Come and See

Come and See is a 1985 Soviet anti-war film directed by Elem Klimov and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova. Its screenplay, written by Klimov and Ales Adamovich, is based on the 1971 novel Khatyn and the 1977 collection of survivor testimonies I Am from the Fiery Village (Я из огненной деревни, Ya iz ognennoy derevni), of which Adamovich was a co-author. Klimov had to fight eight years of censorship from the Soviet authorities before he was allowed to produce the film in its entirety.

The film's plot focuses on the German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II, and the events as witnessed by a young Belarusian teenager named Flyora, who joins a partisan unit, and thereafter depicts the Nazi atrocities and human suffering inflicted upon the populace. The film mixes hyper-realism with an underlying surrealism, and philosophical existentialism with poetical, psychological, political and apocalyptic themes. The film received positive reviews during its initial release and received the FIPRESCI prize at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival. It is the last and most recent film that Klimov directed before his death.

Critical response to Come and See has since continued to rise more widespread acclaim in retrospective years; its realistic portrayal of the horrors of war and brutality in the film's third act was widely praised, alongside previously unknown Kravchenko's performance being universally lauded, which is highly regarded as one of the finest instances of child acting performance ever. It has since come to be considered one of the greatest films of all time, particularly in the anti-war film genre; in the 2022 Sight & Sound directors' poll of the Greatest Films of all Time, it ranked 41st.