The Red Snowball Tree (Russian: Калина красная, romanized: Kalina krasnaya) is a 1974 Soviet drama film written and directed by Vasily Shukshin.

[4] Yegor Prokudin (Vasili Shukshin), a recidivist thief nicknamed Gorye (Grief), completes his prison sentence and moves to a village to meet his pen pal Lyuba (Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina) who lives there.

He drives with Lyuba to another village and asks her to impersonate a social worker to speak to an elderly woman living there.

Yegor dies in Lyuba's hands, while her brother Pyotr (Aleksei Vanin) chases them with his dump truck, crushing them and pushing their car into the river.

[6] In November 1973, when the shooting was completed and Vasily Shukshin was busy with the editing, he suffered a severe attack of the peptic ulcer disease.