Ashes in the Snow

Lithuania, 1941. Lina is sixteen and draws; she has been accepted to art school. One night there is a knock at the door. Soviet security forces take the family from the house; her father is taken separately, her mother and the two children put on a train. The journey lasts weeks. They arrive in Siberia and are placed in a labour camp. There is little food, the winter is long, and nobody knows how long they will stay. Lina goes on drawing. She hides the drawings and looks for a way to get them to her father. Marius Markevicius directs. Bel Powley plays Lina and Lisa Loven Kongsli her mother; Jonah Hauer-King is in the cast. The source is Ruta Sepetys's novel; the writer is of Lithuanian descent and wrote it while researching her family's past. Its ground is real; in 1941 hundreds of thousands were deported from the Baltic countries by the Soviets and many never returned. Those deportations were little known internationally for a long time and the film takes that as a direct subject. Part of it was shot in Lithuania. The matter it treats is keeping a record; Lina's drawings work as both evidence and a form of resistance. Its limit is structure; the narrative proceeds close to a shape and the characters are not opened enough. Another limit is register; the conditions are softened and the production comes close to a Hollywood measure. Who it is for: anyone curious about historical drama and periods rarely told. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the narrative conventional, and the emotional steering high.