Join us for our Staff Picks series, where our Winnipeg Film Group staff will select and introduce new and old favourites. This month’s selection was chosen by Technical and Rentals Coordinator Luke Roach.
Dir. Elem Klimov
1985, Soviet Union, 142 min
Belarusian, Russian and German with English subtitles
This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget anti-war film ever made.
Content warning: This film contains scenes of violence, war, torture and animal cruelty
Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 Manitoba.
“Come and See is a haunting exploration of the psychological and emotional toll of war on a young individual, portraying the degradation of innocence and the corrosion of humanity under the weight of violence.” – Luke Roach
