There Will Be No Leave Today

There Will Be No Leave Today
Title card of There Will Be No Leave Today
Directed by	Aleksandr Gordon Andrei Tarkovsky
Written by	Aleksandr Gordon Irina Makhovaya Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring	Oleg Borisov Aleksei Alekseev Pyotr Lyubeshkin
Music by	Yuri Matskevich
Cinematography	Lev Bunin Ernst Yakovlev
Production company	VGIK Central Television
Release date	9 May 1959 (1959-05-09) (USSR)
Running time	47 min
Country	USSR
Language	Russian

There Will be No Leave Today (Russian: Сегодня увольнения не будет...) is a 1959 student film by the Russian film directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Gordon. Based on a real postwar incident, the film is about an army unit trying to dispose unexploded bombs to save a small town. It was Tarkovsky's and Gordon's second film, produced while being students at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). The film was aired on Soviet Central Television in 1959 and consecutive years on Victory Day. For a long time it was thought to be lost, but was rediscovered in the mid-1990s.

Construction workers find an old cache of bombs from World War II in an unnamed Russian town. An army unit is charged with solving this problem. The municipal committee decides that exploding the bombs would inflict too much damage on the town and so the army unit must transport the bombs manually to a safe site.

After the entire town is evacuated, the soldiers carry the bombs one by one to the armored transport truck. The danger of explosion looms. As the army unit concludes its mission the population returns to the town as the bombs are simultaneously destroyed at the safe site.

There Will Be No Leave Today was suggested by the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) to Tarkovsky and Gordon as a practical exercise for the two film students. The main objective for Tarkovsky and Gordon was not to produce a masterpiece, but to learn the basics of filmmaking through making an uncomplicated and easy-to-consume film. The project was based on a real postwar incident. To prepare Tarkosky and Gordon interviewed witnesses of the incident and visited army barracks to study the military. The script was written jointly by Tarkovsky, Gordon and a third scriptwriter who was later replaced by a group of scriptwriters. The main storyline of the film was created in the beginning of writing the script, and survived with the exception of some minor changes. According to Gordon, Tarkovsky finished and contributed the majority of the script, with the hospital scenes and the civilian/soldier who volunteers to detonate one bomb being Tarkovsky's ideas.