So this is a Soviet (1985, so like Gorbachev Soviet) war movie about the German invasion of Byelorussia. Except that calling it a “war movie” isn’t exactly right, because it’s more of a “war crimes movie.”

The protagonist is a teenage boy in a little village (pictured), who wants to leave home and join partisan resistance forces. His mom is upset about this, because she thinks — pretty reasonably — that the German military is going to fuck those people up.

And they do, bombing their camp and dropping in paratroopers (though the boy survives). But the thing is, the Nazis also pretty much destroy the shit out of the villagers, in some notably grisly scenes, so it’s not like he would have been safe back home, really.

The whole movie is from the boy’s perspective, as he’s trying to help out survivors at first, but ultimately just stay alive in a world of casual violence, ubiquitous death, and sadistic cruelty. The movie feels over the top at times — like, we get it, they’re Nazis, but come on now — and I was thinking that maybe it was getting that Soviet propaganda treatment, but apparently this is pretty straight-up based on real history and the Nazi activities on the East Front really were that phenomenally awful.

It’s a powerful movie, and it’s not actually as painfully unwatchable as I’ve made it sound here — as brutal as it is, I’d much rather watch it than most other war movies.