Rado, an orphan from a poor Sofia neighborhood, has been in and out of school for troubled youth for years. Although he is approaching adulthood, he is yet to finish 8th grade. He cannot reconcile his pride and sense of justice with the kind of education provided by people who are deprived of sensibility and human warmth. Rado asserts his right to freedom by frequently running away. During one of his escapes he meets the love of his life, Albena. She is a good student, and comes from a well-educated, sophisticated family. This new and unexpected connection intensifies Rado's desire for freedom and independence, and leads them both into uncharted territory.
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.
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.
In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin revolt against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
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.
Do-chul is a boxer who never wins a game. While trying to make some money, he gets involved with Hong-ki, a small-time crook. They somehow make friends and hang around together, but their views toward life and the world are almost opposite.
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.
A married woman is living an unexcited life, until she meets a man who is able to put a smile on her face again, at least for a couple of days.
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 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.
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.
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.
Created as a companion documentary to the film "Valkyrie," this documentary details the true story behind the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
Special care has been taken by International Historic Films to assemble this monumental documentary, which tells the story of what is left for a people after its land has been ravaged by war. Situated between the powerful antagonists Germany and the Soviet Union, the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia bore witness to some of the most ferocious land battles of the Second World War.
War takes its cruel toll, which everyone must pay. It hits a small Slovak village especially hard, where the struggle for a bare life becomes a test of human character. For two impoverished friends, Jakub and Maja, struggling through poverty is more than difficult. Jakub delivers sour milk from somewhere on his cart to the entire village and lives in a dilapidated house with his sister Tereza, whose caregiver and guide through life is the experienced woman Mara, who provides herself with money from seduced soldiers. Maja, on the other hand, is a foundling and homeless man who does whatever he can to survive the next day. The only consolation for the two inseparable friends are the circulating tales of a kind of promised land, where there is no poverty or hunger, and where they could both go. Only this vision, this idea alone keeps the two of them and the rest of the village on their feet, and gives them hope for a better tomorrow.