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

Vasily Zaitsev, a soldier in the Red Army, is sent to the frontlines of the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Forced into a suicidal charge without a rifle, he hides among a pile of corpses, while a tank shell incapacitates a car. The occupant, Commissar Danilov, takes cover in the same heap and finds a rifle. Vasilly reveals himself, advising the commissar not to fire until an explosion covers the noise. Danilov gives the rifle to Vasilly, who, to the former's astonishment, is able to kill six nearby German soldiers in less than a minute.