Touko Laaksonen, a decorated officer, returns home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II, but life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds peace-time Helsinki rampant with persecution of the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.
Peter a Lucia
“Death is my Trade” centers on the life of Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau for the majority of its existence. The main character's name in the film is Franz Lang. This name change was deliberate to ensure that the character is not automatically viewed as being some sort of villain or demon. Franz is an average German kid growing up during World War I. The film follows Franz as he grows up and becomes a hard, efficient, organized worker who eventually joins the National Socialist party in Germany. Impressionable young Franz takes orders as one of the utmost points of honor and duty, so when he is eventually asked by Heinrich Himmler to become commandant of the largest extermination camp built during WWII he barely hesitates to consider how heavy such a burden will be.
Ira Hayes, a young Pima Indian, enlists in the Marine Corps. At boot camp, he is shunned and mocked by everyone, aside from a Marine named Sorenson, who he befriends. They happen to be two of the six marines captured in the famous photograph of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima, but Sorenson is killed soon after. Although he is hailed as a hero, Ira's life begins to spiral out of control after the war.
At the end of September 1941, Soviet artillery troops in besieged Leningrad realize that pretty soon they will fire their last shot, and after that the defense of the city will be doomed. The film is based on a true event: a small group of fearless soldiers transported a large supply of gunpowder through enemy lines to Leningrad.
One time members of a resistance group come together every year to remember their dead leader, betrayed to and executed by the Nazis. When it seems that they might finally know the name of the traitor - and that he or she comes from within their own unit - their annual gathering becomes a deadly trial...
The film takes us back to a moving, exciting and unforgettable period in time, the time of Liberation and emancipation. A young teacher – Partisan arrives in a small Serbian town. His wartime, partisan “pedagogy” conflicts with the old methods of work in schools. The children, of course, stand by their teacher, their true friend. The film is a child’s memory and remembrance of an evil, cruel period that left deep imprints in the children’s sensitive and delicate soul of entire generations whose childhood was wounded in the war. The story unfolds over a period of several months, between the fall of 1944 and the summer of 1945, when somewhere far away, in Japan, the atomic bomb is fried to announce a new-atomic era.
War and Peace of Mind explores what war does to the human mind and how both, the individuals and the nation as a whole, survive it psychologically. Finland and WWII, locally known as continuation war, is the backdrop of this documentary.
After the Germans flooded large parts of The Netherlands towards the end of WWII, the Brouwer family find themselves trapped in their attic surrounded by water. With their rations dwindling, tensions arise within the household.
Featuring Charles 'Bud' Tingwell in only his second film and first lead role, which helped prepare him for his part in the 1953 World War Two Hollywood action drama, 'The Desert Rats'. 'Always Another Dawn' celebrates the Australian Navy's contribution to the Allied victory in WW2. The ship (Dauntless) is based on the real-life HMAS Yarra, which was sunk by a Japanese cruiser squadron on 4 March 1942 with 138 lives lost. Assisted by the Royal Australian Navy, filming took place at Flinders Naval Depot Melbourne and aboard the destroyer HMAS Bataan.
WWII - Slovenia under Italian fascist occupation. Two friends separated by a woman they both loved, and then by war as well: one of them joins partisans, the other Italian occupying forces.
Soviet propaganda cartoon made shortly after the German invasion, promising victory against the fascist invaders.
An Italian sex worker falls in love with a black American soldier during World War II.
December 7, 1941 - TOMIKAZU “TOMI” NAKAJI (Kyler Ki Sakamoto) and his best friend BILLY DAVIS (Kalama Epstein) are playing baseball in a field near their homes in Hawaii when Japan launches a surprise attack on the US at Pearl Harbor. As Tomi looks up at the sky and recognizes the Blood-Red Sun emblem on the fighter planes, he knows that his life has changed forever. Based on actual events, Under the Blood-Red Sun is an unforgettable story of friendship, courage and survival.
The film is picturing the faith of the old Serbian warrior Milisav Janjic, who fought against the German occupation in the Second World War as a member of the "Ravnogorski pokret". The storyline narrates his memories of the past and the war events in the spring of 1941 interwoven with the contemporary moments, the author features the attack of fascist Germany, the April war and the fall of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the misfortune placed upon the Serbian people, loss of freedom, birth of the freedom movement in Serbia and one Serbian soldier, who after 70 years of expatriation in America returns to his homeland.
Zip, a 17 year-old Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) baseball pitcher, faces the tragic circumstances of the World War II internment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. Set in a relocation camp in the summer of 1943, this film chronicles the journey of an American family torn apart by a forced and unjust incarceration, a father's decision that challenges his son to find strength, and ultimately his son's triumph through courage, sacrifice and the All-American game of baseball.
Merchant seaman Archie Gibbs manages to survive when his ship is torpedoed by a German submarine. Disguising himself in the uniform of a dead Nazi spy, Gibbs is picked up by the Nazi U-boat. He manages to convince the German sailors that he's the spy, and in this guise he tries to rescue a group of captured Allied scientists.
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…
Immediately after the war, OZNA insert an outstanding intelligence agent to catch the General Draza Mihajlovic.
Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh existence of the survivors.