My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. Switching on subtitles during key scenes was nice, some of the mumbling with an accent was hard to understand.
This story is "inspired" by real events which means it is a fictional story representative of what happened back then, the 1940s, when Stalin's USSR was invading Eastern European countries and labeling residents as enemies, gathering them up and sending them to harsh labor camps. This story focuses on Lithuanians.
Bel Powley is the main focus, even though the actress was 25 or 26, she plays 16-yr-old Lina who has a knack for art - drawing, painting, these types of art. She is self-taught but her father hopes to get her admission to a formal art school. Right then, just after she receives her acceptance letter, is when her family and many others are forced into trucks then trains and shipped off to labor camps.
Of course part of the movie is to show how brutal the Soviets were but the main part is to show how people can work to maintain their dignity in such trying times. Interestingly, in the credits are a long list of "extras" who had ties to ancestors who had been imprisoned and mistreated during those times.
Good movie although hard to watch at times.
