The Russians Are Coming

(Die Russen kommen, Heiner Carow, East Germany 1971, 92 min., DCP, German w/ subtitles)

New DEFA Restoration. Director Heiner Carow’s semi-autobiographical story about sixteen-year-old Günter, a member of the Hitler Youth who is part of the Nazis’ last-ditch effort to resist the feared approaching Soviet Army, did not get the approval for final production in 1968. Censors lamented the film’s focus on an ordinary Nazi follower rather than an anti-fascist hero, and objected to its “contamination with modernism.” Today considered a classic of its era, the film was finally released in East Germany in 1987. Cosponsored by the Humanities Department at the Eastman School of Music, as well as the Department of History, the Film and Media Studies Program, and the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures—German Program at the University of Rochester.