Born in Rezekne, Latvia, in 1898 and dying in Leningrad in 1967, Fridrikh Ermler worked as a Cheka official before turning to cinema, and became one of the central directors at Lenfilm. Fragment of an Empire (1929), a silent film about a soldier who loses his memory in the First World War and wakes up in Soviet Russia, was a major late-silent work. The Great Citizen (1938) was a Stalinist film about a thinly disguised Kirov. The Turning Point (Velikiy perelom, 1945), on the Battle of Stalingrad, shared the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1946.
Filmography
- Fragment of an Empire (1929)
- Counterplan (1932)
- Peasants (1935)
- The Great Citizen (1938)
- She Defends Her Country (1943)
- The Turning Point (1945)