Only Old Men Are Going to Battle (1973)

A black-and-white war film by director Leonid Bykov about the daily life of fighter pilots during the Great Patriotic War, made in 1973 at the Dovzhenko Film Studio and released in 1974. It opens in late summer 1943: after combat sorties the "singing" squadron turns into an amateur orchestra, while young replacements arrive who must still learn to fight. Bykov wrote the screenplay with Yevgeny Onoprienko and Aleksandr Satsky. Rustam Sagdullaev plays the Uzbek pilot Sagdullaev, nicknamed "Romeo".