If you think of the greatest World War 2 films of all time, Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning classic Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List are likely to come up in conversation.

Yet there is one Second World War epic that was the Soviet entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards and wasn’t even accepted.

Today it’s not only considered one of the very best World War 2 movies of all time, but one of the greatest films ever made and it’s now free to watch legally on YouTube.

The film in question is 1985’s Come and See, a Soviet anti-war tragedy that focuses on the Nazi occupation of Belarus through the eyes of a teenager who joins the resistance. Hitler’s atrocities against the populace are horrifyingly depicted in a film that mixes hyper-realism with surrealism. This Russian picture is available to stream on the official Mosfilm YouTube channel (see embed link below) alongside many of the best Soviet-era films, including the acclaimed works of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Come and See’s official synopsis reads: “1943, the Great Patriotic War, territory of Belarus. The 16-year-old boy Flera, having dug out a carbine among scraps of barbed wire, rusty machine-gun belts and shot-through helmets, goes into the forest to join the ranks of the partisans. This film, like no other, shows the tragedy of a child on a battlefield. At the beginning of the picture Flera is just a teenager. But in the end, having gone through horror and fear, child becomes an adult, frighteningly adult – his face is distorted by senile wrinkles, and there is no room for love in his soul…”