Guerreiras do Ar

The film "Air," directed by Alexey German Jr., represents a significant achievement in Russian cinema, especially in the genre of war dramas. The plot immerses us in 1942, on the Leningrad Front, where a group of young female pilots joins a fighter regiment protecting the "Road of Life." From their arrival, they face a cold reception from the men, including the regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel Astafyev, brought to life by Sergey Bezrukov, who doubts the wisdom of sending them to certain death due to their lack of preparation.

What makes "Air" outstanding is its ability to tell the story through the personal experiences of each character. The film skillfully uses close-ups, allowing actors to convey the emotions of their characters almost without words, which places high demands on their skill and involves the viewer in the intimate moments of the characters. This is not just a technical approach but a way to convey deep feelings and internal conflicts of the characters to the audience.

At the same time, "Air" is not without flaws. The film could have gained greater depth if the development of characters had been more balanced. Focusing on the main heroine at the expense of the stories of other characters creates a feeling of incompleteness in the world that the film tries to recreate. Some plot lines seem underdeveloped or overly simplified, reducing the effect of the viewer's empathy.

Nevertheless, "Air" deserves high praise for its sincerity and effort to immerse the viewer in the realities of wartime through the personal stories of its characters. It is a film that makes you think and empathize, highlighting the sacrifices and heroism in times of war. Alexey German Jr., drawing on his personal family heritage and a deep understanding of history, creates a film that, despite some shortcomings, remains an important contribution to the genre of war drama.

A realistic dramatic picture of war. Rare in its realism and atmosphere. Many thanks to the filmmakers for their hard work.

Alexey German Jr. Has repeatedly received high awards at the best festivals in the world. The director's father, Alexey German Sr., is a great director known for his stunning realism films of the 30-50s, the terrible Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. The son inherited and developed this style of realism and immersion in history. For a long time in the post-Soviet space, war films were characterized by aggressive agitation (propaganda) or the use of heavy themes to attract the public. In this film, the ugly truth about war and tragedy, without pathos and slogans.

Among other things, the strengths of the film are the excellent work of the production artists and real, authentic wartime equipment.

The film stands as an unusually introspective entry in the aviation subgenre of World War II cinema, one that privileges emotion and atmosphere over mechanical precision or conventional narrative thrust. From its first frames, it reveals a concern not with the machinery of war but with the texture of experience - the trembling air around engines, the dull echo of silence after flight, the uneasy intimacy between comrades who understand that each mission might be their last. The camera dwells on faces more than on planes, and when it turns toward the sky, it does so less to capture spectacle than to register fragility. The result is a work that searches for poetry in exhaustion rather than glory in combat.

Cinematographically, the film aims high. Its aerial sequences possess a density and spatial conviction that suggest remarkable technical control - not the glossy fluidity of digital flight, but something heavier, tactile, and imperfect. The sky does not feel infinite; it feels constructed, as though suspended inside an enormous chamber of smoke and light. That sensation of containment is crucial to the film's emotional logic: flight becomes a form of confinement rather than liberation. The vast screens and complex rigging used to capture these scenes seem to have allowed the director to treat the sky itself as a physical set, one that presses against the characters rather than frees them.

The production design deserves particular attention. The aircraft, though carefully restored and historically faithful in outline, are filmed not as pristine icons of machinery but as weathered extensions of the pilots' own exhaustion. Paint peels, metal vibrates, frost forms on the glass - material details that anchor the story firmly within the sensory fabric of wartime rather than the mythic. The uniforms and field gear are not displayed as patriotic costume but as evidence of daily attrition. Each seam, each smear of oil, becomes part of the narrative texture. The encircled Leningrad front is rendered with an impressive sense of enclosure. Landscapes are narrow, overcast, stripped of grandeur; the light seems to fall through dust. There is a remarkable coherence between design and photography - both conspire to create an atmosphere of suspended decay. The war feels omnipresent yet almost invisible, manifesting itself not through explosions or spectacle but through the wear of materials and the exhaustion of faces. This level of detail transforms setting into substance: the environment becomes the emotional architecture of the film itself.

Visually, it is a film of contrasts: misted light and sudden flares, the softness of dawn against the hard geometry of metal. Its aerial sequences, though few, are not choreographed for excitement but for tension and disorientation; the sense of altitude is claustrophobic, the horizon almost oppressive. This choice stands in clear opposition to the visual clarity that defines much of the classic Soviet air-war tradition. Where films like V nebe "nochnye vedmy" (In the Sky "Night Witches," 1981) aimed to underline collective heroism and technical mastery, this one searches instead for vulnerability - the moral and emotional turbulence of flight rather than its heroics. Even the cutting rhythm avoids the traditional alternation of cockpit and target, preferring to linger on moments of hesitation, on the barely perceptible shift in breathing before action.

The acting is marked by restraint. The performers remain acutely aware of the weight of silence, which becomes a recurring motif throughout the film. Their gestures are small but eloquent: a half-smile after a failed landing, a gaze held too long toward the clouds, the way fatigue reshapes posture. The ensemble avoids easy camaraderie; bonds form through shared endurance, not explicit declarations. The emotional register is subdued, almost minimalist, but that minimalism carries unexpected depth. There is no attempt to sanctify sacrifice, which distinguishes this film sharply from the more overt pathos of A zori zdes tikhie (The Dawns Here Are Quiet, 1972*).* Both works center on women in war, yet while A zori zdes tikhie frames tragedy within a moral allegory of purity and loss, this film refuses such structure; suffering is treated as atmosphere, not as lesson.

A constant tension emerges between lyricism and detachment. The imagery is meticulously composed - perhaps too meticulously at times. The painterly approach to composition creates beauty but can distance the viewer from the immediacy of danger. The direction appears less interested in the physical mechanics of flight than in the internal landscapes of those who fly, and this ambition, while admirable, occasionally drains momentum. Certain sequences drift, suspended indefinitely between take-off and oblivion. That suspension, however, also gives the film its distinctive melancholy, a kind of aerial stasis that feels truer to the existential condition of wartime aviators than any fiery dogfight might.

The sound design reinforces that impression. Rather than the roar of engines or the symphonic grandeur typical of the genre, it builds tension from sparse noises - the metallic rasp of straps, the faint vibration of wind across the fuselage, the crackle of distant static. Music intrudes only briefly, almost reluctantly, dissolving into ambient drone rather than guiding the audience toward emotion. This refusal to manipulate sentiment feels honest, even austere, yet it also exposes the film to moments of emotional flatness. Still, that restraint aligns perfectly with its worldview: war as exhaustion, not exaltation.

Within the broader cultural moment, the film reflects a shift in contemporary portrayals of the Great Patriotic War - away from triumphalist reconstruction and toward introspection. Its coldness is deliberate, a rejection of inherited rhetoric. It revisits the mythology of heroism with the wary gaze of a generation that no longer finds comfort in certainty. What remains is silence, repetition, and the slow erosion of conviction.

What endures is not the precision of planes or the accuracy of uniforms, but the weight of silences and the faces that inhabit them. This is a war film stripped of certainty, suspended between beauty and fatigue, faith and futility - a meditation in which the sky ceases to be a symbol of freedom and becomes, instead, an immense and indifferent witness.