Enemy at the Gates
Enemy at the Gates (Stalingrad in France and L'Ennemi aux portes in Canada) is a 2001 war film directed, co-written, and produced by Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943. The screenplay was written by Annaud and Alain Godard. The film's main character is a fictionalized version of Vasily Zaitsev, a sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. It includes a snipers' duel between Zaitsev and a Wehrmacht sniper school director, Major Erwin König.
Plot
Vassili Zaitsev, a soldier in the Red Army, is sent to the frontline of the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Forced into a suicidal charge without a rifle but with ammunition, he hides among a pile of corpses, while a tank shell incapacitates a car. The occupant, Commissar Danilov, takes cover in the same heap of corpses and finds a rifle. Vassili reveals himself, advising the commissar not to fire until an explosion covers the noise. Danilov gives the rifle to Vassili, who, to the former's astonishment, is able to kill five German soldiers in less than a minute.
Cast
- Alexander Schwan
- André Emanuel Kaminski
- Anna Böttcher
- Axel Neumann
- Birol Ünel
- Bob Hoskins
- Clemens Schick
- Dan van Husen
- Dana Cebulla
- Ed Harris
- Eva Mattes
- Gabriel Thomson
- Gennadi Vengerov
- Gotthard Lange
- Hans-Martin Stier
- Hendrik Arnst
- Holger Handtke
- Ivan Shvedoff
- Joseph Fiennes
- Jude Law
- Lenn Kudrjawizki
- Marc Bischoff
- Mark Zak
- Markus Majowski
- Matthias Habich
- Michael Schenk
- Rachel Weisz
- Robert Stadlober
- Ron Perlman
- Sophie Rois
- Tom Wlaschiha
- Valentin Plătăreanu
- Werner Daehn