Come and See (1985)

If I’m going to subject myself to a war film, I prefer it to be the grim, realistic type versus the flag-waving, patriotic version. I have never seen another as dark as this one. More than once, I thought to myself that it would have been better for a character to have died than to have continued with the narrative set out for them. Filled with facial close-ups, every actor conveys the feelings of the soul-emptying desperation and despair of existing in a place under siege, none better than Aleksei Kravchenko as Flyora, a young Belarussian teen conscripted into the partisan forces. Is it no surprise that one of the best Russian films ever is so incredibly bleak?