Byelorussia, 1942: exhausted villagers accompany partisan fighters on a trek through the deep snow in retreat from Nazi invaders. It is a frozen hell in which each figure seems cast into his own separate universe, and such is the goal of the special German forces assigned to divide and conquer the partisan resistance. Two partisans who leave the group to forage for food are caught by the Germans, tortured, and hung atop the nearby mountain as a lesson to surrounding villagers. In this setting Shepitko develops an extraordinary psychological drama centering around a Russian collaborator, a partisan who attempts to capitulate, and another who makes his own death a profound moral defeat for the Germans. The Ascent goes beyond a religious allegory of martyrdom; it is a work of art which speaks to moral questions very much alive and unresolved today. Shot in black and white in sub-zero temperatures, it is a haunting film, the more so since it proved to be Shepitko's last. The talented Ukrainian director was killed in an auto accident a few months after The Ascent was awarded the Grand Prize (the Silver Bear) at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival.