Grigory Chukhrai, 80; Soviet Filmmaker Won Top Awards

Grigory Chukhrai, 80, Soviet filmmaker who earned Russia’s Lenin Prize and top awards at film festivals in Cannes, Edinburgh and San Francisco, died Sunday in Moscow.

One of the first post-censorship successes, Chukhrai dwelt on wartime themes, but concentrated more on the people waging war than on battle scenes and triumph.

Among his prize-winning films were “The Forty-First,” a tragic love story set in the post-Bolshevik Revolution civil war; “Ballad of a Soldier,” about an accidental hero of World War II who ultimately dies in battle; and “The Clear Sky,” about another World War II soldier whose German imprisonment makes him an outcast in Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Born in Melitopol, Ukraine, Chukhrai grew up on a collective farm and volunteered for the airborne infantry in World War II. He repeatedly parachuted behind enemy lines and was wounded four times. After the war, he studied at the National Institute of Cinematography.