No One Wanted to Die

At the end of 1965, the young Lithuanian director Vitautas Zalakiavichus came to Moscow with his new film No One Wanted to Die. Everybody knew that Zalakiavichus’ film would be about the ‘Forest Brothers’, the anti-communist partisans who operated in Lithuania (and other Baltic states) during and after World War II. But no one expected an anti-Soviet film. At first sight No One Wanted to Die is a typical Soviet film. Communists and peasants are good; Forest Brothers are bad. The plot is about the revenge of the sons of a village chairman, who is killed by guerrillas. But the main miracle of this film is the choice to make it as a Western, which allowed Zalakiavichus to tell the truth about the Forest Brothers. The film’s title states a perfectly clear message, given to the audience with typical Western landscapes and brutal masculine protagonists.

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