We have no right to live or die! The creator of the film is a very interesting, versatile and multifaceted personality - Baras Tsyretarovich Khalzanov - film director, poet, member of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR, member of the Union of Writers of Russia, Honored Artist of Buryatia, laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Buryatia. Graduate work at the Faculty of Film Directing was a short feature film “White Horse” (1966), for which the author received a medal at the I International Film Festival in Tashkent in 1968.
The film is based on the early story of A. A. Fadeev “Against the current”, which for many years was processed by the author. (In 1934, the writer gave it another name: The Birth of the Amgun Regiment.) The script was written by two screenwriters – Mark Azov and Valery Mikhailovsky – in 1978, together working on the heartfelt and touching film “The Orlova Spouses”. The second story for A. A. Fadeev is almost biographical, because in 1919-1921 he participated in hostilities in the Far East, was wounded. He held posts: Commissioner of the 13th Amur Regiment and Commissioner of the 8th Amur Rifle Brigade.
The story (like the movie) is simple. A regiment formed of partisans, led by commander Semenchuk, left combat positions. But under the influence of the Bolsheviks – Commissar Chelnokov and others who courageously go “against the current” – anarchist sentiments are overcome in the regiment, and he finally goes to the front for the task. Speaking of yesterday’s “troublemakers,” the author writes: “They were neither enemies nor traitors.” All their trouble was that they were dark, like the black soil that raised them, mortally tired of fighting, and their homes were waiting for their own lands, huts and such a tempting family comfort.
The film has many recognizable actors: Peter Velyaminov, Boris Khimichev, Vladimir Zaitsev, Sergey Balabanov. If the viewer easily recognizes Velyaminova and Khimicheva “in the face”, then Balabanov and Zaitsev are more “by ear”, because each of them has more than 100 voiced roles in the highest-grossing films of the 21st century. A special mood is created by the song "In this grove of birch ..." sounding in several episodes to the words of Nikolai Zabolotsky: "In this birch grove, far from suffering and trouble, where the pink unblinking morning light fluctuates, where the leaves from high branches pour in a transparent avalanche - sing to me, an oriole, a desert song, a song of my life ..."
