War & Peace
As we try to push war away into history its routine horrors assail us, and its dirty secrets disempower us again and again. But these fllms go deeper, through essay, and archive documentary, and fiction, into wars that history books have already misunderstood for us — and those wars erupting daily on the too-often unseen street corners near and far…From Robert Kramer’s 1969 classic ICE, to untold stories of anti-war activism and long-term pacifist struggle in Anand Patwhardan’s WAR AND PEACE and Erlich and Tejada-Flores’ THE GOOD WAR, through to Ruddier Sunner’s powerful analysis of Nazi ideology BLACK SUN, here is war and peace seen by visionary filmmakers such as Claude Chabrol, Shohei Immamura, Joris Ivens, Chris Marker, Lynne Sachs, and Marcel Ophuls.
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The Eye of Vichy
Directed by Claude Chabrol • Documentary • With Brian Cox, Maquisard Alfonso, General Bergeret, Jean Bichelonne, Maquisard Boczov, Pierre Boisson • 1993 • 110 minutes
The Eye of Vichy is a brilliantly chosen compilation of long forgotten film footage and newsreels produced by the Nazis and Frenc...
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Scenes from the Labudović Reels
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Self-described "artivist" Mila Turajlić mines Yugoslavian newsreel archives to tell a story of international solidarity and resistance to the binary of the Cold War. Focusing on the work of cameraman Stevan Labudović, who traveled the world on Yugoslav "peace missions" and was embedded with Alger...
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Kyiv Theater: An Island of Hope
Directed by Duccio Bellugi-Vannuccini, Thomas Briat • Documentary • With Ariane Mnouchkine • 2024 • 59 minutes
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brings back dark memories of 1930s Europe for Ariane Mnouchkine, the 84-year-old theater director and founder of the prestigious Théâtre du...
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Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Directed by Marc Rothemund • Drama • With Julia Jentsch • 2005 • 117 minutes
The true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in the multi-award winning drama Sophie Scholl-The Final Days. Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl s...
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Leila Khaled: Hijacker
Directed by Lina Makboul • Documentary • 2005 • 58 minutes
What kind of a person hijacks an airplane? The family of Leila Khaled, fled to Lebanon in fear of the armed Jewish group Stern Gang. This paramilitary unit first came to Palestine after WW2 to prepare the territory for those who had surv...
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Diplomacy
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • Drama • With André Dussollier, Niels Arestrup, Burghart Klaußner • 2014 • 85 minutes
As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubb...
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Some Divine Wind
Directed by Roddy Bogawa • Drama • 1991 • 72 minutes
SOME DIVINE WIND - a rough translation referring to Japanese Kamikaze pilots (on 'God's wind') - is the story of Ben, an American-born young man of mixed parentage, whose father was part of a bombing mission that destroyed his Japanese mother'...
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One or Two Questions
Directed by Kristina Konrad • Documentary • 2018 • 237 minutes
What do peace and justice mean to you?
In 1986, the Uruguayan Parliament approved a law granting amnesty for all crimes and human rights violations committed by the army and police during the dictatorship (1973-1985). This impunity ...
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The 317th Platoon
Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Fabre • 1965 • 95 minutes
1954. The dying days of the French war in Indochina. As the battle of Diên Biên Phu rages, the 317th platoon of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps are ordered to destroy their bas...
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Level Five (Chris Marker)
Directed by Chris Marker • Drama • With Catherine Belkhodja, Kenji Tokitsu • 1996 • 106 minutes
A woman (Laura), a computer, an invisible interlocutor: such is the setup on which LEVEL FIVE is built. She "inherits" a task: to finish writing a video game centered on the Battle of Okinawa—a traged...
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Indigo
Directed by Julio López Fernández • Documentary • With Emy Mena, Larissa Maltez, Lilibeth Rivas • 2023 • 65 minutes
Three young actresses recreate testimonies of women who suffered sexual assault during the Salvadoran civil war in a fable guided by the history of Indigo, which narrates the explo...
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Donga
Directed by Muhannad Lamin • Documentary • With Ali Sabty • 2023 • 90 minutes
During Libya's 2011 uprising, young Donga filmed battles, infusing moments of community and humor amidst the war's chaos. Decades later in Istanbul, wounded he grapples with war's grim realities, yet his enduring spiri...
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Myanmar Diaries
Directed by Myanmar Film Collective • Documentary • 2023 • 70 minutes
MYANMAR DIARIES is comprised of short films by ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers, combined with emotionally harrowing citizen journalism documenting the junta’s brutality, as well as courageous resistance to it.
The film...
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Afghanistan 1979: The War That Changed the World
Directed by Gulya Mirzoeva • Documentary • 2014 • 52 minutes
The Soviet troops' intervention in Afghanistan was a pivotal event in the history of the 20th century. It launched Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in 1979. This was the war that changed the world. Western cou...
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Le Crabe-Tambour
Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jean Rochefort, Jacques Perrin, Claude Rich, Jacques Dufilho • 1977 • 120 minutes
A French naval frigate crosses the Atlantic, bringing supplies and medical care to the French fishing fleet off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. On board are three v...
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Island in Between
Directed by S. Leo Chiang • Documentary • 2023 • 20 minutes
The rural Taiwanese outer islands of Kinmen sit merely 2 miles off the coast of China. Kinmen attracts tourists for its remains from the 1949 Chinese Civil War. It also marks the frontline for Taiwan in its escalating tension with Chin...
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Hitler - A Career
Directed by Joachim Fest • Documentary • With Stephen Murray (narrator) • 1977 • 150 minutes
"Hitler - A Career" is Joachim Fest's controversial German documentary film about the inevitability of Hitler and Fascism within Germany. Narrated by Stephen Murray, it tells the story of Hitler's rise t...
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One Bullet
Directed by Carol Dysinger • Documentary • 2023 • 92 minutes
This story of intimate female friendship forged amidst America's longest war is told by a filmmaker who spent fifteen years in and out of Afghanistan. In this war movie, the battlefield lies behind the curtains of an Afghan home as Bib...
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The Spectre of Boko Haram
Directed by Cyrielle Raingou • Documentary • 2023 • 75 minutes
The Far North Region of Cameroon, bordering Nigeria, lives under military protection, threatened by murderous terrorist incursions. In the village of Kolofata, Mohamed, Ibrahim and Falta — indirect victims of Boko Haram — attempt to ...
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Mafioso, Into the Heart of Darkness
Directed by Mosco Levi Boucault • Documentary • 2022 • 52 minutes
They claimed to be “men of honour”. In reality, they were killers for the Cosa Nostra (Sicily). Arrested in the early 1990s, they chose to work with the Italian justice and obtained the status of “pentiti” (state witnesses). Three...
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Eastern Front
Directed by Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko • Documentary • 2023 • 98 minutes
On February 24, 2022, Yevhen Titarenko didn’t have to puzzle over what he should do. He went to the front. And from the first minute of Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine, he began to record everything ...
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And Still I Sing
Directed by Fazila Amiri • Documentary • 2023 • 90 minutes
Amidst the United States and Taliban peace negotiations, Afghanistan’s controversial pop star and activist Aryana Sayeed mentors hopeful contestants on the hit singing TV series Afghan Star, including the only two female singers, Zahra E...
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Town Of Glory
Directed by Dmitry Bogolyubov • Documentary • 2019 • 82 minutes
With few exceptions, Yelnyans raise their children to become good patriots. They don’t mind the eerie, all-encompassing militarization of society. A heroic Soviet past and a destitute post-industrial present make this provincial tow...
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Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege
Directed by Abdallah Al-Khatib • Documentary • 2021 • 89 minutes
The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018.
When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and ...