Best movies like Two on the Steppes

A 1943 Soviet documentary war film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko and Yuliya Solntseva. It is Dovzhenko's second World War II documentary, and dealt with the Battle of Kharkov. The film incorporates German footage of the invasion of Ukraine, which was later captured by the Soviets.

Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.

Banned in the Soviet Union for its "negative" content and never released, Kalatozov was forced to retreat from filmmaking for seven years because of this film. The film sets out to illustrate the old adage, "For want of a nail, the battle was lost," showing how the inferior quality of something so trivial as a nail in a soldier's boot leads inexorably to the capture of an armored train. Kalatozov had intended to demonstrate the crucial and universal importance of efficiency in Soviet industry, but the government decided that his fable gave a negative impression of the Red Army's capabilities.

During World War II, earnest young Russian soldier Alyosha Skvortsov is rewarded with a short leave of absence for performing a heroic deed on the battlefield. Feeling homesick, he decides to visit his mother. Due to his kindhearted nature, however, Alyosha is repeatedly sidetracked by his efforts to help those he encounters, including a lovely girl named Shura. In his tour of a country devastated by war, he struggles to keep hope alive.

In a remote village in Karelia, Sergeant Vaskov commands an anti-aircraft unit that protects a rail depot. While his men are transferred to the front line, he is reprimanded for their unruly behavior. He retorts that he wants replacements that aren't drunks or womanizers. In response, he is assigned a unit made up entirely of young women, fresh from training.

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

An expermintal gun powered by an atomic reactor is misplaced when the transport carrying it crashes into a river. The weapon soon falls into the hands of a bullied teen named Zeke, who uses it to get even with his persecutors. An army team led by the overzealous Lt. Dalton is sent to recover the weapon before it's unstable reactor overloads and causes a meltdown.

A story of a young lad Sergey who is destined to fight in multiply wars.

Soviet documentary film.

A farmer and his wife live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia with their three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.

Capt. Harper's cavalry patrol returns to the fort to find it besieged by Ute Indians. The apparent cause is the recapture of Army traitor Brett Halliday, who deserted to the Utes in a previous war; but Brett has a different story. With capture imminent, the only chance for the surviving men (and one woman) is to boat down a wild, uncharted river, where Harper and Halliday must pull together, like it or not.

Adventures of three Red Army soldiers. Misha, Duniasha and Tom Jackson, an afro-American boy, are fighting against enemies.

A disgraced pilot determines to regain the respect of both his son, now a test pilot for the Army, and the men he once flew with.

Private Internal Troops Andrei Ivin is a security guard in a strict regime zone. He is absolutely not adapted to military service, a typical humanist who left the historical and archival institute. One summer, he stands at night on duty on the tower. A recidivist nicknamed Mishka Knyaz escapes. Private Ivin could not shoot him, and he was forced to go under the tribunal himself. In an explanatory note, he writes that he "refuses to continue to dispose of someone else's life." Under the supervision of the company commander Narotiev, he is sent to the disbat. Senior Lieutenant Narotiev is almost the same age as Ivin. It's hard for him to believe that the private is telling the truth. In his opinion, the soldier was simply at a loss, giving evidence, and fell asleep at the post, or, perhaps, chickened out.

The film is based on the novel by Vyacheslav Kondratyev "Vacation by Wound." The story of the few weeks that young lieutenant Volodya spent in Moscow in the summer of 1942 after treatment at the hospital. Directly from the Rzhev Front with a bandaged hand, in a bloodstained padded jacket and tattered boots, he goes on vacation to his mother in the capital. Here, at the height of the war, almost peaceful life is going on - lines for vodka and beer, restaurants for the aristocracy of nomenclature, parties, girls... It’s another month for Volodya to live an ordinary life in Moscow, in a peaceful city in which everything is alien to him.

Out hiking, Special Forces Brenner Baker stumbles onto a Cartel's compound. Her husband's killed and she's left for dead. The Cartel made two mistakes, killed her husband and left her alive. They won't live to make another.

This distinctly Russian war story takes place in 1942 behind enemy lines. A regiment of partisans captures former Red Army lieutenant Lazarev who is dressed in a German uniform. He’s a Nazi defector and collaborator but now desires to switch back and fight with Russian partisans.

A family of a private stud-farm head takes cover from a Civil War in a forsaken estate in Urals steppe. Once an old family friend Victor, lieutenant of White Guard, shows up in the estate and claims that he wants to come out of action and live according to the laws of God. The old man marries his daughter and Victor, but that is the end of peace in this house, taking into account that the white Cossacks are getting nearer

The events of a dynamic, action-packed film take place in the 20s. The main character of the picture is the red commander Rude, a man unrestrainedly brave, courageous and devoted to his work. His opponent is the cunning, insidious and elusive ataman Kudre. Tracking down his gang, Hamit at some point falls into a trap himself and becomes a prisoner of the chieftain.

Summer of 1960. A detachment of exploration geologists is working in the steppe region, and among them is Alyoshka, a guy who, before entering the geological exploration institute, decided to walk with geologists. Unskillful and messy in everyday life, he becomes the object of their jokes and practical jokes, which are not always harmless. However, his persistent character, his timid and pure love for the switchwoman Zinka, who lives with her grandfather on a crossing lost in the steppe, makes the guys from the squad take a different look at this inconspicuous guy and at his relationship with each other.

Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alenka Muratova (Ovodova) is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alenka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.

In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.

In November, 1942, near the Volga, Stanlingrad is under siege of Commander Friederich Paulus and his 330,000 men. The Russian high command unleashes an operation to protect the Mishkova River to avoid that about four hundred tanks join Paulus' army. The Soviet artillery soldiers protect their position with their lives in a bloodshed with few survivors.

Chronicle of the unheralded and unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union by the Italian army during World War II.

The film tells about the fighting everyday life of the crew of self-propelled guns during the liberation of Right-Bank Ukraine. Junior Lieutenant Maleshkin, an unshooted graduate of the school, commands the crew of the self-propelled gun SU-100. All the subordinates of Maleshkin are older than him and much more experienced. The authority of the young commander is tested at every step, he quarrels, then reconciles with his crew. In addition, Maleshkin is very dissatisfied with the battery commander, he now and then threatens to remove the sluggish young officer from the command. In the crew of Maleshkin, various troubles constantly occur: either the driver will catch the commandant’s eyes in an untidy, grimy look, then a combat grenade with a dropped check will be discovered in the car, or a breakdown will occur just at the moment the regiment enters the march.

An old-time cavalry sergeant's resistance to change could cost him his post.

The film tells about the struggle of the Georgian people under the leadership of the great commander George Saakadze for a centralized state.

Soviet and American soldiers are meeting on the shores of the Elbe river in Germany in 1945.

On December 6, 1941, the troops of the Western Front launched an offensive near Moscow. And before that, in the autumn of 1941, when the fascists were at Moscow, ten soldiers under the command of a lieutenant went into the enemy terrain to blow up the ammunition base.

The film is about the hot war summer of 1944. A group of several gun crews defends a tiny bridgehead on the right bank of the Dniester. The fates of the main characters: the front-line soldier-battalion commander Babin, the young lieutenant Motovilov, the nurse Rita Tamashova and the rank-and-file gunners, soldiers, among whom are brave people, faint-hearted and scoundrels, unnoticed heroes, are shown in a setting of several hours of peaceful life before another violent attack of the enemy, after which not everyone will survive...

This literary adaptation was the first Soviet feature length dramatization, as opposed to documentary film, on the momentous Battle of Stalingrad.

Set in Russia during the Battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War. The war is shown through the eyes of simple soldiers, who are dreaming about love and being loved in a peaceful life, which most of them will never have.

The film takes place in a Kazakh village. Aman and Aizhan love each other very much, but they often quarrel. Their neighbor Nagima decides to use one of these quarrels to marry her son Ospan to Aizhan. This leads to a number of ridiculous situations that the characters get into. But good, as always, overcomes evil, and the young people reconcile — Aizhan marries Haman.