Just up top here we want to say that this is a pretty hard one.

It's hard for a lot of reasons and you probably know that we'll touch on a lot of subjects like this

on this podcast because of what it's about but today's film is almost Baroque in its depiction of Nazi war crimes and we're going to talk about them.

So maybe don't listen with the kids in the car.

It's 1977 and Belarusian director Elem Klimov

began work on what, eight years later,

would finally become today's shocking

unflinching portrayal of a boy who lives through the Nazi invasion of Belarus

and subsequent systematic extermination of the inhabitants of over 600 villages in that country by

the occupying Germans.

When we talk about films that do not mint the issue of the horrors of war. This one is right up there. The plot is pretty simple.

Our main character is a young boy named Floria who is too young to be a soldier.

He is a pretty simple kid living a very rustic, pre-industrial existence

and a Soviet republic that is basically steamrolled by the Nazis.

And what we see are a handful of moments in his life before the Nazis arrive in which he exhibits a vague sense that he would like to participate in the attempt to repel them.

And then a harrowing series of days or weeks or months,

that parts a little unclear.

After the invasion, we watched through Floria's eyes.

We see the horrors that the Nazis visit upon the people of Belarus,

and that's everything up to and including rape and mass murder.

One of the defining images of the film

is an entire town's population,

...