Come And See

A rare look at World War II from the Soviet side, Come and See is based on the real-life experiences of Ales Adamovich, who fought with Russian partisans in Belarus in 1943, when the Nazis systematically torched over 600 villages and slaughtered their inhabitants. Adamovich and director Elem Klimov co-authored the screenplay, which shows the horrors through the eyes of a 13-year-old peasant boy named Florya (Alexei Kravchenko). Awarded the Grand Prix at the 1985 Moscow Film Festival, Come and See is notable as an honest and unflinching portrait of one of the darker chapters among many in the history of the World War II.

After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces and experiences the horrors of World War II.

The scars that have devolved on succeeding generations from the Japanese Imperial Army’s “Rape of Nanking” on the eve of World War II have gained prominence in the news of recent years. We recall how the Japanese government has only been able to go so far in recognizing a national culpability. A book of that title written by Iris Chang came into prominence three times at least – the first time upon publication in 1997, on the suicide of its author in 2004, and again at the release of an incendiary documentary inspired by her book in 2007, the year that it was at last published in a Japanese translation. Given raw feelings are on both sides 70 years after the destruction of the city, the prospect of a mainstream feature film dealing with that period is likely to be met with concern and trepidation. The wonder is that director Lu Chuan finds humanity in the suffering on both sides, and has made a film both impossible to watch and yet hypnotically seductive.

A crowning achievement of 1980's Soviet cinema, Elem Klimov's Come And See is perhaps the ultimate WW II film. This savage and lyrical fever dream of death, rage and terror experienced through young eyes is a virtual primer for the subsequent, similarly psychedelic intensity of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Klimov's elegant, harrowing union of unflinching ferocity and dreamlike clarity moved Empire Of The Sun author J. G. Ballard to declare Come And See the greatest war film ever made. Time Out New York agreed, saying "Come And See's nimble balance of the sordid with the elegiac makes Peckinpah's Cross Of Iron seem like Newsies."

Henry Cole travels around Britain with Sam Lovegrove nosing around people's sheds and garages in the hope of finding some automotive bargains.

Just like us, animals rely on their senses to communicate with each other, to find their way around, to find food and to stay safe.

April 1945: Gregor Hecker, 19 years of age, reaches the outskirts of Berlin as part of the Red Army's scouting team. Having fled Germany with his family when he was eight, he is confronted with the dilemma of having to fight men from the very country he was born in. Through dealing with challenging situations (e.g. he is appointed commander of Bernau, talks to many disillusioned Germans, and is once and again attacked by scattered groups of German soldiers), he grows more confident that not all hope is lost for post-war Germany. Based on the diary entries of director Konrad Wolf, the episodic movie authentically portrays the protagonist's struggle to come to terms with his own past and identity.