"The cruelest side of war."
The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
Aleksei Kravchenko
Flyora Gayshun
Olga Mironova
Glasha
Liubomiras Laucevičius
Kosach
Vladas Bagdonas
Rubezh
Jüri Lumiste
Obersturmführer
Viktors Lorencs
Sturmbannführer
Kazimir Rabetsky
Village Headman
Yevgeni Tilicheyev
Gezhel
Aleksandr Berda
Chief of Staff of the Partisan Detachment
The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
This has got to be the perfect antidote to the Hollywood treatment of a war film. It's bleak, grim and repulsive - and all in a great, intentional, cinematographic fashion. The thread centres around the young "Flyora" (a superb effort from Aleksey Kravchenko) who is taken from his Belorussian family farm at gunpoint (along with anything it's possible to eat) by the invading Nazi troops. What now ensues follows this young man as he escapes his captors, finds an old rifle and determines to join up with the communists who are fighting almost insurmountable odds to thwart their encroaching, heavily armed, foe. What really resonates here is the simplicity of the production. There are no specials effects, no CGI to create many when there are few - it tells the simplest of stories in a manner that is truly brutal at times, then truly evocative at others. Man's inhumanity to man and all that - but writ large and depicting an invading army devoid of any semblance of humanity on just about every level. The experiences of this young man are truly horrific, but the presentation here is not especially graphic - though it's not for the faint hearted. We are shown what is happening, but Elem Klimov leaves plenty of scope for our own imagination to augment, if that is actually possible, the true grotesqueness of war, of random killings and destruction and all quite possibly exacerbated by the fact that the conquerors had no real idea what they were doing, or why - the film almost imbues them with the characteristics of the wildest of animals who enjoy their regime of torture and malevolence for the sake of it. The ending has a certain degree of vindication about it - but oddly enough it's not especially satisfying. The emotional exhaustion of the viewer has long since set in, and the true fate of what I can only really call these uniformed bullies is just, yet somehow inadequate. The film is gently paced, it could almost be a video diary as young "Flyora" meets and hides from those he encounters and we share his fears and risks en route. This is really well worth a watch but it's not an easy one.
The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.
19 year old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer in Poland when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help twelve Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of – the basement of the German Major's house. Over the next eight months, Irena uses her wit, humour and immense courage to hide her friends as long as possible.
December of 1941, Northwestern Front. A German tank column is moving towards Moscow. During a mission to stop the enemy advance, Nikolai Komlev's IL-2 is shot down. Komlev manages to crash-land his plane in a remote forest clearing. He's alive, but far from friendly territory. Ahead of him is a relentless trial of severe physical and mental endurance. After battling hunger and extreme cold, evading packs of wolves and detachments of Nazi soldiers, the wounded Komlev finally makes it back to safety. But there he faces another challenge, the most life-changing of them all.
Two young men are seriously affected by the Vietnam War. One of them has always been obsessed with birds - but now believes he really is a bird, and has been sent to a mental hospital. Can his friend help him pull through?
The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.
In Korea, on 6 September 1950, Lieutenant Benson's platoon finds itself isolated in enemy-held territory after a retreat. Soon they are joined by Sergeant Montana, whose overriding concern is caring for his catatonic colonel. Benson and Montana can't stand each other, but together they must get the survivors to Hill 465, where they hope the division is waiting. It's a long, harrowing march, fraught with all the dangers the elusive enemy can summon.
As a young and naive recruit in Vietnam, Chris Taylor faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.
In 1933, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones travels to Ukraine, where he experiences the horrors of a famine. Everywhere he goes he meets henchmen of the Soviet secret service who are determined to prevent news about the catastrophe from getting out. Stalin’s forced collectivisation of agriculture has resulted in misery and ruin—the policy is tantamount to mass murder.
1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.
After again attempting to commit murder, a Jewish man with a mysterious past and extraordinary intelligence, charisma, and body control returns to an insane asylum, where he makes a startling discovery.