Films about the Cold War and Wars of Decolonization
This collection provides information on selected movies, TV productions and documentaries on the themes of gender, military and war in the period covered by the Oxford Handbook.
The most important wars for this period include:
- Cold War (1946–91)
- Arab-Israeli Conflicts (1947ff)
- War of Indonesian Independence (1945–49)
- Korean War (1950–53)
- African Wars for Independence (1952ff)
- Algerian War (1954–62)
- Indochina Wars (1946–79)
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This documentary traces the life of Madeleine Riffaud, a French poet and journalist who participated in and documented resistance during war. After gaining notoriety for her bold actions in World War II, she turned her attention to the Vietnamese...
In this English romantic comedy, two young women in Thatcher-era Liverpool, Elaine (Alexandra Pigg) and Teresa (Margi Clarke), meet a pair of Soviet sailors, Peter (Peter Firth) and Sergei (Alfred Molina), who are on shore leave. While Teresa and...
Lisbon is a 1956 American film noir crime film adapted from a short story by Martin Rackin. For Capt. Robert John Evans (Ray Milland), smuggling black-market goods is nothing out of the ordinary. But one day he's hired by Aristides...
An All-American teenager who wants to join the Air Force discovers his parents are Soviet spies in this late Cold War espionage thriller. With excellent performances from a top-notch cast, Little Nikita is a fast-paced suspense thriller in the...
Based on the 1957 novella, L'Hôte (The Guest), by Albert Camus, David Oelhoefen directs this story the story of two men on opposite sides of the Algerian War (1954–62) who find common ground. Daru, an Algerian-born French teacher of...
The war drama Lost Command, directed by Mark Robinson and based on the best-selling 1960 novel Les Centurions by Jean Lartéguy, explores France's loss of political control and military defeat in Indochina and Algeria through the...
Set in Beirut in 1983, torn by the prolonged civil war, twelve-year-old Lina is the sad and only child of an embattled couple, Fouad and his pregnant wife, Thérèse. Lina hovers on the outskirts of domestic strife as the family tries to cope with...
Man on a Tightrope is a 1953 American film noir directed by Elia Kazan, based on a 1952 novel of the same title by Neil Paterson. Karel Cernik (Fredric March) is the owner of a small Czech circus that's been in his family for generations...
A chronicle of Nelson Mandela's life journey from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. [IMBd]
This German-Italian-Spanish production viewed the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) through an anti-war lens. A commander of the French Foreign Legion takes his battle-scarred men to search for an Algerian nationalist leader. Though...
A light-hearted comedy, Matinee romanticizes American innocence and Cold War culture before assassinations of political leaders and Vietnam disrupts them. A flashy producer of low-production horror and science fiction films arrives in a...
After the death of her husband in the Six Day War (June 5 – 10, 1967), an Israeli woman struggles to forge her new identity in the face of grief, bereavement and societal expectations. Tamar's friends and family believe she should behave as a...
In this visually arresting documentary, director Fernando E. Solanas weaves together the threads of globalization, neoliberalism, and political corruption to explain the decaying social, economic, and political fabric of Argentina in the late...
Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather's savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Direct, stubborn, and determined to reclaim what is hers,...
This Cold War sports drama tells the story of Coach Herb Brooks (1937–2003), who led the U.S. Hockey team to Olympic Gold in 1980 after defeating the Soviet Union.
The Olympics often became a site of Cold War cultural tensions, pitting the United States against the Soviet Union. This film is based on real events and shows how the U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the heavily-favored Soviets at the 1980 Lake...
When director Philippe Aractingi is forced to leave his native Lebanon for the third time, the realization dawns on him: his ancestors have been fleeing wars for five generations. Exploring his roots, Aractingi goes back to the fall of the...
The murder of a high-profile French colonel opens up old wounds from the Algerian War for Independence. An investigator tracks down old connections and materials from the war to solve the case.
This film explores the struggles of a woman during and after the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence (1963-1974), fought between Portugal and its colony for over 500 years. Diminga, wife to a wounded guerilla commander, travels to the front lines...
Moscow on the Hudson is a 1984 American romantic comedy-drama about Vladimir Ivanoff, a Russian saxophonist (Robin Williams) visiting New York with a circus troupe, who suddenly decides to defect from the USSR during a shopping trip to...