Defiance

Defiance (2008) is Edward Zwick's wartime drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Daniel Craig leads as the eldest Bielski brother, who trades a quiet village for a rifle and the cover of the forest.

The summer of 1941 takes everything from them. Their parents are murdered, their home burns, and three surviving brothers vanish into woods the Germans won't enter. Tuvia (Craig) wants to shelter the helpless. His brother Zus (Liev Schreiber) wants blood. The youngest, Asael (Jamie Bell), grows up fast under fire. Around them a whole camp takes shape — refugees from the ghettos, the elderly, children. Feeding and defending more than a thousand people becomes harder than fighting the patrols, and each winter threatens to finish what the enemy started.

Adapted from Nechama Tec's book about the actual partisan unit that sheltered roughly 1,200 Jews, the film was shot on location in the Lithuanian forests. James Newton Howard scored it, with violin solos by Itzhak Perlman. It argues, plainly, that staying alive can itself be an act of resistance. Stream Defiance (2008) online on iFILM.