August Eighth

August Eighth (Russian: «Август. Восьмого», translit. Avgust. Vosʹmogo) is a 2012 Russian action drama film about the 2008 South Ossetia war. This is the third film that has been made on this subject.

The film tells the story of a young single mother who must make her way to South Ossetia to reunite with her son, whom she had sent away before the war. The film is told from two perspectives: one shows the war through the mother's viewpoint, while the other shows it through the eyes of her son, as a science fiction story about fighting robots. As opposed to the preceding of the Olympus Inferno and 5 Days of War, this film was not advertised officially as "The Struggle for Truth," although it also was subsidized by the government. The film was recognized as a socially important project, and was filmed at the expense of the Russian State Fund for Social and Economic Support of National Cinematography.

Twentieth Century Fox C.I.S., a Russian distributor of 20th Century Fox distributed the film. The Russian premiere took place February 21st 2012 in theaters, and also November 4th of the same year on TV on Channel One. Dzhanik Fayziev dedicated this film to all women in his life who played any part in his upbringing.

Kseniya (Svetlana Ivanova), a 23-year-old Muscovite pastry chef, is very busy with her new second-chance romantic relationship, while her 7-year-old son Artyom (Artyom Fadeev), hides in a world of fantasy to escape the pain of his parents separation. In his fantasies, he sees himself as a superhero, Kosmoboy, who, together with a kind robot (Edger Beroev) battles against the monster robot Mrakovlast (“Darklord”). On August 5th, 2008, everything changes. Kseniya gets a call from Artyom's father Ossetian Zaur (Egor Beroev), who serves as a peacekeeper in South Ossetia. Missing his son, he asks her to send the boy to his parents, who live in the village of Sidamonta, right next to the administrative border separating South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia. Zaur assures her that everything is perfectly safe. Kseniya, after some hesitation, agrees, because she wants to take a vacation in Sochi with her new boyfriend, a bank employee, Yegor (Aleksandr Oleshko), who can't find understanding with Artyom and Kseniya needs some private time with her new lover. But she agrees under a condition, that Zaur sends her son back immediately as soon as she asks him to.