Panfilov's 28 Men (2016) on Netflix
PG-1320161h 45mActionDramaHistory
November 1941. Outside Moscow, twenty-eight soldiers of the 316th Rifle Division under General Ivan Panfilov must stop a column of fifty-four German tanks of the 11th Panzer Division.
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- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.7/106,680 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
In November 1941 the German Army advances toward Moscow, and outside the capital the Soviet Army is stretched thin. In one sector the Germans bring overwhelming force against lightly armed infantry: fifty-four tanks of the 11th Panzer Division, with hundreds of infantry guarding their flanks. A group of twenty-eight soldiers from the 316th Rifle Division, part of the Red Army, under the command of General Ivan Panfilov, is sent to hold the line. Their rifles, machine guns, anti-tank grenades and anti-tank rifles are no match for tanks.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Panfilov's 28 Men (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
A declassified Soviet investigation carried out in 1948 found the legend behind the film to be a fabrication: German and Soviet documents did not confirm the claimed German casualties, and six of the twenty-eight Guardsmen were discovered to have survived.- For the tank battle, full-size wooden tank models covered with green cloth were dragged across a field on a sleigh; surveyors then measured the landscape and the Scandinava studio rebuilt the battlefield at 1:16 scale and filmed detailed model tanks there.
- To make toy tanks look full-size, the crew shot them four times faster and then slowed the frames; since the camera had to move four times faster than on the field, they used the robotic arm KUKA Agilus, programmed with the help of specialists from the Research Research Institute of Robotics.
- For close-ups the crew built a full-size mock-up of a PzKpfw IV tank and recreated its cabin at Lenfilm as a separate capsule mounted on springs, achieving realistic pitching while shooting; the model is now kept in the Museum of the Karelian isthmus in Vyborg.
- Rather than using CGI for winter weather, smoke, ash and explosions, the studio Scandinava shot real natural effects on camera and later combined the layers of tanks and effects into one single image on the computer.
- Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky defended the film against criticism of its historical accuracy, telling Russia's parliament that the production reflected the country's interest in patriotic films and that the story is a sacred legend and those who interfere with it are filthy scum.
- Because of the crowd-funded budget, casting took a long time: Yakov Kucherevskiy, who played Sergeant Dobrobabin, agreed to star two years before filming, while Aleksey Morozov was confirmed as political instructor Klochkov just one day before shooting started.
- Panfilov's division was formed in the Kazakh SSR and included many Kazakhs, so the filmmakers needed many actors of Asian appearance for the crowd scenes and turned to the national diasporas of Moscow, St Petersburg and Ivanovo.
