to shoot the picture from a stretcher on which she was brought from the infectious barracks. Moreover, Shepitko did not recuperate enough, and the consequences of the disease adversely affected her well-being in the future, in particular on the set of The Ascent. In addition she experienced extreme pain which was caused by her recent spinal trauma. But Shepitko still rose two to three hours before the crew to have time to prepare, after which she worked to the maximum limit of her capabilities throughout the day. For example, in one long scene, the partisans are running away with difficulty through the thick snow from their pursuers. On screen it was necessary to show the deadly fatigue of the flushed, panting people. To prevent hypocrisy in the scenes, the director ran alongside the actors while filming, experiencing their exhausted state with them. With this dedication the shooting took place without interruption and was completed one month ahead of schedule. In order to achieve the desired performance from the actors, Shepitko sometimes talked for a long time with them out in the cold. For example, despite the crew's full readiness, the director would talk for a long time with Boris Plotnikov, whose character she carefully directed during the filming. Shepitko's habit of clearly stating her thoughts contributed to a successful transmission of information; she did not use abstruse terms that might mask the lack of clarity. She waited for the necessary expression of emotion, for the right facial expression and gestures and then suddenly would give the order to start filming. Boris Plotnikov later said that he would have liked to repeat this experience in other films, but never did. On working with Shepitko, Plotnikov spoke of "a meeting with a living genius." Vasil Býkaŭ also shared a similar opinion about the film's director, he called her "Dostoevsky in a skirt." Býkaŭ valued Larisa Shepitko very highly and once admitted that had he met her before, he would have written Sotnikov differently. Vladimir Gostyukhin described the filming process not as acting but as "death in every frame." For him and Plotnikov it was extremely important to validate the director's trust, since she had needed to defend their casting choices long and hard in front of the Soviet film authorities. Gostyukhin spoke of Shepitko's ability to convey an idea to the actors, akin to hypnosis, under which he with Plotnikov - the