What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds an ex-soldier living in her apartment. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
After a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.
Dr. Parsa and his daughter, Bahar, are on the way to Khoramshahr to set up a specialized hospital there. It seems their cold relationship is related to this journey. Reaching there, Bahar finds a diary of a girl at her age called Maryam which was written in the same day, 30 years ago; 2 days before the first day of schools, and also the start of Iran-Iraq war! The girlish joy that Maryam describes in the first pages of the diary, the sudden invasion of enemies to their town, and finally her love story which is mentioned in the diary, motivates Bahar to continue reading it. Maryam was in love with a young intern who was working in the town's only clinic. Now Bahar thinks that the intern could be his father.
When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that of her previous husband, who died in prison many years earlier. It turns out that the young man had been his cell mate for a year, and he tells her the story of how her husband died. She then remembers (in flashbacks) how she had helped her first husband rid himself of his sexual repression, and how she had promised him she would marry her current husband if she were widowed. It seems her doctor-husband was a man who could remain untouched through any political climate, and was much admired by her first husband. Now that her memories have been awakened by the young man's account, she ignores the repeated phone calls of her current husband and decides to rid this young man of his own sexual repressions.
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family.
Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.
At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.
The story of a war-orphan, who remembers first post-war days, his stay in Home for war-orphans, his teachers, friends, and mostly his "only brother".
World War II is over and Heinrich, a young German boy, influenced by the Russians, starts to act according to Communist principles in a small German village.
A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst's visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory.
With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant portrait of a quartet of aging geishas contemplating their troubles with men and money.
Lifelong hard work for the count makes the servant Anton a cripple. Everybody calls him Crooked Anton. When, after the end of the war, the land of the count gets divided amongst the farmers, Anton receives a piece and hopes to be able to work freely. But an old debt and intrigue keep Anton and his family from finding peace. The farmers of the village begin to discover their own power when Annegret, Anton's daughter, leaves. Is a new beginning possible for Anton? This film paints an impressive panorama of the development of a minor village in Mecklenburg from the end of the war to the uprising of 17 June 1953.
When Peter comes back from the war, he finds his father changed and alone. Their former maid, Leni, has also left and soon Peter's grandfather also dies. His father begins writing his memoirs of his Partisan years. Peter blames his father for his mother's death, but the final blow comes when he catches his father together with his (Peter's) former girlfriend. He moves in with his brother and accuses Leni of having had an affair with his father. Peter decides to kill his father but cannot carry out the plan. His father tells him in a fit of rage that he isn't his son at all. Feeling desperate and down, he goes to Leni's place for comfort, and finds her dead on the floor. The police arrest Peter for the murder of Leni. Will Peter have to serve a jail sentence on his road to maturity and will political connections have a bearing on the final verdict of the trial? Peter doesn't even know whom he can trust anymore.
In the harsh post-war years' Catalan countryside, Andreu, a child that belongs to the losing side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.
A post-WW2 story about the village largely involved in wine-making business. The peasants who claimed possessions of lands, woods, and churches after communist party seized the power hold a party where a member of so-called reactionary forces (kulaks, clergy and Axis collaborators) tries to break in and stop it.
Following World War II in peacetime Scotland, brigade headquarters replaces commanding officer Major Jock Sinclair, a boisterous battalion leader, with the strict, temperamental Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow. Resentful toward his replacement, Sinclair undermines Barrow's authority and damages his successor's reputation among the soldiers. Barrow faces an uphill battle in regaining the discipline and respect of his battalion.
When a U.S. Marine returns home from Afghanistan, he finds that the place he once called home is no better than the battlefields he fought on overseas. Accompanied by his best friend, he searches desperately for the whereabouts of his estranged son and wife. In their search, the two intercept a man carrying vital information about his family.