Defiance

Defiance

Defiance is a 2008 war film written, produced, and directed by Edward Zwick, set in the western part of the Nazi occupied Belarusian SSR.

The film is an adaptation of Nechama Tec's Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, which tells how the region was in Poland to 1939 and was seized by the Soviet Union in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet pact. Tec writes that Jews in the area of Nowogrodek, or Navahrudak, welcomed the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Tec also writes that when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Bielskis operated as Soviet partisans in Poland, saving and recruiting Jews into their units.

Defiance stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, and George MacKay as four Jewish brothers from Belarus who escaped the Nazi persecution and fought back to rescue fellow Jews. Production began in early September 2007. The film had a limited release in the United States on December 31, 2008,and went into general release worldwide on January 16, 2009.It was released on home media on June 2, 2009.