Saratoga Jewish Community Arts (SJCA) will present a panel discussion on Zoom of the 2018 film “Ashes in the Snow,” Sunday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m. Directed by Marius A. Markevičius, the film tells the story of the Soviet Union’s deportation of tens of thousands of Lithuanians to labor camps and to the frozen Siberia during and after World War II, a campaign in which many thousands died.

The film is an adaptation of the bestselling historical novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. The story centers on Lina Vilkas (played by actress Bel Powley), a 16-year-old aspiring Lithuanian artist whose family is exiled to Siberia during the first wave of Soviet deportations in 1941. Separated from her father and forced into brutal labor, Vilkas records what she witnesses in her drawings, hoping they will somehow reach him.

“As is true of many who lived through such suffering,” says Phyllis Wang, coordinator of SJCA, “survivors often are silent to the next generation. It is another time no one talked about, or could talk about, because of the ongoing Russian influence in the area.”

Sepetys did extensive research to make the story as historically accurate as possible, interviewing survivors and their descendants, who later agreed that it was true to what they or their families had endured.

The film’s actors came from many countries, including Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain, and all were committed to a project about Lithuania and the Baltics. It is regarded as the first globally distributed, major feature film in English about Lithuania. Many of the extras, and some of the elderly principal actors, were actual survivors who had been deported as children; others are children or grandchildren of survivors. The Lithuanian crews working on the film were not only skilled, but many of them also had a family connection to the Siberian experience.

The film raises questions such as what a human life is worth, and it explores the resilience of the human spirit amid systematic oppression and genocide—questions that resonate in so many places around the globe. Americans in general, and Jews in particular, have heard very little about the history of the Siberian deportations, though they may know a bit more about Stalin’s reign.

Pre-registration for the discussion is required and may be obtained at https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/h3v20z4/AshesinSnow