Come and See

A teenage boy joins a Soviet partisan unit in occupied Belarus and witnesses the escalating brutality of German reprisals against civilians. His journey through burned villages and massacres transforms him from an eager youth into a shattered witness to genocide.

German anti-partisan operations in Belarus involved the systematic destruction of villages and mass killing of civilians, with over 600 villages burned along with their inhabitants during the occupation. Belarus lost a greater proportion of its population than any other Soviet republic during the war.

The narrative is a composite drawn from documented massacres such as Khatyn, rendered through the perspective of a fictional protagonist.

Directed by Elem Klimov

Cast: Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevičius

Positioned at 1943 within the German occupation of Belarus phase of the war, as part of the Anti-partisan operations in Belarus. This is entry 86 of 150 in the chronological archive.

• Belarus
• partisans
• atrocities
• civilian suffering
• Soviet cinema

• 

  Ivan's Childhood

  1943–1944

• 

  White Tiger

  1943–1945

• 

  Liberation

  July 1943 – May 1945

• 

  Defiance

  1941–1944

• 

  The Zone of Interest

  1943–1944

• 

  Uprising

  19 April – 16 May 1943