Come and See is a 1985 film about the Great Patriotic War, set in the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic during occupation from the Nazi Third Reich. The film is a war film which depicts the life of a young boy who joins the Soviet Communist partisan movement. The boy is growing up amidst the conflict of the Second World War, which was a war of extermination, where Nazi Germany and its allies massacred the Soviet population.
The film shows Waffen-SS collaborators who work alongside the Wehrmacht; the Wehrmacht was the German military, and the Waffen-SS were fellow Slavs or other peoples who decided for one reason or another to ally and work for Fascism. The local villagers in the film do not understand what is happening and the German and allied soldiers who enter towns as ‘liberators’ trick the populace into barns to be burned and blown up, or against walls to be shot.
Flora, the boy, sees all of these horrible things happening, including rape and looting. Flora’s friends are slain in battle or in maneuvering, and his family is executed at one point in the film, which the young adult struggles to understand.
The movie is a real-life story, which is talked about at the end of the film, describing the many hundreds (over 600) such villages destroyed by the Nazis and their allies in the then Soviet Republic of Belarus. The film is praised around the world for its imagery, emotions, and the overall cinematography of the Soviet film production.
US Friends presents the Mosfilm YouTube uploading of the films, with English and Spanish subtitles.
English Subtitles
Spanish Subtitles
