Ruthless Times

Portugal managed to get through all of World War II without firing a single shot. Caught in a vise between the Axis and the Allies, Antonio Salazar, the country’s strongman, used every trick in the book to get his country through unscathed. In this war of nerves in which anything went, the Portuguese dictator took brilliant advantage of the only weapon available to maintain his country’s independence: neutrality.

During the Japanese-American internment of World War II, a woman held at the Tule Lake segregation camp with her family leaves her barracks one night.

Tango

The life of celebrated but reclusive author J.D. Salinger, who gained worldwide fame with the publication of his novel The Catcher in the Rye.

The gripping story of Britain's most extraordinary double agent; Eddie Chapman. Chapman duped the Germans so successfully he was awarded their highest honour, the Iron Cross, the only UK citizen ever to have received one.

The story of Holocaust survivor Emil A. Fish, who was nine years old when he and his family in Bardejov, Slovakia were sent to a concentration camp.

The most implacable opponents of the British and Canadians fighting in Normandy were the largely teenage soldiers of the Hitlerjugend. From D+1 through to attacking back into the Falaise Pocket, this unique division constantly thwarted Montgomery's plans and exacted a terrible price on the Allies for every mile gained. Formed from 'volunteers' from the Hitler Youth Movement in the aftermath of Stalingrad, this division of boys, aged 17 on recruitment into the SS, came of age and were declared fully operational just before D Day. Coming from a fully militarized society they made exceptional and highly committed soldiers but with officers and non-commissioned officers from the Leibstandarte commanding them, they were to become a ruthless and brutal arm of the Nazi fighting machine that battled towards the Eastern Front. Both Hitlerjugend's alleged atrocities and their remarkable doggedness in battle made them a loathed but grudgingly respected opponent to all who fought them.

Immediately after the war, OZNA insert an outstanding intelligence agent to catch the General Draza Mihajlovic.

In the early days of the Showa era in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture a newborn baby is abandoned with a doll under the eaves of a merchant house along the pilgrimage route in Shikoku. It seems to be a pilgrim struggling to make a living. This baby girl is named Haruko and brought by Tomita Shizuko and Katsuji as the younger sister of their son Ryosuke who is three years apart. When the war begins, 16-year old Ryosuke qualifies for the naval academy and crosses the Seto Inland Sea. After some consideration, Shizuko tells Haruko the truth that they are not real siblings for the first time. Haruko who has had a secret crush on her brother ever since he said that he would protect her, is innocently overjoyed and heads to Hiroshima to convey this to him. The next day, an atomic bomb explodes in the sky…

Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.

From 1940 to 1944, France's Vichy government collaborated with Nazi Germany. Marcel Ophüls mixes archival footage with 1969 interviews of a German officer and of collaborators and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature, details and reasons for the collaboration, from anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and fear of Bolsheviks, to simple caution.

The story of the hero of the Soviet Union, Manshuk Mametova, machine-gunner of the 21st Guards Rifle Division of the 3rd shock army of the Kalinin Front, the guards sergeant in charge. The first woman awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for bravery. The film recreates the past and shows a day of combat life Manshuk and her comrades, who took unequal battle with German tanks.

A look into the life of American actor James Stewart, whose inspiring tale of valor, purpose and faith will win over everyone.

In the 1940s, the world was in turmoil, and it was crucial to decipher the enemy's communication codes in a timely and accurate manner. Rong Jinzhen has shown amazing mathematical talent since her childhood, and because she solved the problems assigned by her math teacher, she was noticed by more people, and even walked into the door of code-breaking by mistake.

La justice sous l'Occupation

At the end of World War II, Red Army soldiers bent on brutal revenge for past atrocities attack a German city. Compassion comes from an unlikely source. Based on a true story.

Jižní kříž

Balada o naději

During the brutal invasion of China in 1937 by Imperial Japanese forces, tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are murdered and women raped in what is known simply as "The Rape of Nanking." This docudrama is a stirring account of a small band of courageous American missionaries who choose to stay in Nanking to try and protect a quarter million vulnerable Chinese civilians who are trapped in a city ruled by a savage, out of control army. Their stories are brought vividly to life through actual real-time letters and diaries as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.

A young teacher grows up in a small Slovak village during the Second World War.