Zoya (1944 film)

This article is about the 1944 film. For the 2020 film, see Zoya (2020 film).

Zoya (Russian: Зоя) is a 1944 Soviet biographical war film directed by Lev Arnshtam.^[2] Margarita Aliger’s poem with the same name which had been published in September 1942 was the inspiration of the film.^[1] It was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.^[3]

Zoya
Film poster
Directed by	Lev Arnshtam
Written by	Lev Arnshtam Boris Chirskov
Starring	Galina Vodyanitskaya
Cinematography	Aleksandr Shelenkov
Music by	Dmitri Shostakovich[1]
Distributed by	Soyuzdetfilm
Release date	1944 (1944)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

Plot

The film depicts the short life of a Moscow schoolgirl Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya who at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War became a partisan-infiltrator and was executed by the Germans in November 1941 near Moscow in a village Petrishcheva. She was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Cast

• Galina Vodyanitskaya as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
• Tamara Altseva as Zoya's Teacher
• Aleksey Batalov
• Anatoli Kuznetsov as Boris Fomin
• Rostislav Plyatt as German Soldier
• Boris Podgornij as German Officer
• Vera Popova
• Boris Poslavsky as Owl
• Nikolai Ryzhov as Zoya's Father
• Yekaterina Skvortsova as Zoya as a child (as Katya Skvortsova)
• Kseniya Tarasova as Zoya's Mother
• Yekaterina Tarasova as Katya Tarasova
• Vladimir Volchek as Komsomol Secretary