Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia and Poland.

As forced conscription into Red Army and Stalinist repressions escalated, thousands of Lithuanians took to the forests in the countryside as a refuge.

These spontaneous groups became more organized and centralized culminating in the establishment of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in February 1948.

Initially, the Lithuanians greeted the Germans as liberators from the repressive Soviet rule and made plans to reestablish independent Lithuania.

However, a large proportion of the LTDF succeeded in escaping deportation to Germany and formed guerrilla units, dissolved into the countryside in preparation for partisan operations against the Soviet Army as the Eastern Front approached.

In 1949 all members of the presidium of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters – captain Jonas Žemaitis-Tylius, Petras Bartkus-Žadgaila, and Bronius Liesys-Naktis ir Juozas Šibaila-Merainis – came from the LLA.

[7] The Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Vyriausiasis Lietuvos išlaisvinimo komitetas, VLIK) was created on November 25, 1943.

The resistance in Lithuania was well organized, and uniformed guerrilla units with a chain of command were effectively able to control whole regions of the countryside until 1949.

[4] When not directly fighting the Soviet Army or special NKVD units, they significantly delayed the consolidation of Soviet rule through ambush, sabotage, assassination of local Communist activists and officials, freeing imprisoned guerrillas, and printing underground newspapers.

stribai, from the Russian: istrebiteli – destroyers) used cruel repression to discourage further resistance, e.g. displaying executed partisans' corpses in village courtyards.

The partisans usually replenished their arsenal by killing istrebiteli, members of Soviet secret-police forces or by purchasing ammunition from Red Army soldiers.

One grenade was usually saved to blow themselves and their faces to avoid being taken as prisoner, since the physical tortures of Soviet MGB/NKVD were very brutal and cruel, and being recognised, to prevent their relatives from suffering.In the first year of partisan warfare, about 10,000 Lithuanians were killed – about half of the total deaths.

Men avoided conscription to the Red Army and hid in the forests, spontaneously joining the Lithuanian partisans.

There were several larger open engagements between the partisans and NKVD, like in Kalniškė, Paliepiai, Seda, Virtukai, Kiauneliškis, Ažagai-Eimuliškis and the village of Panara.

In July 1945, after the end of World War II, the Soviets announced an "amnesty" and "legalization" campaign for those hiding in the forests to avoid conscription.

According to a Soviet report from 1957, in total 38,838 people came forward under the campaign (8,350 of them were classified as "armed nationalist bandits" and 30,488 as deserters avoiding conscription).

The territory of Lithuania was divided into three regions and nine military districts (Lithuanian: apygarda): Open engagements with NKVD/MGB were replaced by more clandestine activities.

In February 1949, partisan leaders met in the village of Minaičiai and established a centralized command, the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters.

Juozas Lukša was among those who managed to escape to Western countries; he wrote his memoirs – Forest Brothers: The Account of an Anti-Soviet Lithuanian Freedom Fighter, 1944–1948 – in Paris, and was killed after returning to occupied Lithuania in 1951.

[12] Adolfas Ramanauskas (code name Vanagas), the last official commander of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters, was arrested in October 1956 and executed in November 1957.

Writings on the subject by the Lithuanian emigrants were often labelled by Soviet propaganda as examples of "ethnic sympathy" and disregarded.

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Lithuania ruled that the systematic extermination of the partisans by the Soviet regime constituted a genocide.

Despite being propaganda shot from a Soviet perspective, the film alludes to the possibility of alternative points of view.