IN THE DUSK

Lithuania, 1948: From within a snowy wooded area, a scrappy band of partisan fighters strikes back at the Soviet troops that have been occupying the country for the past four years. In a nearby village, fear has the firm upper hand, fear of dispossession and denunciation at the hands of the NKVD. Pliauga, a farmer, is also scared of losing his little country estate. His only joy is an affair with the housemaid Akne – he and his noble-born wife have long since drifted apart. Now, he is in danger of losing his foster son Unte too, to the partisans, who Pliaugu secretly supplies with food. However, the nineteen-year-old is quickly forced to realise that there are traitors among the rebels as well. In his unflinchingly honest narrative, director Šarūnas Bartas shows the effects that Soviet occupation had on the populace as well as the Lithuanian partisans commonly referred to as the "Brotherhood of the Forest". He is not interested in rehashing tales of heroism here: resistance fighters are also capable of becoming collaborators and murderers in Bartas' recounting. Since its release in his native land, 30 years after Lithuania regained its independence, Bartas' film has been the object of heated debate, due to its critical approach to the national myth of the Forest Brothers.