Synopsis

In Soviet Russia, 1943, a group of teenage convicts are secretly trained for a guerrilla mission to stop the actions of a German army group called "Edelweiss

Edelweiss

Edelweiss , Leontopodium alpinum, is a well-known European mountain flower, belonging to the sunflower family.-Names:The common name comes from German edel, meaning "noble", and weiß "white", thus signifying "noble whiteness".The scientific name Leontopodium is a Latin adaptation of Greek...

".

Plot summary

A "Hitlerjugend" kind of story, set in the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
Year 1943. Colonel Vishnevetskiy is released from prison to organize a school of military training for saboteurs. Students come from prisons and correction colonies; these are 14–15 years old criminals who nobody will even look for. After severe training they are sent to destroy a Nazi Oil Depot deep in the Carpathians.
Being lost high in the mountains and being on the edge of life and death, you still can make a choice: to remain a bastard or become a hero for a country that doesn't want you.

Controversy

The film's release caused massive controversy in Russia, where some deemed it "state-supported anti-Soviet propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

."
The plot for the movie, written by Kunin, involved a story of teenagers with a criminal background who were caught by the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

 during the Great Patriotic war, then trained as saboteurs in special schools and thrown into the German rear to face a certain death.

After the movie was shown in Russia, the Federal Security Service responded with a press-release, stating that archives of security services of Russia and Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

 do not have any documents confirming the existence of "kid saboteur schools", and that there are no archive documents about missions to send saboteur groups consisting of teenagers into the adversary's rear. Although they did state that there are archive documents evidencing the use of kids in saboteur purposes by special services of Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

.

While the advertising campaign of the movie claimed it was based on real accounts, after the controversy arose both the writer and the director confessed the plot was mere fiction.

While the movie won the MTV award for 2007, the famous director Vladimir Menshov

Vladimir Menshov

Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov is a Soviet and Russian actor and film director. He is noted for depicting the Russian everyman and working class life in his films. Like many other Russian filmmakers, he studied acting and directing at the state film school VGIK, the world's oldest educational...

 refused to hand over the award:
Dmitry Puchkov

Dmitry Puchkov

Dmitry Yuryevich Puchkov , also known as Goblin and Starshiy Operupolnomocheniy Goblin, is an English-to-Russian movie and video game translator, script-writer, and author...

commented on the film making:
Puchkov also commented on the information that Russian school students were obligated to watch this movie: "Have our children to know the history of the country? Well, now they know it: if anything happens, they would be caught and sent to face certain death."