Marcel Ichac captures the mountain warfare of the French Alps in World War II, the highest battles to take place during the war. The film also features footage of the liberation of Torino, Italy.
Social & External
Self
On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team – which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock – to complete the film from hours of shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).
Inspired by the true-life experience of its star George Takei, Allegiance follows one family's extraordinary journey in this untold American story following the events of Pearl Harbor. Their loyalty was questioned, their freedom taken away, but their spirit could never be broken.
If Only I Were That Warrior is a feature documentary film focusing on the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935. Following the recent construction of a monument dedicated to Fascist general Rodolfo Graziani, the film addresses the unpunished war crimes he and others committed in the name of Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. The stories of three characters, filmed in present day Ethiopia, Italy and the United States, take the audience on a journey through the living memories and the tangible remains of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia — a journey that crosses generations and continents to today, where this often overlooked legacy still ties the fates of two nations and their people.
On Christmas Eve, 1944, in Nazi-occupied Slovakia, the Kubiš family grapples with survival amidst brutal reprisals. Marián collaborates as a fascist guard leader, while his sister Angela has an affair with their Nazi lodger, Major Brecker. The situation escalates when their younger son, Juraj, a former partisan fighter, returns home wounded. As Germans search homes for escapees, Juraj hides in the attic, while an unsettling Christmas dinner unfolds below with Major Brecker present.
A dramatic love story in the front line.
World War II film set in German occupied Italy. A US fighter pilot is shot down in enemy territory during a raid against a German supply depot. He receives from Italian partisans in laying the groundwork for a new attack by his squadron.
The story follows a young genius university professor who is able to learn any language. He is asked to decipher a code used in wireless communication: the Luger Code, developed by werewolves, enemies to mankind. Startled to find that he cannot decipher the code and desperate to study it, the professor embarks on a journey to capture a living werewolf to aid him.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.
This documentary re-examines the story of the Red Orchestra: the most important resistance network in Nazi Germany, whose operations extended from Berlin and Brussels to Paris.
How did Nazi Germany, from limited natural resources, mass unemployment, little money and a damaged industry, manage to unfurl the cataclysm of World War Two and come to occupy a large part of the European continent? Based on recent historical works of and interviews with Adam Tooze, Richard Overy, Frank Bajohr and Marie-Bénédicte Vincent, and drawing on rare archival material.
A remarkable film that takes a special look at the first war to be truly reported and recorded by one of the more unsung heroes of World War II: the combat photographer. Through the unflinching eye of their camera's lenses, these courageous soldiers continually risked their lives in their brave attempts to capture history.
Hitler no longer believes in himself, and can barely see himself as an equal to even his sheep dog. But to seize the helm of the war he would have to create one of his famous fiery speeches to mobilize the masses. Goebbels therefore brings a Jewish acting teacher Grünbaum and his family from the camps in order to train the leader in rhetoric. Grünbaum is torn, but starts Hitler in his therapy ...
The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
Ireland, June 1944. The crucial decision about the right time to start Operation Overlord on D-Day comes to depend on the readings taken by Maureen Flavin, a young girl who works at a post office, used as a weather station, in Blacksod, in County Mayo, the westernmost promontory of Europe, far from the many lands devastated by the iron storms of World War II.
After a failed anti-Nazi sabotage mission leaves his eleven comrades dead, a Norwegian resistance fighter finds himself fleeing the Gestapo through the snowbound reaches of Scandinavia.
Stella, grows up in Berlin during the rule of the Nazi regime. She dreams of a career as a jazz singer, despite all the repressive measures she is forced to go into hiding with her parents in 1944, her life turns into a culpable tragedy.
Berlin, 1943, during World War II. Martha Liebermann, an elderly upper-class Jewish woman, faces the decision of her life: should the widow of the world-famous and revered painter Max Liebermann continue to try to obtain an exit permit from the Nazis or, with the help of a resistance group, should she flee to Switzerland?
Meet American fighter pilots and bombers who raided Romanian targets in WW-II including its major oilfields centered on Ploesti and Romanians who defended them. 'Ace' pilot interviews, both American and Romanian, as well as US Air Force prisoners experiences are explored through rarely viewed Romanian archive footage. The documentary is seen through the eyes and words of Nicholas Dimancescu. He journeys back to Romania both to discover his own roots and also to uncover the stories of American and Romanian airmen who raided and defended Romania's oil refineries during World War II. The experiences of wartime 'aces' on both sides are recounted and two of them, once enemies who attacked one another over Romania, meet for the first time 66 years later.
Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.
A documentary about World War I with never-before-seen footage to commemorate the centennial of Armistice Day, and the end of the war.
Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
This documentary movie is about the battle of San Pietro, a small village in Italy. Over 1,100 US soldiers were killed while trying to take this location, that blocked the way for the Allied forces from the Germans. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.
World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late.
When Sgt. First Class Brian Eisch is critically wounded in Afghanistan, it sets him and his sons on a journey of love, loss, redemption and legacy.
Inspired by the real-life German special operations unit KG 200 that shot down, repaired, and flew Allied aircraft as Trojan horses, "Wolf Hound" takes place in 1944 German-occupied France and follows the daring exploits of Jewish-American fighter pilot Captain David Holden. Ambushed behind enemy lines, Holden must rescue a captured B-17 Flying Fortress crew, evade a ruthless enemy stalking him at every turn, and foil a plot that could completely alter the outcome of World War II.
Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.
Korengal picks up where Restrepo left off; the same men, the same valley, the same commanders, but a very different look at the experience of war.
Produced and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi leaders, this film consists primarily of dead and surviving prisoners and of facilities used to kill and torture during the World War II.
The Japanese attack on Midway in June 1942, filmed as it happened. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, in 2006.
In 1940, the Royal Air Force fights a desperate battle against the might of the Luftwaffe for control of the skies over Britain, thus preventing an attempted Nazi invasion.
This WW2 documentary centers on the crew of the American B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle as it prepares to execute a strategic bombing raid on Nazi submarine pens in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Belle and Sebastian is set high in the snowy Alps during the Second World War. The resourceful Sebastian is a lonely boy who tames and befriends a giant, wild mountain dog, Belle – even though the villagers believe her to be ‘the beast’ that has been killing their sheep.
A bitter battle is fought between Australian and Japanese soldiers along the Kokoda trail in New Guinea during World War II.
The extraordinary story of how Hollywood changed World War II – and how World War II changed Hollywood, through the interwoven experiences of five legendary filmmakers who went to war to serve their country and bring the truth to the American people: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens. Based on Mark Harris’ best-selling book, “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.”