War

Quote:
Marcel Ophuls’ four-and-a-half hour portrait of the French town of Clermont-Ferrand under German occupation from 1940-44 is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, as important as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah in its value not just as a film but as an essential historical record in its own right – not least since its interviewees are all long dead.
Describing the fall of France and the rise of the Resistance, with the aid of newly-shot interviews and eye-opening archive footage including newsreels and propaganda films, Ophuls painstakingly crafts a complex, nuanced picture of what really happened in France over this period. He also demolishes numerous self-serving national myths to such an extent that, although he made the film for French television, they wouldn’t show it for over a decade.Read More »

Mona and Manar are two Palestinian girls growing up in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem. Despite the overwhelming barriers that separate them, the girls form a close friendship through letters and a dramatic reunion across the Lebanese border with Palestine. Shot during the liberation of south Lebanon from Israeli occupation and the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, FRONTIERS OF DREAMS AND FEARS articulates the dreams and hopes of a generation of young Palestinians living in exile.Read More »

Emergency Landing is a 1952 Norwegian film directed by Arne Skouen.
It was entered into the 1952 Cannes Film Festival.

An American bomber is shot down on the Norwegian coast during World War II. The airmen bail out and land at different locations. In spite of the German search for them, the Norwegian resistance picks them up and hides them in the attic of the local church, a center of operations. Things become tense, however, when the hideout is spotted by a notorious collaborator, and soon the protagonist, Hans (Henki Kolstad), has to get the airmen to Sweden.Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
It is the summer of 1941 and the Finnish army has been mobilized along the border with Russia. A platoon led by Lt. Eero Perkola is waiting for orders to go on the offensive. The platoon receives orders for a recon mission through the wilderness around the Lieksa lake to search for possible Russian defensive positions. When the platoon rests in a newly conquered village Lt. Perkola meets his fiancee Kaarina Vainikainen, who is serving in the Women’s Auxilary Corps (Lotta). The platoon continues with the mission, but after some time a terrible message reaches Lt. Perkola. The message causes Perkola to become totally indifferent to his and his platoon’s safety during the remainder of the mission.Read More »

Follows a naval officer who stands trial for mutiny after taking command from a ship captain he felt was acting in an unstable way, putting both the ship and its crew in danger.Read More »

Greece 1942. In an island across the coast of Asia Minor, a woman finds an injured partisan who wants to leave for Turkey. She helps him with a boat to cross over but they will be caught by the Turks and kept in a camp.Read More »

American-born Agnes Keith (Colbert) and her British husband (Patric Knowles) attempt to flee Borneo with their young son in the wake of the Japanese invasion. They are interned and then taken to separate prison camps, one for men, the other for women and children. Amid the brutality of the internment camp, the camp commander Lieutenant-Colonel Suga (played by Sessue Hayakawa who in 1958 was nominated for an Oscar for a similar role in The Bridge on the River Kwai) is respectful to Mrs Keith because he is familiar with her work, and is shown to be kind to the children even when his own family has been destroyed by the American atom bombs.Read More »

Voyage of the Damned is a 1976 war drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with an all-star cast featuring Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, and Malcolm McDowell.

The story was inspired by actual events concerning the fate of the ocean liner St. Louis carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. It was based on a 1974 nonfiction book of the same title written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. The screenplay was written by Steve Shagan and David Butler. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and released by Rank Film Distributors in the UK and Avco Embassy Pictures in the US.Read More »

A story of a farmer and his calf, the only survivors of the German WW2 punitive expeditions that passed through their village. While evading before the dangers of war, the farmer develops a deep attachment to his calf and tries to save it at all costs, but it wouldn’t be much easier for them even after the liberation day.Read More »