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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After Black September's assassination of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, Prime Minister Golda Meir okays a covert operation to hunt down and kill all involved. A team of five gathers in Switzerland led by Avner, a low-level...
Family, friends, and strangers obsessively hold onto memories of the past within the changing French nation in the aftermath of the Algerian War for Independence (1954–1962). In the seacoast town of Boulogne, Hélène sells antique furniture,...
This documentary reveals the conflicting aims of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War era by exploring the life of German SS Officer Klaus Barbie. Barbie's war crimes in World War II earned him the name "the Butcher of Lyon," yet he was one of...
Based on the 1949 novel Came the Dawn by Roger Bax, the Cold War film follows the disrupted love story between an American journalist and a Russian ballerina. Separated by the KGB on their attempt to leave the Soviet Union for the United...
My Lan, a radio broadcaster of a program titled The Soldier's Heart asks a South Vietnamese army colonel to allow her to travel to the front lines of the Vietnam War to search for her lover. Their relationship began through...
Night Crossing is a 1982 British-American drama film, based on the true story of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, who on September 16, 1979, fled from East Germany to West Germany in a homemade hot air balloon, when emigration to...
Director Alfred Hitchcock tackles a case of mistaken identity and a murder mystery in this masterful exploration of Cold War America. This classic suspense film finds New York City ad executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) pursued by ruthless...
This television film traces multiple perspectives of the October Massacre during the Algerian War of Independence. It follows members of the National Liberation Front (FLN), French military officers, Parisian police, journalists, and school...
A 20-year veteran of the Angolan civil war returns to the capital city of Luanda where he faces the challenges of assimilation and survival.
A friendship between two Americans is tested during the conflicts surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Said, a Palestinian immigrant, and Bobby, a Jew, leave New York to support their respective sides.
This documentary, censored for over ten years, explores the Paris Massacre of 1961 during the Algerian War for Independence (1954-1962) through interviews, newsreel, and re-enactments. After implementing a curfew for all Algerians in the city,...
Omar is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. When Omar is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls...
On the Beach tapped into Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation and World War III. After the northern hemisphere is left uninhabitable from radiation, Americans find refuge in Australia. Survivors soon hear Morse code coming from the...
This documentary presents the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Existing footage and interviews emphasize the lack of security, the botched rescue mission, and the preparation of the...
This Cold War screwball comedy is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play Egy, kettő, három by Ferenc Molnár, with a "plot borrowed partly from" Ninotchka, a 1939 film co-written by Billy Wilder. C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney)...
Based on Jon Michelet's 1977 novel by the same name, Orion's Belt offers a biting critique of the Norwegian policy of allowing a Soviet presence on Svalbard during the Cold War. The film follows three Svalbard-based shabby seamen, played...
An adaptation of Graham Greene's 1958 novel, Our Man in Havana brings a deft touch to the Cold War spy game. British expatriate Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness) runs a vacuum cleaner store in pre-revolutionary Havana, Cuba. He has promised...
At the end of the Second World War, Soviet and American troops met and rejoiced at the defeat of Nazi Germany. The mood on the river Elbe was one of camaraderie between Allies, and their optimism was shared by the liberated populations of Europe...
Part 13 of the film series People's Century: 1900-1999, Freedom Now: Colonial Rule Is Overthrown in Asia and Africa, focuses on the anticolonial...
While in the second half of the century there are fewer conventional wars, civil conflicts under the backdrop of superpower rivalries emerge, fought by ideologically-driven guerrilla movements. Part 23 of the film series, ...