“The Deep Rear” is a story about the Kama Region during the Great Patriotic War. It tells of how, far from the front lines, people worked to the limits of their strength, raised children, lost loved ones, and believed that their labor was also a front—just a different one.
The film’s plot centers on life and work in the home front, where people sacrificed their health and were forced to live even in a circus ring and an orchestra pit. Teenage girls worked as blasters in potash mines, lab assistants conducted typhus vaccine trials in ways unimaginable today, and 2,000 housewives became top-performing miners. And these are just a small fraction of the stories the film crew managed to uncover.
In developing the screenplay, the team studied materials from state archives, departmental and municipal museums, and libraries. Several dozen interviews were also recorded, and the film itself incorporates more than a hundred documented recollections from eyewitnesses of those years.
