Afghan Breakdown (Russian: Афганский излом, translit. Afganskiy Izlom) is a 1991 war drama film about the Soviet–Afghan War directed by Vladimir Bortko and co-produced by Italy and the Soviet Union (Lenfilm). Michele Placido plays the protagonist, Major Bandura, a commander of a unit of Soviet paratroopers, co-starring with several popular Soviet actors. Director Vladimir Bortko invited Mikhail Leshchinskiy (a Soviet TV war reporter who worked in Afghanistan for 4.5 years) as a co-writer and visited Kabul and Kandahar in 1988 to research on the ground.