MOSCOW, MAY 7 — . On the eve of the 79th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, on May 8, the RT and RT Doc TV channels will premiere the documentary “Veterans”.
The film contains stories and memories of veterans, many of whom are over 100 years old.
“The heroes are very different, and their stories are priceless. It is very important that they tell them, and that we hear them,” says the author of the film, Lydia Vasilevskaya.
Front-line nurse Valentina Petrovna Minaeva went through three wars: the Soviet-Finnish, the Great Patriotic War and the Soviet-Japanese. She has saved hundreds of lives. Now Valentina Petrovna is 103 years old. In the film, she shares her memories of the horrors of war and how she persuaded soldiers who were seriously wounded at the front to live.
“It was a great honor for us to communicate with some of the last witnesses of the Great Patriotic War. Despite the venerable age of the film’s characters, they remember the events of 80 years ago in great detail. What they experienced during the war years is etched in their memory forever,” — says RT Doc director Ekaterina Kozhakina.
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Another hero of the film, Vitaly Ivanovich Kolesov, celebrated his 100th anniversary. Having gone to the front at the age of 18, he became an artilleryman and took part in the Battle of Stalingrad and the liberation of Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Austria. Vitaly Ivanovich became a professional military man and participated in the war in Afghanistan.
The youngest hero of the film is 98 years old. Tankman Nikolai Petrovich Teplotanskikh, being a 17-year-old boy, insisted on being taken to the front. In one of the battles, he pulled a friend out of a damaged tank, and he himself was seriously wounded, but after a while he returned to the front. Nikolai Petrovich still sees dreams about the war — he especially often dreams of a woman with a girl from a liberated village.
The premiere screening of the film “Veterans” will take place on May 8 on the RT and RT Doc TV channels.
On May 9, the documentary will be released available for viewing in the free online cinema Artel.doc.