Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 1985
Come and See
Idi i smotri
A Belarusian boy digs up a rifle to join the partisans and is dragged through the German anti-partisan terror that wipes whole villages off the map.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 1 places.
Stop 1: Burned village in Belarus (after Khatyn)
Key location
After weeks with the partisans, Flyora is caught in a village as German troops and collaborators round up its people and drive them into a barn.
What really happened
Elem Klimov and the writer Ales Adamovich built the film on survivors' accounts of the German occupation of Belarus, where anti-partisan operations served as cover for the mass murder of civilians. More than 600 villages were burned together with their inhabitants, and roughly a quarter of Belarus's population died during the war.
The massacre that closes the film recalls Khatyn, where on 22 March 1943 Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 and the SS Dirlewanger unit herded 149 villagers, half of them children, into a barn and set it alight. The village in the film is fictional, but almost every atrocity it shows is documented.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Idi i smotri
- Directed by
- Elem Klimov
- Countries
- Russia
- Languages
- Belarusian, Russian, German
- Released
- 1985
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front
- Themes
- Resistance
- Holocaust
