Ivan's Childhood

Ivan (Nikolay Burlyaev) is twelve, an orphan, and a scout who crosses the German lines for the Soviet army. Three officers, among them Kholin (Valentin Zubkov) and Galtsev (Yevgeni Zharikov), take to him and try to keep him out of the fighting. Andrei Tarkovsky, in his first feature, shows a boy whose childhood has been taken by the war, and the film refuses to let that loss pass quietly.