Films about the Age of Second World War
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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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...
After twenty-seven long months spent in Algeria, Frédéric Simon, a young French photographer, is determined to forget this time of trouble and is determined to live a good life after the army discharges him. At first, things go according to his...
From the first attacks of November 1954 to Algerian independence in 1962, this landmark documentary disrupts familiar narratives of the Algerian conflict by presenting it through eyewitness testimony previously unavailable to the public and...
This documentary focuses on the experiences of French veterans of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). The memories of two dozen veterans provide anguished and honest accounts of a conflict that had yet to be called a war by their nation...
This documentary, directed by the Algerian writer and filmmaker, Assia Djebar (1936–2015), tells the story of a woman who returns to her native region 15 years after the end of the Algerian War for Independence (1954-1962). Lila is obsessed by...
The Algerian War came within the framework of a very special era of decolonization, soon after the Second World War and the loss of Indochina, as well as of the Cold War tension which led the French army to see the hands of Communism behind the...
Based on the 1958 controversial memoir by Henri Alleg, La Question highlights the role of torture in the Algerian War for Independence (1954-1962). The film recounts Alleg's detention and torture by French officials.
This Oscar-nominated Best Foreign Language Film explores the psychological trauma of war in Andean women, particularly one young girl, in modern-day Peru. Fausta has a mythical disease called the milk of sorrow, passed down through her mother's...
Lieutenant Roque attempts to bridge suspicions and tensions among a diverse group of soldiers under his command, including French nationals, French born in North Africa, and native Algerians, during the Algerian War of Independence. The film...
A documentary detailing the consequences of the Algerian War for two groups: the harkis, native Algerians who served on the side of France for diverse reasons, and the pieds noirs, colonists of European descent. Neither were welcome in...
1967. The world is alive with change: brimming with reawakened energy, new styles, music and an infectious sense of hope. In Jordan, a different kind of change is underway as tens of thousands of refugees pour across the border from Palestine....
This French New Wave drama reveals the political instability that engulfed France during the Algerian War of Independence. A son of an industrialist joins a right-wing, nationalist terrorist organization (loosely resembling the OAS) but is soon...