Alexey Yakovlevich Ochkin (1922-2003). In 1960 he made film "The Girl of Tien-Shan" in Kyrgyzstan. When the war began, Alexey Ochkin was 16 years old. Having added two years to his age at the military registration and enlistment office, he volunteered for the army in 1941.

Returning to duty, Alexey Ochkin fought on the Don, participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, where he led the "57 Immortals" group: after the death of the commander, he took command of the company, and for nine days 57 fighters of the 112th Rifle Division held the factory assembly shop and the command height. The enemy opened fire several times a day, launched minesweeper tanks, but did not achieve results. The Germans decided that they were fighting an entire battalion, although only Ochkin, who was wounded in the head, and six other fighters remained to defend the height.

On March 26, 1943, Aleksey Ochkin repeated the feat of Aleksandr Matrosov. As the commander of an assault detachment, in the battle for the village of Romanovo, he covered the embrasure of a pillbox with his body, from which a machine gun was firing at his soldiers. He came to only a month later, already in the hospital. Gangrene was already developing on the leg that had been hit by an explosive bullet, but he refused amputation and headed to his unit.

Young Alexey Ochkin

In November 1943, while participating in the battles for the liberation of Kyiv, Ochkin was surrounded and was seriously wounded in the leg and shell-shocked. After going through seventeen hospitals, in 1944 he continued to serve as a guard captain in the guard fighter-anti-tank brigade of the Reserve of the General Command; as part of it, he crossed the Vistula, Oder, and Neisse rivers.

During the attack on Prague, Alexey Ochkin was shell-shocked again. After treatment, he was sent back to the front, promoted to deputy commander of a rifle regiment. Despite numerous wounds, he fought until the end of the war, participated in the storming of Berlin and the liberation of Prague. Soon, due to the consequences of his wounds, he was mobilized as an invalid.

After demobilization, Aleksey Ochkin worked at a factory and studied at a school for working youth, and in 1947 he entered the directing department of VGIK, graduating in 1953. As an assistant director, Ochkin worked on the famous film The Forty-First (1956), directed by another war veteran, VGIK student Grigory Chukhrai; he directed the films We Are from Semirechye (1958), The Girl of Tien Shan (1960), and Races Without a Finish (1977). Aleksey Ochkin wrote books about the Great Patriotic War, The Undefeated (1968), Ivan — I, the Fedorovs — We (1973), and others. More info here

Dinara Asanova in "The Girl of Tien-Shan".

She was assistant of Ochkin

Star of the "The Girl of Tien-Shan" - Jamal Seidakhmatova