her poetic visual language and belief that cinema should confront moral and spiritual questions rather than provide comfort.

Shepitko was one of the very few women directing major films in the Soviet Union, and she consistently resisted expectations to soften her perspective. Her work often centers on characters who are outwardly strong but inwardly isolated.

Her later work, including The Ascent, would bring her international acclaim and confirm her status as one of the most serious moral filmmakers of her generation.

Larisa Shepitko’s career was not simply cut short — she tragically died in a car accident in 1979 while working on a new project. Her sudden death shocked the Soviet film community and left behind a body of work that feels painfully unfinished. Despite its small size, her legacy remains immense: the film and her later works continue to be studied as rare examples of cinema that confront moral choice, loss, and human endurance with uncompromising honesty.