Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape into the Belarussian forests, where they join Russian resistance fighters, and endeavor to build a village, in order to protect themselves and about one thousand Jewish non-combatants.
George MacKay was only 12 years old when he appeared in this film, and director Edward Zwick would later tell Sam Mendes, who directed MacKay in 1917 (2019), how very impressed he was by the young actor because on his way to the film set in Lithuania from the airport, MacKay was injured in a car accident that left him with a blackened eye he could barely open, yet he was "so game" to immediately start shooting his first scene.
Tuvia Bielski:
We may be hunted like animals, but we will not become animals.
Zus Bielski was, in fact, four years YOUNGER than his brother Asael.
English, German, Russian
$32,000,000 (estimated)
$123,513 4 January 2009
$28,644,813
$51,262,751