Afghan Breakdown

Afghan Breakdown (Афганский излом)
Directed by	Vladimir Bortko
Produced by	Aleksandr Golutva
Written by	Leonid Bogachuk Aleksandr Chervinsky Mikhail Leshchinsky Ada Petrova
Starring	Michele Placido (Russian voice by Oleg Yankovsky) Mikhail Zhygalov Aleksey Serebryakov Yuri Kuznetsov
Music by	Vladimir Dashkevich
Cinematography	Valeri Fedosov Pavel Zasyadko
Editing by	Mauro Bonanni
Studio	Lenfilm
Release date(s)	1990
Running time	140 minutes
Country	Soviet Union Italy
Language	Russian, Italian

Afghan Breakdown (Russian: Афганский излом, translit. Afganskiy Izlom) is a 1990 war drama film about the Soviet war in Afghanistan directed by Vladimir Bortko and co-produced by Italy and the Soviet Union (Lenfilm). Michele Placido, an Italian TV star popular in the USSR, plays the main protagonist, Major Bandura, a commander of a unit of Soviet paratroopers, co-starring with several popular Soviet actors.

The movie is still regarded by most veterans as the best account of the war^{[citation needed]}, despite new box-office hits coming out like 9th Company. Vladimir Bortko visited Kabul and Kandahar in 1988 to research on the ground.

Plot

The events unfold just before the start of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. A son of a high ranking military general is assigned to Afghanistan, hoping to take part in combat and earn some medals before the war ends. This leads to a chain of events in both combat and the paratroopers' private life on a local base. Major Bandura, whose tour of duty has expired, decides to stay with his men and lead yet another mission in a remote village. The mission turns into the unit's extermination and subsequent massacre of the village by Soviet retaliation airstrike.

See also

• The 9th Company
• The Beast

External links

• Afghan Breakdown at the Internet Movie Database
• Afghan Breakdown at AllRovi