During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape.
After WWII had ended, it was realized by the American Allies that there were children whom Hitler trained to be soldiers between the ages of 9-17. They were the "Hitler Youth". As the adult German soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, so were the children. These boys were taken to France and reeducated by being taught democracy and treated better than the adult POWs. This story recounted by a former "baby cage" prisoner at the age of 92.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
Three friends go on an adventure throughout the day, looking for a spot to put a pet rock.
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.
A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life.
Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.
In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
The Polish city of Łódź was under Nazi occupation for nearly the entirety of WWII. The segregation of the Jewish population into the ghetto, and the subsequent horrors are vividly chronicled via newsreels and photographs. The narration is taken almost entirely from journals and diaries of those who lived–and died–through the course of the occupation, with the number of different narrators diminishing as the film progresses, symbolic of the death of each narrator.
The New York club scene of the 80s and 90s was a world like no other. Into this candy-colored, mirror ball playground stepped Michael Alig, a wannabe from nowhere special. Under the watchful eye of veteran club kid James St. James, Alig quickly rose to the top... and there was no place to go but down.
The story of student love in the most difficult times, because even during the Protectorate, young people liked to have fun, dance, and fall in love. In the villa of their classmate Paddy, who was expelled from high school because of his mixed heritage, his former classmates gather, obsessed with jazz and the desire to start their own band. They succeed, and when Paddy's father takes Zuzana, whose parents are in a concentration camp, under his wing, the band also gains a singer. Zuzana and Paddy fall in love. Their classmates prepare a concert, but it is threatened by a ban imposed by the high school principal, who says that students are not allowed to perform in public after 7 p.m. Zuzana lures the principal to Prague with a fake invitation, where he is to be awarded the Protectorate Order for his pedagogical merits. The Maskovaní banditi concert takes place, but the price the students pay is high...
The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
Shortly after Ernst Richter, aka Enno, lost his job, his social situation began to change drastically. A supposed war is raging in Germany, and Enno tries to escape this grim reality by holing up in his house. One day, however, he is dispossessed of his property.
The true story of Traian Popovici, a Romanian Mayor that saved 20,000 Jewish People from death during WWII and his friend, who married a Jewish woman against Hitler's orders.