The Royal Air Force at War 1939-1941

Compiled from the Imperial War Museum Official Collection, this film collects rare and previously unseen film material shot by official cameramen on behalf of the RAF before the formation of the RAF Film Production Unit in September 1941. It tells the story of the RAF in the early years of the Second World War through the "phoney war", the Blitzkfreig and the Battle of Britain, capturing everyday life for those who served as wel as the RAF's frontline aircraft of the period. Other highlights include a fillmed account of a Blenheim raid on Northern France, a Sunderland flying boat sortie over Norway and Winston Churchill inspecting the new American aircraft for the RADF including the B-17, Douglas Boston and P-40.

2005-06-01 | en

The Hiding Place

World War II. Darkness has fallen over Europe, and the boots of the Third Reich echo through the streets. But on a quiet city corner in the Netherlands, some choose to resist. Corrie Ten Boom and her family risk everything to hide Jewish refugees by the hundreds, and they ultimately face the consequences when they are discovered.

2023-08-03 | en

D-Day Assassins

In 1944, group of rebellious American soldiers known as "The Filthy Thirteen" parachute into Normandy to carry out a deadly mission.

2019-04-15 | en

Eastern Corridor

This film is war parabola with expressive visual style. This not typical point of view about the war for Soviet cinema.

1968-02-19 | ru

Chosen

An unassuming young lawyer leads a fight against the Nazis near the end of the Second World War.

2016-08-08 | en

The Gold Rimmed Glasses

A Jewish couple and a homosexual doctor fall to prejudice and scandal in 1938 Italy.

1987-09-25 | it

War Comes to America

The seventh and final film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight World War II propaganda film series. This entry attempts to describe the factors leading up to America's entry into the Second World War.

1945-06-14 | en

The Chocolate Soldier

Germany, 1945. The War is over, and it has left a slew of devastated families in its wake. Among them are Maria and her mother, two refugees who find themselves working on a farm in the German countryside after they are forced out of their home by violence and political upheaval. It is there that little Maria makes an unlikely friend: an American soldier — an enemy soldier — who, through one act of unnecessary kindness, teaches Maria and her family a powerful lesson in compassion and humanity during the most inhumane of times.

2017-04-28 | de

Escape from Davao: 1943

April 4, 1943, ten American prisoners of war and two Filipino convicts executed a daring escape from one of Japan's most notorious prison camps.

2013-05-08 | en

Reporting from the Line of Fire

1985-05-23 | ru

Until They Sail

Four sisters in New Zealand fall for soldiers en route to the Pacific theater in WWII.

1957-10-08 | en

The Last Butterfly

Stage mime Antoine Moreau is compelled by the Gestapo to put on a performance for the children of Terezin, a "model" concentration camp, to convince the Red Cross observers that the camp is truly what it seems. Reluctant at first, Moreau slowly learns the true nature of the camp, including the meaning of the "transports" on which people leave. With a world-class orchestra (made up of people interned in the camp) and a cast of children, Moreau stages a show to end all shows.

1991-01-01 | cs

Escape

An American goes to pre-war Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of an American-born widowed countess he seeks to engineer her escape.

1940-11-01 | en

The Brighton Strangler

After suffering a head injury during the Blitz, John Loder, a theatre actor comes to believe himself to be the Brighton Strangler, the murderer he was playing onstage.

1945-05-10 | en

A Child in the Crowd

Deserted by his father, and dislocated by the Second World War, Paul is a boy who wants affection and attention and cannot find it at home. For a while, he becomes the pet of some German soldiers, running errands for them. Later, he helps the Resistance, and when the Americans come to stay, he is really in his element with them.

1976-06-04 | fr

The Dunera Boys

At the start of WWII the British Government decided to arrest all Germans in the UK no matter how long they had been there. Among those arrested were many Jewish refugees and many who were fully assimilated. This film records the story of a group who were sent to a POW camp in Australia aboard the Dunera.

1985-10-03 | en

Cefalonia

Cefalonia tells the real story about what happened in September 1943 on the Greek island of Kefalonia (Cefalonia in Italian), when the 12,000 men in the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division, following Italy's surrender to the Allied, refused to put themselves under German command and also refused to surrender their weapons. The local German force, supported by Stuka dive-bombers and additional troops, attacked the Italians and after several days of combat the Italians surrendered, having lost 1,300 men. As punishment, the German High Command ordered that all surviving Italians should be executed. Some 5,000 were executed during a week of killings. A handful were rescued by locals and the Greek guerrilla, while the rest were shipped off as prisoners, whereof 3,000 drowned when their ships hit mines. The film "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is based on a novel about the Italian occupation of Cefalonia, but the massacre was much toned down in the Hollywood version.

2005-10-29 | it

A Boy's Summer in 1945

Commencing well-respected Nippon director Kazuo Kuroki's sixth decade behind the camera, "A Boy's Summer in 1945" (literally "A Beautiful Summer in Kirishima") is a lyric, novelistic drama set in the countryside in the last days before Japan's surrender ending WWII. Striking a welcome retro note in its languid pacing and delicate handling of seriocomic ensemble threads, handsome production is a natural for fests. It might also prove a cornerstone for retrospectives or ancillary releases of works by a helmer ("Preparation of the Festival," "Ronin-gai") who's long been appreciated at home but has won just limited attention abroad.

2002-12-14 | ja

Force of Arms

During the winter of 1943, the German Army halted the American advance in the mountains of Italy; back-and-forth combat decimates Joe Peterson's platoon. On leave in Naples, Joe meets WAC lieutenant Eleanor MacKay; initially cool, she begins to melt during a bombing raid. Their romance develops despite Joe's periodic returns to the front. But whether he'll come back in the end becomes more than doubtful.

1951-08-13 | en

Memo

The story of the film is set in the period from the 1940s until today in the Pannonian plain (the plain in the Central Europe), in an area of elusive boundaries, mysterious and unstable spiritual identity. The witness of the time is a Jewish boy Benya Cohn who, with his eye wide open, remembers the tragedy of his family, in the shadow of the Holocaust, concentration camps and new wars.

2004-06-17 | sr