'Stalingrad' Trailer: One Of The Nastiest Battles Ever Fought Becomes A Big Action Movie

Stalingrad is Russia's entry in the "giant war movie" category for 2013. It recreates the extraordinarily vicious and devastating WWII battle that shut down Hitler's efforts on the eastern front. (And which has become the subject for many a video game battle scene.) But this isn't just a big war movie; it's a big war movie shot in IMAX and presented in 3D and rendered in familiar blue and orange.Fedor Bondarchuk (9th Company, The Inhabited Island) directs, and has certainly made a big movie. Check out the trailer below to get a sense of the action, which seems like it has been polished up nicely to make the horrifying battle more visually appealing.Stalingrad is in theaters in Russia now; it does not have a US release date at this point, but has been submitted for Best Foreign Film consideration at the Oscars.

It is 1942. The Soviet army plans to mount a counter-attack on the Nazi forces that occupy half of Stalingrad on the other side of river Volga. But the operation to cross the river is unsuccessful. A few soldiers who managed to get to the other side take refuge in a house on the bank of Volga. Here they find a girl who did not escape when the Germans came.

A true romance would blossom in this unlikely place amid the bloodiest battle in the history of mankind. While the whole might of the German army descended upon them, the heroes of Stalingrad would experience love, loss, joy and the sense of ultimate freedom that can only be felt by those about to die. They have to defend the house at all costs while the Red Army prepares for another attack.