Defiance

Defiance is an upcoming war film written and directed by Edward Zwick. The film is based on the true story of the Bielski partisans, covered by author Nechama Tec in the book of the same name. Defiance stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as three Jewish brothers from West Belarus who escape from the Nazis and fight back to rescue fellow Jews. Production began in early September 2007. The film is scheduled to be released on December 19, 2008.

Premise

During World War II, three Jewish brothers escape their Nazi-occupied homeland of West Belarus and join the Soviet partisans to combat the Nazis. They build a village in a forest and manage to save some 1,200 Jews and other fugitives.

Cast

• Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, one of the three Jewish brothers
• Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski, one of the three Jewish brothers
• Jamie Bell as Asael Bielski, one of the three Jewish brothers
• Alexa Davalos as Lilka, a Polish refugee and the love interest of Craig’s character
• Tomas Arana as Ben Zion, a resistance leader

Production

Edward Zwick began writing a script for Defiance in 1999 after he acquired film rights to the 1993 nonfiction book of the same name by author Nechama Tec. Zwick developed the project under his company, Bedford Falls, and the project was financed by the London-based company Grosvenor Park with a budget of $50 million.

In May 2007, actor Daniel Craig was cast into the lead role with Paramount Vantage acquiring the rights to distribute Defiance in the United States and Canada. The following August, actors Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos, and Tomas Arana were cast into Defiance. Production began in early September 2007 so Craig would complete filming Defiance before moving on to reprising his role as James Bond in Quantum of Solace.

Filming of Defiance took place for three months in Lithuania, which had beaten out other Eastern European locations such as Poland and Romania due to lower production costs.

Controversies

The film-makers omitted the fourth (and the only surviving) Bielski brother, Aron, who in 2007 was jailed in the United States. As of June 2008, together with his wife Henryka Bell, Aron Bielski is facing a sentence of up to 90 years imprisonment.

In addition, the Naliboki massacre, the partisan raid on a Polish town in the area which killed more than 100 people including women and children, as well as other crimes commited by the Soviet-commanded partisans against the local non-Jewish and non-communist population were left out (though they possibly occur after the end of the film as the film does not cover the entire war). Instead, Zwick made them actively fight the German military forces, even though, according to the research by the Polish government’s Institute of National Remembrance, they preferred to flee the manhunt operations in order to survive rather than fight any battles against the German soldiers.

The Jewish Press cited the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Telford Taylor, as saying that “historical misrepresentations could leave the uninformed viewer with an inaccurate historical record about what a movie is depicting” while criticizing the fictionalization of the story.