Chapayev (film)

Chapaev
Official film poster
Directed by	Georgi Vasilyev Sergei Vasilyev
Written by	Dmitri Furmanov (book)
Starring	Boris Babochkin Boris Blinov Varvara Myasnikova Leonid Kmit
Music by	Gavriil Popov
Production company	Lenfilm
Release date	1934 (1934)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

Chapaev (Russian: Чапаев, IPA: [tɕɪˈpaɪf]) is a 1934 Soviet war film, directed by the Vasilyev brothers for Lenfilm.

The film is a fictionalized biography of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev (1887–1919), a Red Army commander who became a hero of the Russian Civil War. It is based on the novel of the same name by Dmitri Furmanov, a Russian writer and Bolshevik commissar who fought together with Chapaev.

Chapaev premiered on 6 November, 1934, in the Leningrad cinema "Titan"; it quickly became one of the most popular films in the Soviet Union. Within the first year it was watched by 30 million people in the USSR alone.

It was awarded "Best Foreign Film" by the US National Board of Review in 1935 and the Grand-Prix of the Paris World Fair in 1937.

In a 1978 poll of cinema critics, the film was considered one of the best 100 films in history.

After the release of the film, Chapaev and his assistants Petka and Anka became Russian folklore characters. These three, together with their political commissar Furmanov, are present in a large number of Russian jokes.