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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Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Indochine, Régis Wargnier offers an interpretation of French colonialism in Indochina through the lens of a French plantation owner, Éliane Devries, played by Catherine Deneuve, and her...
Invasion, U.S.A. is set in the Cold War and portrays the fictional invasion of the United States by an unnamed communist enemy, likely referring to the Soviet Union. It is typical of the Red Scare film genre, common throughout the 1950s...
In the waning years of the Cold War, Gen. Chappy Sinclair (Louis Gossett Jr.), is charged with assembling a joint U.S.-Soviet operation to take out a weapons plant in the Middle East. He supervises his old buddy Matt Cooper (Mark Humphrey), and...
Dalila Ennadre and produced by Film Documentaire France and Aya Films, describes the life of a Moroccan woman named Fadma who worked as a prostitute in a French military brothel during the First Indochina War (1946–54). Fadma...
On the night of April 21st 1961, in an attempt to halt the policy implemented by General de Gaulle which led to Algeria's independence, the 1st Foreign Regiment of Parachutists took power in Algiers. At the same time, Malika, Jacquot and Thomas...
This well-researched documentary dramatizes Charles de Gaulle's changing positions regarding the Algerian War. Recently elected as president of the new Fifth Republic of France in 1958, de Gaulle issues his support to nationals and partisans in...
Young Park Seol-Hee is eagerly planning her wedding to a young anti-Communist activist when the North Koreans invade. Her fiancé is forced to flee, leaving her behind with her family in their tiny, rural South Korean village. Rather than resist...
Assembly explores honor, sacrifice, and identity through Gu Zidi, a captain of the 9th Company of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) near the end of the Chinese Civil War. During the decisive Huaihai Campaign, Gu and his men defend a...
Released a year after Battle of Dien Bien Phu (March – May 1954), this film pays homage to a group of soldiers who died in the climatic battle of the First Indochina War (1946–1954). Veterans and new enlistees encounter guerilla warfare,...
Captain Vostrikov, a Russian naval officer, has been given command of the Soviet Union's first nuclear submarine, K-19, at the height of the Cold War in 1961. The vessel's executive officer Captain Polenin asserts that the flagship is not yet...
The film takes place in the southern town of Kangamba, Angola, in August 1983, during the Angolan civil war. Troops of the Unión Nacional para la Independencia Total de Angola (UNITA – National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), trained...
A group of Holocaust refugees arrive in war-torn Palestine, days before the declaration of the state of Israel. Some join the Palmach, the Jewish underground army, while others try to find peace amidst chaos.
Informed by scholarship and archival records, this television docu-series explores the history of the Congo from the 15th century to the present. From the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to colonialism and independence, the three-part series examines...
This Oscar-nominated documentary explores the lives of the wild rabbits who lived in the No Man's Land between the Berlin Wall. When the Wall came down in 1989, the rabbits scattered, became fearful, and ultimately migrated westward. The film is...
This TV movie deals with the last years of the Algerian war. The director highlights within the same family the different points of view of the pieds noirs on the course of events. But all come together on the attachment to their country that is...
This film is based on the 1992 nonfiction book La guerre sans nom (The War without a Name) by the French historian Patrick Rotman and its subsequent 2002 documentary adaptation by France3, directed by Florent Emilio Siri, who also...
Pierre Schoendoerffer directs this riveting French courtroom drama, about dead Captain Marcel Caron (Jacques Perrin), whose memory is publicly damaged by a historian on television twenty years after his death. Captain Caron’s widow (Nicole Garcia...
This French film L’Insoumis, directed by Alan Cavalier, was one of the first that dealt with the Algerian War (1954–62). Thomas Vlassenroot, a citizen of Luxembourg, played by Alain Delon, enlists in the French Foreign Legion after his...
This French film, directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer, offers a close examination of French and Laotian soldiers near the end of First Indochina War (1946–1954). A French platoon retreats to Dien Bien Phu to provide reinforcements for the Battle...
Gillo Pontecorvo directed this classic, highly influential, and controversial film, that focuses on the early years of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). The film tells the story of revolutionary fighter Ali La Pointe during the years...