First Love (Erste Liebe in German) is a 1970 film, written, directed, and starred in by Austrian director Maximilian Schell. It is an adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's homonymous novella starring Schell, Dominique Sanda, and John Moulder-Brown.
The film is quite obscure, but in 1971, it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the Academy Awards, losing to Vittorio de Sica's Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, which ironically starred Sanda. It won the 1971 German Film Award. In the United Kingdom, it is frequently shown on Actionmax on Sky Digital.
Based on Ivan Turgeyev's novella, Erste Liebe is about two young lovers in czarist Russia. One is a 21-year-old woman, the other a young man of sixteen. Things take a tragic turn as the girl (Dominique Sanda as Sanaida) falls in love with the boy's father (Maximilian Schell). This film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1970's Academy Awards. Written by Reece Lloyd
