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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Director(s): Riklis, Eran
Year of Publication: 1992
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Set during the First Lebanon War in 1982, Palestinian fighters take a young Israeli soldier hostage. The 1982 FIFA World Cup happens to be broadcasting during the invasion, and their mutual love for football, particularly the Italian national...

Director(s): Trajkov, Ivo
Year of Publication: 2004
Abstract:

On his deathbed, a Macedonian politician remembers his childhood in post-World War II Yugoslavia. After wandering the countryside in the aftermath of the war, communist soldiers take Lem to a hard labor camp acting as an orphanage. There, he...

Director(s): Becker, Wolfgang
Year of Publication: 2003
Abstract:

A son takes great measures to protect his mother before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Alex's mother falls into a coma when she sees her son arrested during an anti-government protest. To protect her recovery, he pretends German...

Director(s): Levinson, Barry
Year of Publication: 1987
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Good Morning, Vietnam is a 1987 American comedy-drama war film directed by Barry Levinson. Disc jockey Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams), starts to work for the Armed Forces Radio in Saigon in 1965, during the Vietnam War. His irreverent...

Director(s): Clooney, George
Year of Publication: 2005
Abstract:

This film reveals the history behind journalist Edward R. Murrow's encounter with Sen. Eugene McCarthy at the height of anti-communism in early Cold War America. Murrow and his CBS news team face down accusations of communism after they file a...

Director(s): Young, Roger
Year of Publication: 1985
Abstract:

Gulag is a 1985 drama film which aired originally on HBO and was later released for home video. TV reporter and former star athlete Mickey Almon (David Keith) is covering an international athletic event in Moscow when he is arrested by...

Director(s): Nesher, Avi
Year of Publication: 1978
Major Wars:
Abstract:

The Bandהלהקה, (also known as The Troupe) is an Israeli comedic musical, first shown in April 1978, about an army singing group in 1968 during the War of Attrition (1967-1970). Three new members are hazed at first,...

Director(s): Shagrir, Micha
Year of Publication: 1969
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Two years after the Six Day War (June 5–10, 1967), doctors at an Israeli hospital try to save the lives of an Arab terrorist and Israeli officer just brought in after a border clash. This documentary, while including this staged plotline,...

Director(s): Peter Davis
Year of Publication: 1974
Major Wars:
Abstract:

This documentary film recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and interviews. A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and self-righteous militarism...

Director(s): Oliver Stone
Year of Publication: 1993
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Director Oliver Stone's third Vietnam War film is based on the life of Le Ly Hayslip (born 1949) who also has a cameo appearance in it. Le Ly is a girl growing up in a Vietnamese village. Her life changes when communist insurgents show up in the...

Director(s): Baker, Roy
Year of Publication: 1950
Abstract:

The British government asks entomologist Frances Gray (Margaret Lockwood) to go behind the Iron Curtain and examine insects that might be used for germ warfare. Grudgingly accepting the job, Frances goes undercover as a tour director and meets...

Director(s): Koshashvili, Dover
Year of Publication: 2010
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Based on one of the most popular Israeli novels by Yehoshua Kenaz, this film unravels the making of Israeli national identity through militarism as well as the ethnic, national, and class distinctions that still characterize Israeli society. Set...

Director(s): Bouchareb, Rachid
Year of Publication: 2010
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Beginning with its controversial interpretation of the Setif massacre in 1945, in which French soldiers killed Algerians following riots and protests, Outside the Law, reveals how young Algerian men respond to colonialism. Three brothers...

Director(s): Douglas, Gordon
Year of Publication: 1951
Abstract:

During the 1950s, FBI agent and Slovenian-American Matt Cvetic (Frank Lovejoy) poses as a Communist to infiltrate the U.S. Communist Party. Unable to tell his friends and family about the undercover mission, Matt is deemed a traitor to his...

Director(s): Sturges, John
Year of Publication: 1968
Abstract:

With rough parallels to incidents in the late 1950s, this Cold War thriller pits the United States and the Soviet Union in a hunt for sophisticated military technology in the Arctic. A US submarine is dispatched to the frozen wastes of the North...

Director(s): Adi, Yasmina
Year of Publication: 2011
Major Wars:
Abstract:

On the call of the revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN), thousands of Algerians marched in Paris, on October 17, 1961, to protest France's war effort in Algeria, despite the curfew imposed by the government. The police responded with...

Director(s): Bauer, Tristán
Year of Publication: 2005
Abstract:

This anti-war film tells the story of two young Argentinian men sent to fight against Britain in the Falkland Islands in 1982, who return home bearing traumas. The script is based on a book written by a veteran of this war. 

Director(s): Paul Aaron
Year of Publication: 1987
Major Wars:
Abstract:

This movie is an account of US Navy Commander James Stockdale's (1923-2005) seven-and-a-half year imprisonment in North Vietnam. During his confinement in such camps as the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," Stockdale, among other senior officers, led a...

Director(s): Barbeau-Lavalette, Anaïs
Year of Publication: 2012
Major Wars:
Abstract:

Chloé, a young French-Canadian doctor with the Red Crescent, constantly moves between contemporary Israel and the Occupied territories. She lives in Jerusalem and works in Ramallah, passing through checkpoints daily to monitor the pregnancies of...

Director(s): Bastos, Mario
Year of Publication: 2015
Major Wars:
Abstract:

This documentary begins with memories of the colonial situation in Portuguese-ruled Angola, reveals the first steps in the struggle, and covers the main settings where it took place. From 1961 to 1974, the war in Angola spread from the bush areas...

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