Scorching Sun 2 (Part 2): Stronghold Fortress

1943, the height of the Great Patriotic War. Mitya (Oleg Menshikov) finds Kotov (Nikita Mikhalkov) in the ranks of a penal battalion standing at the walls of some fortress. To avoid meeting Mitya, Kotov sends the penal soldiers into the attack, forcing Mitya to go under intense enemy fire, as he is prevented from returning to the trench by the blocking unit. Kotov remains unharmed and is later rehabilitated and awarded the rank of lieutenant general. The surviving Mitya and Kotov go to the house where the commander once lived with his family (the house featured in the first part). However, no one was expecting Kotov at home, as it was believed that he had been executed (according to article 58). Marusya (Victoria Tolstoganova) is raising a child from Kirik (Vladimir Ilyin), and all photographs connected to Kotov and Nadya have been hidden away in drawers. Thus, with his arrival, Kotov disrupts the peace of the household, and the next day the entire family decides to leave secretly. The commander catches them at the train station but decides to let them go. Later, Stalin orders Kotov to carry out a complex operation: to lead a frontal assault of thousands of untrained people so that the defenders would expend their ammunition, allowing for a storming of the fortress with minimal losses among the soldiers. The newcomers to the fortress's trenches are handed shovel handles. Kotov is the first to go into the attack.