region, such as On the Danube. This cinematic growth came to an end, though, when Nazi Germany and Romania, which had recently aligned itself with the Axis Powers, moved into Bessarabia and crossed the Dniester River into modern day Transnistria. Afterwards, all soviet republics’ film industries were enlisted into the war effort and, like the film industries of the Allied Powers, produced documentaries and newsreels about the USSR’s military activities. After the USSR recaptured Bessarabia and Transnistria, both regions were devastated by the war. Chişinău, the capital city of Moldova, was almost entirely destroyed from the bombing campaigns. But the Bessarabian region also faced additional hurdles, as noted by Leonid Brezhnev: Because it was not part of the USSR during the 1920s, Bassarabia remained undeveloped in comparison with its Soviet counterparts. Hence, rapid collectivization and sovietization followed the Second World War. Although there were efforts to cultivate a Moldovan film culture in this period—Russian-language films continued to be subtitled in Romanian, the government published soviet newsreels focusing on Moldova, etc.—the cinematic situation remained stagnant until the 1950s. 1952-1970 On April 26, 1952, after much planning, the USSR Ministry of Cinematography created the Documentary Film Studio in Chişinău. During the first year two documentaries, Kodry and Moldovan Cannery appeared. However, these films, like those of the MASSR, lacked a distinctly Moldovan identity. The directors working in Moldova at this point were from Moscow and Odessa, in part because there were no trained Moldovan film professionals. Between 1952 and 1957, six documentaries were screened. Afterwards, more Moldovan filmmakers began to participate in local productions, which caused the MSSR to take an increased interest in the state's role in developing a national film culture. To that end, on January 24, 1957, the MSSR Council of Ministers renamed the national film studio the "Studio for Fiction Movies and Chronicle Documentaries from Chişinău," also known as "Moldova-Film". Moldova-Film was far more productive than its predecessor. Funded by the State, Moldova-Film turned out 160 feature films, 1,500 documentaries and educational shorts, and over 100 animated films between 1957 and 1992. A few years later, in 1967, the MSSR founded Telefilm Chișinău, which, like Moldova-Film, received state funding and was similarly productive, producing over 300 documentaries, music videos, and telefilms during its existence. It was during this period that many notable Moldovan filmmakers began receiving training at VGIK in Moscow and returning to Moldova to shoot films