About the film
Florya digs a rifle out of the sand so he can join the partisans, against his mother's wishes. What starts as a boy's adventure becomes a journey through the Nazi occupation of Belarus, where hundreds of villages were burned together with their people.
Klimov films the war through Florya's eyes and ears, often in long, unbroken takes. The result is one of the most powerful and disturbing war films ever made.
Viewer note: this film contains intense scenes of violence and is not suitable for children.
Did you know?
- Aleksei Kravchenko was 14 and had never acted before.
- The script was co-written by Ales Adamovich, who fought as a teenage partisan in Belarus.
- It regularly appears on critics' lists of the greatest films of all time.
