Two Soviet partisans are separated from their unit in the frozen wastes of occupied Byelorussia during World War II and forced to seek shelter, setting them on a path that leads to capture, torture, and a choice between survival and principle. Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent, the last film she completed before her death in a car crash at age forty-one, is a transcendent masterwork that elevates its war narrative into something sublime—a meditation on suffering, sacrifice, and redemption suffused with spiritual intensity and shot in stark, gorgeous black and white.