The 40 Best Films About World War II

When we think of a “World War II film,” our minds almost inevitably go to coded images: the Normandy landings, suicide missions, the epic of heroism and sacrifice. These monumental works have defined the genre and shaped our collective memory of the conflict. But this vision, however powerful, is only one piece of the mosaic.

The deepest and most harrowing cinematic explorations of the conflict were not only born under the California sun, but were forged in the mud and wounded memory of the nations that experienced the devastation firsthand. It is a cinema that does not offer easy answers but asks terrible questions.

This guide is a journey across the entire spectrum of the conflict. It is a path that unites the great Western masterpieces with the independent films. From the frozen steppes of the Eastern Front to the sewers of Warsaw, we will explore how Soviet, Polish, German, and Japanese directors have used the camera to question their own history, confront guilt, and search for a glimmer of humanity in the abyss. It is a cinema that doesn’t just tell history, but interrogates its soul.

Part I: The Scorched Soul – Soviet and Russian Cinema

No nation paid a higher price in blood than the Soviet Union during World War II. The “Great Patriotic War,” as it is remembered, left an indelible scar on the collective psyche, a trauma of unimaginable proportions that cinema has tried to process for decades. Far from simple propaganda, the best Soviet films about the conflict transcend the celebration of victory to become profound existential explorations. They are works that use an almost unbearable hyper-realism, often transfigured into a hallucinatory surrealism, to communicate not so much the chronicle of war, but its essence: a metaphysical event that tore the fabric of reality and annihilated innocence.

Come and See (Idi i smotri, 1985) by Elem Klimov

A young Belarusian boy, Florya, enthusiastically joins the partisans to fight the Nazi invasion. Instead of the adventure he expected, he is plunged into a surreal and increasingly terrifying nightmare of unimaginable brutality. The film follows his harrowing journey as he witnesses the genocide perpetrated on his people, an experience that physically and spiritually ages him beyond his years.

To call Come and See a war film is an understatement; it is a sensory immersion into hell. Elem Klimov uses a subjective camera and expressionistic sound design to drag the viewer into Florya’s experience, making the viewing almost physically unbearable. There is no heroism, no catharsis. There is only the progressive unraveling of humanity. The transformation of the young protagonist’s face, from an innocent boy to an aged mask of terror, is one of the most powerful visual metaphors in cinema history, a symbol of the psychological destruction of an entire generation. It is perhaps the most definitive anti-war statement ever filmed, a work that doesn’t just show horror, but makes you feel it in your bones.

Ivan’s Childhood (Ivanovo detstvo, 1962) by Andrei Tarkovsky

Ivan, a twelve-year-old orphan whose family was exterminated by German soldiers, works as a scout for the Red Army. Driven by a burning desire for revenge, he volunteers for the most dangerous reconnaissance missions. The harsh reality of war, made of swamps and trenches, contrasts with his lyrical dreams, memories of an irretrievably lost childhood.

In his stunning debut, Andrei Tarkovsky already defines his unique cinematic language. The film is a painful counterpoint between the desolation of the front, with its swampy and barren landscapes, and the dreamlike sequences, flooded with light, that represent the lost paradise of childhood. For Tarkovsky, war is not just a physical conflict, but a metaphysical event that has violated Ivan’s soul, making childhood itself a victim. The work avoids any heroic mystique to focus on the violence suffered by a child’s soul, transforming a war story into a profound elegy on the loss of innocence.

The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli, 1957) by Mikhail Kalatozov

In Moscow, Veronika and Boris live an intense and hopeful love, but their future is shattered when Germany invades the Soviet Union and Boris volunteers for the army. Left alone, Veronika must face the hardships of the home front, loss, betrayal, and complex emotional trials, while waiting for the return of a man who may never come back.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and a symbol of Khrushchev’s cultural “thaw,” this film was revolutionary for Soviet cinema. For the first time, the focus shifted from heroic deeds on the battlefield to the emotional turmoil of the individual, particularly a complex female protagonist on the home front. Sergei Urusevsky’s virtuosic and mobile cinematography captures Veronika’s torments with unprecedented emotional charge, exploring themes like love, infidelity, and tenacious hope amidst collective trauma. It is a powerful and visually stunning melodrama that paved the way for a more human and personal war cinema.

Ballad of a Soldier (Ballada o soldate, 1959) by Grigory Chukhray

Alyosha, a young Red Army soldier, destroys two German tanks almost by accident and, as a reward, gets a short leave to visit his mother. His journey home turns into an odyssey through a war-torn country, a journey where he meets various people, helps others, and falls in love, revealing the resilience of the human spirit even in the darkest times.

Far from the brutality of other war films, Ballad of a Soldier is a lyrical and deeply humanistic road movie. Alyosha’s simple quest, his desire to embrace his mother, becomes a powerful symbol of the human cost of conflict: the lost moments, the fleeting loves, the missed connections, and ultimately, the sacrifice of an entire generation’s youth. Chukhray’s direction is imbued with a melancholic poetry, contrasting his protagonist’s kindness with the desolation of the landscape, creating a pacifist work of rare grace and emotional impact.

Part II: Between Heroism and Abyss – The Polish School and Eastern European Cinema

Born literally from the ashes of World War II, the Polish Film School gave rise to a movement defined by a romantically tragic and deeply cynical perspective. Directors like Andrzej Wajda and Andrzej Munk used the conflict to explore the paradoxes of Polish history: the nobility of a heroism destined for defeat, the absurdity of sacrifice, and the moral compromises necessary for survival. This approach extends to other Eastern European cinemas, such as those of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, which used the war as a powerful allegory for their complex national histories, often using the trauma of Nazism as a coded language to criticize the oppression of the Soviet era.

Kanał (1957) by Andrzej Wajda

In the last, desperate days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a company of Polish Resistance fighters attempts to escape the German army through the city’s labyrinthine sewer system. Their journey into darkness quickly turns into a descent into a claustrophobic and psychological hell, stripping them of all heroism, hope, and humanity.

A masterpiece by Wajda and a symbolic film of the Polish School, Kanał demolishes the romantic myth of heroic resistance, portraying it as a desperate, tragic, and ultimately futile struggle. The sewers are not just a setting but a powerful metaphor for the abyss of war, a Dantesque vision where humanity dissolves in filth and darkness. The direction creates almost unbearable tension, turning Warsaw’s underground into a purgatory with no way out, an indelible image of a nation’s suffocation.

Passenger (Pasażerka, 1963) by Andrzej Munk

Years after the war, a German woman, Liza, on an ocean liner, believes she recognizes another passenger as Marta, a former prisoner at Auschwitz where she herself was a guard. The encounter triggers a series of conflicting and self-absolving flashbacks as Liza tries to reconstruct and justify her complex relationship with the prisoner.

The uniqueness of this film lies in its fragmentary nature, a result of director Andrzej Munk’s tragic death during production. His collaborators assembled the filmed material, using still photographs and narration to fill the gaps. This incompleteness, however, becomes a powerful aesthetic choice, perfectly reflecting the fractured and unreliable nature of memory and guilt. It is a radical work that explores the Holocaust not from the victim’s point of view, but through the distorted and self-deceiving lens of the perpetrator.

The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze, 1965) by Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos

In a small Slovak town during World War II, the mild-mannered carpenter Tóno is assigned the role of “Aryan controller” of the button shop of an elderly Jewish widow, who is deaf and unaware of the reality outside. A strange and tender relationship develops between them, but it is brutally shattered by the reality of the deportations, forcing Tóno to confront his own moral cowardice.

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a masterpiece of the Czechoslovak New Wave, The Shop on Main Street is a masterful illustration of the “banality of evil” theorized by Hannah Arendt. Its tragicomic tone focuses not on Nazi monsters, but on the complicity of ordinary people, the small compromises, and the indifference that pave the way for immense tragedies. It is a powerful and heartbreaking parable about conscience, moral failure, and the fragile line that separates humanity from barbarism.

Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966) by Jiří Menzel

In German-occupied Czechoslovakia, a young and naive apprentice stationmaster is far more concerned with losing his virginity than with the war raging around him. His personal anxieties and sexual frustrations casually intertwine with a small act of partisan sabotage, giving rise to a coming-of-age story that is as comical as it is, ultimately, tragic.

Another fundamental work of the Czechoslovak New Wave, this film brilliantly mixes humor, eroticism, and tragedy. Menzel, adapting a story by Bohumil Hrabal, uses the war backdrop to explore themes like masculinity, lost innocence, and the absurd intersection of the personal and political spheres. The protagonist’s act of resistance becomes almost a consequence of his sexual maturation, a brilliant and melancholic subversion of the heroic war genre, showing how even great historical events are experienced through the filter of small human obsessions.

Underground (1995) by Emir Kusturica

A surreal and sprawling epic that follows two friends, Blacky and Marko, from the bombing of Belgrade in 1941, through the Tito years, to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Marko, who becomes a big shot in the regime, keeps his friend and a group of partisans locked in a cellar for decades, making them believe that World War II is still raging, while he gets rich selling the weapons they produce.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Underground is a phantasmagorical tragicomic allegory of the history of Yugoslavia. The titular cellar is a metaphor for the collective delusion and historical manipulation under communism. With its frantic energy, deafening brass band soundtrack, and controversial vision, Kusturica directly links the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s to the unresolved traumas of World War II, painting a grotesque and desperate portrait of a country that “is no more.

Valley of Peace (Dolina miru, 1956) by France Štiglic

In Slovenia, two children orphaned by the war, a local boy and a German girl, flee the devastation in search of a mythical “Valley of Peace.” They are joined by an African American pilot whose plane has been shot down. This unlikely trio must navigate the dangers of war together, forming a bond that transcends nationality and conflict.

This Yugoslav film is a universal and humanistic fairy tale set against the backdrop of war. Told through the innocent eyes of children, the story strips the conflict of its political ideology, focusing instead on the fundamental search for security and human connection. John Kitzmiller’s performance, awarded at Cannes, is revolutionary for its time. With its gentle and anti-propagandistic tone, Valley of Peace stands out as a work of rare poetry, celebrating solidarity in a world divided by hate.

Part III: The Burden of Guilt – Perspectives from Germany

Tackling World War II from the German perspective has been one of the most complex challenges for post-war cinema. The concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or the process of “coming to terms with the past,” has dominated cultural production for decades. German directors have often avoided direct combat narratives, focusing instead on the civilian experience, the psychology of Nazi indoctrination, and the moral abyss of the Reich’s final days. These films do not seek heroes nor do they wallow in victimhood, but conduct a ruthless critique of complicity and moral failure, humanizing the “perpetrators” not to absolve them, but to expose the tragic ideological mechanism that created them.

The Bridge (Die Brücke, 1959) by Bernhard Wicki

In the final days of World War II, a group of seven German students, teenagers filled with patriotic fervor, are drafted into the army. They are assigned the seemingly insignificant task of defending a local bridge. When American tanks approach, what was supposed to be a safe mission turns into a brutal, senseless, and tragic battle.

One of the most important German films of the post-war era, The Bridge is a powerful indictment of the cynical manipulation of youthful idealism by a dying regime. Its structure is exemplary: the first part details the almost idyllic life of the boys, only to plunge everything, in the second part, into the sudden and brutal chaos of combat. The film’s strength lies in the tragic absurdity of a single, useless clash, which becomes a symbol of the madness of an entire nation. It is anti-war cinema that finds its power not in grand battles, but in the senseless sacrifice of youth.

Germany, Year Zero (1948) by Roberto Rossellini

Amidst the rubble of a spectral Berlin, young Edmund struggles to survive and support his family. Influenced by the nihilistic and persistent ideology of his former Nazi teacher, Edmund is driven to commit a terrible act, becoming a symbol of a generation morally and spiritually destroyed by the war and its aftermath.

Although directed by an Italian, this film is a cornerstone of the Trümmerfilm (“rubble film”) and an essential work for understanding the German perspective. Rossellini’s neorealist gaze is merciless in capturing not only the physical but, above all, the moral devastation of Berlin. The film directly and chillingly links Nazi ideology to the destruction of the family and the annihilation of childhood innocence, culminating in one of the most desperate and unforgettable final scenes in cinema history.

The Turncoat (Der Überläufer, 2020) by Florian Gallenberger

In 1944, a young Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern Front begins to doubt his duty and the purpose of the war. Torn between his conscience, loyalty to his comrades, and love for a Polish partisan, he is finally driven to desert, only to discover that switching sides offers no easy moral clarity.

Based on a long-unpublished novel by Siegfried Lenz, this recent film is a modern exploration of the German soldier’s conscience. It delves into the complex psychology of desertion, not as an act of cowardice, but as a moral choice within an immoral system. The work analyzes how the true “enemy” is not a nationality, but the dehumanizing logic of war itself, an internal conflict where loyalty to the homeland clashes with loyalty to one’s own humanity.

Part IV: The Shadow of Resistance – French Cinema

Post-war French cinema undertook a long and complex journey to process the trauma of the Occupation. Initially dominated by the “résistancialiste” myth promoted by De Gaulle—a narrative of a nation almost unanimously united in resistance—it saw the emergence, especially after 1968, of more critical and complex voices. Directors like Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Ophüls offered a colder, psychologically rigorous, and morally ambiguous look, transforming the story of the Resistance into an existential thriller about paranoia, betrayal, and the loneliness of those who fight in the shadows.

Army of Shadows (L’armée des ombres, 1969) by Jean-Pierre Melville

Philippe Gerbier, a high-ranking member of the French Resistance, navigates the treacherous world of clandestine operations. The film offers a cold, procedural, and unsentimental portrait of the daily life of partisans, a life marked by paranoia, loneliness, and the brutal necessity of violence, even against their own comrades.

Melville’s absolute masterpiece, Army of Shadows is the quintessential anti-heroic representation of the Resistance. Applying the codes of his gangster cinema, with its minimalist style, desaturated colors, and dialogues reduced to the bare minimum, Melville transforms the war into a dark and tense existential thriller. The film is pervaded by an inescapable fatalism: heroism, in this world of shadows, is a solitary, thankless, and deadly profession, where every victory is just a step towards one’s own end.

The Battle of the Rails (La bataille du rail, 1946) by René Clément

A tribute to the French railway workers, the backbone of a crucial form of Resistance. The film documents their acts of sabotage—delaying trains, diverting cargo, organizing ambushes—which were vital in hindering the German war machine, especially in the lead-up to the Normandy landings.

Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, this film is a unique blend of documentary realism and narrative tension, a key work of the immediate post-war period. Its semi-documentary style, using many real railway workers as actors, captures the collective and working-class nature of this form of resistance. It beautifully contrasts with the more individual and existential struggles of Melville’s cinema, showing another, more choral and pragmatic face of the fight against the occupier.

The Last Metro (Le dernier métro, 1980) by François Truffaut

In occupied Paris, Marion Steiner takes over the management of her husband’s theater, a Jewish director forced to hide in the building’s cellar. As she tries to keep the shows running and protect her husband, Marion navigates the complex world of censorship, collaboration, and a budding love for her leading actor.

Truffaut’s film is a superb exploration of “resistance through art.” The theater becomes a microcosm of occupied France, a besieged space where life, love, and artistic creation must continue under the shadow of oppression. Through themes of clandestinity, performance, and the blurred lines between fiction and reality—both on stage and on the streets of Paris—Truffaut creates a passionate and complex work on the importance of culture as the last bastion of humanity.

Au Revoir les Enfants (1987) by Louis Malle

Based on the director’s childhood memories, the film tells the story of Julien, a boy in a Catholic boarding school in occupied France. He forms a close but competitive friendship with Jean, a new student, only to discover that Jean is a Jewish boy being hidden from the Nazis by the school’s headmaster. A small, unintentional betrayal will have devastating consequences.

This deeply personal and moving film is a tale of the loss of innocence and the casual cruelty of betrayal. Malle’s subtle and observational style portrays the Holocaust not through large-scale horror, but through its silent and devastating impact on children’s lives. The final look between the two boys, filled with regret and awareness, is one of the most powerful cinematic condemnations of indifference and complicity.

The Sorrow and the Pity (Le chagrin et la pitié, 1969) by Marcel Ophüls

A monumental four-hour documentary that dismantles the myth of a united and resistant France during the Nazi occupation. Through interviews with former partisans, collaborators, German officers, and ordinary citizens of the city of Clermont-Ferrand, Ophüls paints a complex and uncomfortable portrait of a nation marked by apathy, opportunism, and anti-Semitism.

This work had a seismic impact on the French national consciousness, so much so that it was banned from television for over a decade. Its journalistic method, which juxtaposes testimonies to create a powerful dialectical effect, forces the viewer to confront the gray areas of history. It is not just a documentary, but a ruthless investigation into the memory, guilt, and self-narration of a nation.

Part V: Humanity Among the Rubble – Italian Neorealism and its Minor Voices

Italian Neorealism is universally recognized for redefining the language of cinema in the post-war era. Although works like Rome, Open City or Bicycle Thieves are pillars of film history, the movement was much broader and more politically multifaceted. Away from the spotlight, a “minor” neorealist strand focused on the Resistance not only as a struggle for national liberation but as a foundational moment for a new Italian identity, rooted in the alliance between partisans and the working class. These films are precious documents of a cinema committed to building a future from the ruins of fascism.

The Sun Rises Again (1946) by Aldo Vergano

After the armistice of 1943, a disillusioned soldier returns to his village in Lombardy. There, he becomes romantically involved with both a decadent aristocrat and a politically aware factory worker. His personal journey mirrors the political awakening of the region, eventually leading him to join the partisans in the fight against Nazis and fascists.

Financed by the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI), this film is a prime example of politically engaged neorealism. Its narrative places the class struggle at the center of the Resistance, seeing it as a revolution not only against the foreign invader but also against the old social order. With a screenplay co-written by future masters like Giuseppe De Santis and Carlo Lizzani, the film offers a raw and authentic portrait of partisan warfare in Northern Italy.

A Man Returns (1946) by Max Neufeld

A soldier returns home after years of imprisonment to find his house destroyed and his family scattered and morally compromised by the war. He must face the ruins, both physical and spiritual, of his country, fighting against bureaucracy and despair to rebuild not only a power plant but also a sense of hope and dignity.

Starring two giants, Anna Magnani and Gino Cervi, this film is a touching example of the neorealist strand dedicated to the difficult reintegration of veterans. It bravely tackles themes of post-war trauma, moral collapse, and the immense challenge of reconstruction, both physical and psychological, in a defeated and divided nation. It is a bitter and powerful portrait of the struggle to start over.

Achtung! Banditi! (1951) by Carlo Lizzani

In occupied Genoa, a group of partisans descends from the mountains to retrieve a shipment of weapons from a factory. Their mission intertwines with a workers’ strike, leading to a climactic battle where partisans and workers fight side by side against German forces.

Carlo Lizzani’s debut is a powerful neorealist action film, produced by a cooperative of viewers, embodying the collective spirit it portrays. The film’s central theme is the union between the armed Resistance from the mountains and the urban working class, seen as the two engines of Italy’s liberation and future. The final scene, where the partisans carry not only rifles but also factory machinery on their shoulders, is a powerful symbol of the struggle to defend the country’s future.

Part VI: The Individual Against the Machine – Japanese Anti-War Cinema

From the ashes of total defeat and atomic trauma, post-war Japanese cinema produced some of the most profound and devastating reflections on war. Rarely focused on conventional combat, these films conduct a painful inquiry into the national soul, questioning the militaristic and imperialist ideology that led to catastrophe. The real conflict shifts from the battlefield to the individual’s interiority, in a struggle between conscience and a dehumanizing system, transforming the war narrative into a spiritual pilgrimage through suffering.

The Human Condition (Ningen no jōken, 1959-1961) by Masaki Kobayashi

This monumental nine-hour trilogy follows Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, through his ordeal during the war. From his attempts to humanely manage a labor camp for prisoners in Manchuria, to his brutalization as a soldier, and his final desperate journey through a devastated landscape, Kaji struggles to maintain his humanity against an oppressive and cruel system.

One of the most staggering achievements in cinema history, The Human Condition is a novelistic epic that serves as a ruthless indictment of Japanese militarism. Kaji’s journey is an existential tragedy, a relentless investigation into whether individual morality can survive within a totalitarian system. It is the definitive anti-war film because it shows how war destroys the soul long before it destroys the body.

The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto, 1956) by Kon Ichikawa

At the end of the war in Burma, a Japanese soldier, Mizushima, is separated from his company. Haunted by the sight of his unburied compatriots’ bodies, he disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and dedicates his life to burying the dead, choosing a spiritual path rather than returning home.

Ichikawa’s film is a poetic, moving, and deeply spiritual meditation on the consequences of war. The central role of music, a universal language that unites even enemies, underscores the work’s pacifist message. Mizushima’s journey is not a tale of military conflict, but a pilgrimage to find meaning and atonement in the face of mass death, transforming pain into an act of universal compassion.

Children of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko, 1952) by Kaneto Shindō

Years after the atomic bombing, a young teacher returns to her hometown, Hiroshima, to find her former students and colleagues. Through her visits, she witnesses the physical and psychological scars left by the bomb on the survivors (the hibakusha), including illness, poverty, and social ostracism.

One of the first and most direct cinematic confrontations with the legacy of the atomic bomb, this film adopts a quiet, almost neorealist style to focus on the human cost rather than political polemics. It gives a voice to the forgotten victims, the hibakusha, whose suffering continued long after the war ended, telling a trauma that is not only historical but existential and deeply personal.

Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (Momotarō: Umi no shinpei, 1945) by Mitsuyo Seo

Japan’s first feature-length animated film is a work of propaganda commissioned by the Imperial Navy. The film portrays the folklore hero Momotaro leading a troop of cute animal soldiers as they “liberate” the Pacific islands from clumsy, horned Western demons, in a celebration of Japan’s imperial mission.

Including this film is crucial to understanding the context from which post-war pacifist cinema was born. Its animation, surprisingly sophisticated and inspired by Disney’s Fantasia, serves a propagandistic message that sanctifies imperialism. Its existence makes the deep sense of guilt and disillusionment that fueled the anti-war masterpieces made just a few years later even more powerful and radical.

Part VII: Forgotten Fronts and Unexplored Perspectives

World War II was a global conflict, but its cinematic representation has often been limited to a few main fronts. The independent cinema of nations whose war experience is often marginalized offers unique and powerful stories that broaden our understanding of the conflict’s scope and its complex moral landscapes. These films often focus on a single event, an impossible choice, or an extreme situation that becomes a microcosm for the entire national experience of the war.

The Cuckoo (Kukuška, 2002) by Aleksandr Rogozhkin

Towards the end of the Finno-Soviet war, a Finnish sniper and a Russian captain, sworn enemies, find refuge with a Sami woman in the desolate wilderness of Lapland. Unable to understand each other’s languages, the three form a strange and primordial family, where the absurdities of war give way to fundamental human needs and connections.

This is an anti-war parable as beautiful as it is witty. The language barrier functions as the film’s central device, stripping the characters of their national identities and forcing them to communicate on a purely human level. The Cuckoo suggests that peace is not the result of a treaty, but the rediscovery of a shared humanity, a powerful message conveyed with grace and humor.

Land of Mine (Under sandet, 2015) by Martin Zandvliet

In Denmark, immediately after Germany’s surrender, a group of very young German prisoners of war is forced into a suicidal task: clearing thousands of landmines from the Danish coast with their bare hands. Under the command of a Danish sergeant hardened by hatred, the boys face death at every step, while the sergeant is forced to confront his own desire for revenge.

This tense and morally complex film sheds light on a little-known chapter of post-war history. The dynamic between the sergeant and the boys explores themes of collective guilt, revenge, and the difficult process of re-humanizing the enemy. The suspense is not just about the mines, but also about the salvation of the sergeant’s soul, in a powerful psychological drama about the possibility of forgiveness.

The King’s Choice (Kongens Nei, 2016) by Erik Poppe

The film dramatizes three crucial days in April 1940, when the German war machine invades neutral Norway. The story focuses on King Haakon VII, who faces an impossible ultimatum from the Germans: surrender or face total war. His decision will determine the fate of his nation.

More than a conventional war film, The King’s Choice is a political thriller that focuses on the immense moral and political pressure placed on a single man. The film skillfully contrasts the diplomatic and personal drama of the King and his government with the chaotic and terrifying reality of the invasion for the young and unprepared soldiers on the ground, showing how the great decisions of history fall on the shoulders of individuals.

Dark Blue World (Tmavomodrý svět, 2001) by Jan Svěrák

The story of Czechoslovak pilots who flee their occupied homeland to fight with the British RAF. After the war, these heroes are betrayed by the new communist regime in Czechoslovakia, which labels them enemies of the state and imprisons them in labor camps.

This film’s tragic and ironic narrative structure frames the heroism of war within the bitter betrayal of peace. It is a powerful critique of how political ideologies can discard and punish the very individuals who fought for freedom. The aerial combat scenes are impressive, but the heart of the film lies in the post-war tragedy, a warning about the fragility of freedom.

Wil (2023) by Tim Mielants

In occupied Antwerp, two young auxiliary police officers are torn between their duty to the German authorities and their secret support for the resistance. A violent incident pushes them deeper into a world of moral ambiguity, where every choice could mean life or death for them and those they try to protect.

This recent Belgian film is a raw, noir-tinged exploration of the “gray zone” of collaboration and resistance. It avoids easy moral judgments, immersing the viewer in the terrifying and complex reality of having to make choices when survival and morality are in direct conflict. It is a powerful film about the impossibility of remaining neutral in the face of evil.

The Travelling Players (O Thiasos, 1975) by Theo Angelopoulos

A troupe of traveling actors wanders through Greece between 1939 and 1952, attempting to stage a 19th-century pastoral drama. Their private lives, which mirror the ancient myth of the House of Atreus, intersect with the tumultuous history of their country: dictatorship, war, occupation, and civil war.

Angelopoulos’s four-hour epic is a masterpiece of political and historical cinema. Its non-linear structure and masterful use of the long take to connect different historical periods in a single shot are revolutionary. The film brilliantly weaves together history, myth, and theater to create a deep and complex tapestry of Greek national trauma in the 20th century, a monumental work that requires but repays the viewer’s attention.

1945 (2017) by Ferenc Török

On a sweltering summer day in 1945, in a remote Hungarian village, two Orthodox Jews get off a train. Their silent and determined walk towards the village unleashes a wave of panic, guilt, and paranoia among the inhabitants, who have appropriated the property of their deported Jewish neighbors during the war.

Shot in stark and powerful black and white, this film is a formidable parable about unresolved guilt and complicity. The arrival of the two men acts as a catalyst, forcing an entire community to confront the crimes it has tried to bury. It is a slow-burn thriller where the tension is entirely moral and psychological, a ruthless investigation into a nation’s guilty conscience.

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) by Radu Jude

A young and uncompromising theater director attempts to stage a public reenactment of the 1941 Odessa massacre, in which the Romanian army, allied with the Nazis, slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews. She clashes with city officials, recalcitrant actors, and an audience that does not want to face this dark chapter of their national history.

This fiercely intelligent and meta-textual film from the Romanian New Wave uses the “film within a film” structure to deconstruct historical revisionism and the creation of nationalist myths. It is a brilliant and provocative work on the difficulty of representing history and the responsibility of art in an age of denialism, questioning not only Romania’s past but the way all nations confront their own atrocities.

Bulgarian Rhapsody (2014) by Ivan Ničev

In Sofia in 1943, two teenage boys—one Jewish, one not—fall in love with the same Jewish girl from Greek Thrace. Their youthful love story unfolds against the backdrop of Bulgaria’s complex wartime history and the looming threat of the deportation of Jews from the occupied territories.

This film offers a rare cinematic glimpse into Bulgaria’s role in World War II. It uses a classic teenage love triangle to explore the historical ambiguity of a nation that, on one hand, saved its own Jewish population and, on the other, was complicit in the deportation of Jews from the territories it controlled, offering a nuanced and painful perspective.

Black Book (Zwartboek, 2006) by Paul Verhoeven

In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, a Jewish singer joins the resistance after her family is murdered. She is tasked with seducing a high-ranking Gestapo officer to gather information, but finds herself in a morally ambiguous relationship where the lines between hero, villain, victim, and collaborator become dangerously blurred.

Paul Verhoeven’s return to Dutch cinema is a deliberate subversion of the heroic resistance genre. With its noir sensibilities and cynical view of human nature, the film suggests that no one is purely good or evil. It is a compelling and provocative work that explores the “gray zone” of war, arguing that the greatest betrayals often come not from the enemy, but from one’s own side.

Vermiglio (2024) by Maura Delpero

In a remote village in the Italian Alps during the last year of the war, the lives of three sisters in a patriarchal family are upended by the arrival of a deserter from the south. The film explores the rhythms of rural life, the awakening of female consciousness, and the subtle but profound impact of a distant war on a seemingly isolated community.

This recent and acclaimed film offers a feminist perspective on the “home front” narrative. With its painterly images and focus on the inner lives of its female characters, Vermiglio uses the war as a catalyst. The real drama, however, is the silent rebellion against patriarchal and religious constraints, a struggle for personal liberation that runs parallel to the national one.

Part VIII: The Form of the Unspeakable – Essential Documentaries

To conclude this guide, it is necessary to dedicate a space to those non-fiction films that have revolutionized the way cinema can bear witness to atrocity. These are not traditional historical documentaries, but radical works of art, often formally audacious, that confront the limits of representation and force the viewer into an active ethical engagement with the past. These films understood that the horror of the Holocaust could not be “shown” without trivializing it, and they built their power on what is absent: the missing images, the silences, the indelible traces left on memory and on the landscape.

Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard, 1956) by Alain Resnais

One of the first and most powerful documentaries about the Holocaust. Resnais juxtaposes unsettling color tracking shots of the now-abandoned and overgrown concentration camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek with black-and-white archival footage of the atrocities that took place there. The result is a devastating meditation on memory, history, and the human capacity to forget.

The film’s formal structure is revolutionary. The dialectical dialogue between the pastoral color present and the terrifying black-and-white past creates a philosophical essay that questions our relationship with history. The film’s final question—”Who is responsible?”—is not a rhetorical one, but a perpetual warning against the danger of indifference and oblivion.

Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann

A monumental nine-and-a-half-hour documentary about the Holocaust that, deliberately, contains no archival footage. Lanzmann builds his work entirely on interviews conducted in the 1970s and 80s with survivors, former Nazi officers, and Polish witnesses, often bringing them back to the very sites of the extermination camps.

Shoah is not a film about the Holocaust; it is a cinematic event that actualizes the trauma in the present of memory. Lanzmann’s radical decision to exclude historical images is based on the conviction that the horror of the extermination cannot be represented. Its power derives from the living word, from the act of remembering, from the confrontation between the tranquility of the places in the present and the unspeakable horror that the testimonies evoke.

Son of Saul (Saul fia, 2015) by László Nemes

In Auschwitz, Saul, a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, discovers the body of a boy he believes to be his son. While his comrades plan a revolt, Saul embarks on an obsessive and desperate mission: to find a rabbi to give the boy a proper Jewish burial, a single act of spiritual defiance in the heart of hell.

Although it is a fiction film, its inclusion here is justified by its radical approach to representing the unrepresentable. Nemes’s visual strategy is claustrophobic and immersive: a shallow focus that relentlessly ties the camera to Saul’s perspective, while the horrors of the camp unfold, blurred and indistinct, on the periphery of the frame. This aesthetic choice refuses to turn the Holocaust into a spectacle, instead creating a subjective and visceral experience of hell.

Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky

In a desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape, a guide known as the “Stalker” leads two clients—a cynical Writer and a pragmatic Professor—into the forbidden “Zone.” This mysterious area, possibly the site of an alien visit or a military disaster, is said to contain a Room capable of granting one’s innermost desires.

We conclude with a film that does not literally speak of World War II, but is perhaps one of the most profound allegories of its consequences. Stalker is a spiritual and philosophical journey through a world marked by a nameless catastrophe. The Zone, with its ruins overgrown by nature, is a perfect metaphor for post-war Europe: a landscape of trauma where the old rules no longer apply and all that remains is the search for faith, hope, and meaning. It is the definitive film on the psychological “fallout” of a conflict that shattered the world.