Lithuanian filmmaker Sharunas Bartas achieves a “Defiance” level of grim, wintry detail in his post-war Soviet occupation drama “In the Dusk.”

The director of “The Corridor,” “Freedom” and “Frost” tells a story of his native land’s countryside in 1948, with World War II finally ended, the fascists defeated and the communists moving in to take over.

Summary arrests, credulous denunciations and abitrary land seizures and “loans” to the “Soviet people” (government) were the new occupiers’ preoccupation. Those fighting back, hiding in the forests, clung to the hope that the Russians would withdraw, that the West — after “Churchill’s speech” at “Fulton” — would come to their aid.

If you remember your Eastern European Baltic States history, that help was a tad tardy.

We see the plight of the people through the teenaged Unte (Marius Povilas Elijas Martynenko) who has come home to the farm to find his father (Arvydas Dapsys) and stepmother (Alina Zaliukaite-Ramanauskiene) estranged and living under separate roofs, his father carrying on with the family cook (Vita Siauciunaite) and fretting over seeing everything he’s worked, suffered and married to attain ripped away from him by the machine-gun-wielding socialists who have come to town.

Will the lad find a way to keep his parents together, maybe hold on to some of the dirt-poor, struggling farm? Or will he join or return to (I couldn’t tell) the partisans who have taken to the woods and don’t seem to be carrying the fight to the Bolsheviks, no matter what they would have everyone believe.

As his father goes into hiding and the partisan-alligned Ignas (Valdas Virgailis) starts parroting socialist talking points (in Lithuanian with subtitles) — “They’re saying people will be given land…taken from those who have too much” and given “to those who have nothing.” — Unte has some considering to do.

The final third of “In the Dusk,” also titled “At Dusk” at certain points of its release, is where all the action is — interrogations, betrayals, shootouts and such.

The first 100 minutes of this midwinter’s tale is like watching snow melt. Bartas holds shots too long, lets scenes go on forever, and takes his sweet time getting to anything resembling a point.

Family intrigues, local rivalries, Russians disgusted by the poverty of the place and yet still determined to ruthlessly shake the locals down, the history here is fascinating, and rendered in what feels like slow motion.

Bartas must not have read Hemingway’s advice about murdering “your little darlings,” as huge chunks of the first two acts add little to the narrative and merely flesh out what we can see simply in situations and performances.

This is, no doubt, a vital piece of Lithuania’s history and well worth recalling with Putin’s fumbling efforts to reconstitute the Russo/Soviet Empire. But wasting this much time getting to the point is a lot like the infighting and recriminations amongst the opposition partisans in the film — hurling your efforts and your ammo in the wrong direction.

And recreating important history doesn’t give you the right to bore the viewer to death before getting around to your point.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Marius Povilas Elijas Martynenko, Arvydas Dapsys, Alina Zaliukaite-Ramanauskiene, Salvijus Trepulis, Valdas Virgailis and Rytis Saladzius

Credits: Directed by Sharunas Bartas, scripted by Sharunas Bartas and Ausra Giedraityte. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 2:08