Our Own

Our Own (Russian: Свои, translit. Svoi) is a 2004 Russian drama film directed by Dmitri Meskhiyev. The film won the Golden George Award for Best Film at the 26th Moscow International Film Festival in June 2004. Meshiev also won the award for Best Director and Bohdan Stupka won the award for Best Actor.

It is October 1941. Soviet Russia has been attacked and invaded by the Germans. The country has begun total mobilization and fighting back. The Great Patriotic War had begun. The Germans occupy large parts of Soviet Russia, including the Pskov Region where some of the province is still free. In this province, a NKVD officer (Sergey Garmash) arrives on his motorcycle. He stops at the officer's building and on the highest floor and speaks to a NKVD-Officer who seems to be a major. He hands him the personal documents of a fallen Red Army soldier. The main NKVD officer known as the "Checkist" eats porridge and drinks milk. Suddenly a German grenade explodes. German special assault troops enter the building and attack the NKVD staff and soldiers. "Checkist" and his NKVD comrade, a political instructor called "Livshits" (Konstantin Khabensky) flee, amid the chaos and gunfire they change clothes in a local laundry, knowing that German troops shoot Red Army commanders, officers and political commissars. Eventually they are caught by soldiers from a German motorized unit who invaded the province and taken many prisoners. (Both Red Armists and local civilians). The prisoners are led westward to the local dislocation point of the German army.

After marching for a time, the German soldiers stop and allow the prisoners to eat. Livshits is threatened by a Red Armist who takes his food, threatening to give him up to the Germans, who would shoot him as a Jew and a politcommissar. But his throat is cut by "Checkist" later with a razor blade and he dies. After eating the prisoners continue to march. Livshits, "Checkist" and a young Soviet sniper Mitya Blinov (Mikhail Evlanov) decide to escape and flee the German soldiers. The three protagonists find shelter in Blinov's home village, Blyany, where his father Ivan Blinov (Bogdan Stupka) still lives. Blinov Snr allows the three escapees to hide in his barn. "Checkist" suspects that Blinov Sr. is a pro Nazi policeman but Blinov Sr. himself admits to being a village chief who is 'working' for the Germans. The villages have found a way to manage their own interests. Arguments and conflicts appear between "Checkist" and Blinov Sr but the situation calms down and the men begin to cooperate.