Come and See

Summer 1943 in the Byelorussian SSR. German forces burn villages and massacre civilians, forcing thirteen-year-old Flyora Gayshun to flee his home. Despite his mother's desperate pleas to hide, he steals a rifle from a fallen soldier and runs into the dense forest to join partisans. The film opens with this intimate terror rather than grand strategy, establishing a tone of suffocating dread that defines the entire narrative.

Elem Klimov directed this 1985 masterpiece based on Ales Adamovich's non-fiction book I Survived the Holocaust. It blends historical drama with surreal horror to depict the psychological disintegration of a child witnessing unspeakable atrocities. Aleksei Kravchenko delivers a raw performance as Flyora, supported by Olga Mironova as Glasha, a traumatized young woman they meet along the way. The production utilized real locations in Belarus to enhance authenticity, creating a visual landscape that feels both grounded and nightmarish. [edit]

Flyora's journey begins when he abandons his family to find resistance fighters. He enters the woods only to discover a group of partisans who are exhausted, demoralized, and ill-equipped against the organized German army. The atmosphere shifts quickly from hope to despair as the group struggles to survive in swamps and caves. Flyora becomes separated from the main unit and wanders alone through the oppressive forest, where he encounters Glasha. She carries the weight of a lost child and a broken spirit, forming a fragile bond with the boy as they navigate a world turned against them.

The pair moves deeper into the occupied zone, witnessing systematic campaigns of genocide that defy human comprehension. They see entire villages burned to the ground and children slaughtered without mercy. The film strips away all romanticism associated with combat; there are no clear heroes, only victims and perpetrators caught in a machine of destruction. Flyora's appearance changes drastically under the strain of what he sees, his eyes widening in a perpetual state of shock as stress causes him to age prematurely.

Visual language becomes increasingly surreal, blurring the lines between reality and hallucination. The forest transforms into a labyrinth of death, and German soldiers appear less like men and more like a faceless mechanical force. Flyora and Glasha stumble upon a village completely annihilated, and the pacing slows to focus on grotesque details of the aftermath. The narrative builds toward a terrifying climax where the line between Flyora and the monsters he fears begins to blur. The story challenges the viewer's understanding of survival and sanity, leaving the outcome ambiguous until the very last frame.[edit]