86 DEFIANCE
Defiance (2008)
Synopsis
Defiance is an American war film directed by Edward Zwick. With a screenplay by
Zwick and Clayton Frohman based on Nechama Tec’s book, Defiance: The Bielski
Partisans (1993), Defiance tells the story of the Bielski partisans: a group led by
Belarusian Jewish brothers who saved hundreds of Jews in Nazi- occupied Belarus
during the Second World War. The film stars Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, Liev
Schreiber as Zus Bielski, Jamie Bell as Asael Bielski, and George MacKay as Aron
Bielski.Background
Alexander Zeisal “Zus” Bielski (1912–1995) was one of the four legendary Bielski
brothers: Jewish partisans who rescued some 1,200 Jews from Nazi extermination
in Belarus during World War II. When Zus Bielski died in New York City 50 years
after the war ended, screenwriter Clayton Frohman read his obituary in the New
York Times and brought Bielski’s story to the attention of his boyhood friend, film
director Edward Zwick (Glory). Convinced that the story of the Bielski brothers
would provide a power ful counternarrative to the widespread belief that Jews pas-
sively succumbed to Nazi genocide, Frohman and Zwick set out to bring the Biel-
ski saga to the screen. Serendipitously, Holocaust historian/survivor Nechama Tec
(University of Connecticut) had recently published the definitive history of the Biel-
ski brothers— Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (1993). Zwick acquired the film rights
to Dr. Tec’s book, and he and Frohman collaborated on a screen adaptation, but it
would take a de cade to bring the proj ect to fruition; the Hollywood studios were
not interested in financing a Holocaust- themed picture certain to be a grim, if not
grueling, viewing experience. After actor Daniel Craig was cast in the lead role in
May 2006, Zwick secured $32 million from Canadian film financing mogul Don
Starr’s Grosvenor Park Productions. With Craig signed and financing in place,
Zwick’s production com pany, Bedford Falls Productions, was able to sell U.S. and
Canadian distribution rights to Paramount Vantage. The following August, Liev
Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos, and Tomas Arana were cast.Production
Zwick and his co- producer, Pieter Jan Brugge, considered shooting the movie in
Canada, but labor costs were prohibitive. They then pondered Poland or Roma-
nia, where labor costs are low, but could not find the requisite forest setting close
to a major city needed to lodge production offices, cast, and crew (Dapkus, E.20).
Ultimately they chose to shoot in eastern Lithuania, at a forest site close to Vilnius,
the nation’s capital city, and just 100 miles from the actual locations of the Bielski
partisan camps in Belarus. As it turned out, some locals who acted as extras in the
film were descended from families the Bielski partisans had rescued. According to
Zwick, the shoot was an arduous one: “To work at northern latitudes is to be acutely
aware of winter’s approach. By September there was frost on the ground. By mid-
October we were knee- deep in snow. By November dawn wasn’t until 8 a.m., and