World War II

World War II

OVID's unrivaled collection of WWII documentaries features Hotel Terminus: The Life And Times Of Klaus Barbie by Marcel Ophüls, a brilliant Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer. Mosco Boucault's Terrorists in Retirement, too controversial to be shown on French TV when first released, was highly praised by Richard Brody in The New Yorker: "Extraordinary. Audacious, passionate, and exalted... One of the great films about the Holocaust." Other highlights include Black Sun by Rudiger Sunner, which sheds new light on the sources of Nazi ideology by examining its occult roots in the world of myths, symbols, and fantasies.

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World War II
  • Pastorale 1943

    Directed by Wim Verstappen • Drama • With Pim de la Parra, Rutger Hauer • 1978 • 128 minutes

    Submitted for the 1978 Academy Awards -- Best Foreign Film, Wim Verstappen's Pastorale 1943 is a war drama centered on the Dutch resistance during World War II, starring Derek de Lint, Sylvia Kristel, Ru...

  • 900 Days

    Directed by Jessica Gorter • Documentary • 2011 • 77 minutes

    Jessica Gorter's 900 DAYS contrasts the devastating and unforgettable stories recounted by survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, the infamous German blockade, which caused the deaths of more than 1 million people during World War II, wi...

  • 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...

  • As If It Were Yesterday

    Directed by Myriam Abramovicz and Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 1980 • 84 minutes

    Belgium, 1940. Amidst escalating terror and raids on Jewish residents by the occupying Nazi forces, a resistance movement emerges to shelter Jewish children from deportation and extermination. Myriam Abramowicz...

  • Memoir of War

    Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel • Drama • With Mélanie Thierry • 2018 • 127 minutes

    In Emmanuel Finkiel’s haunting adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s semi- autobiographical novel, The War: A Memoir, the famed author (Mélanie Thierry) recounts an emotionally complex story of love, loss, and perseveran...

  • As a Young Girl of Thirteen...

    Directed by Elisabeth Coronel, Florence Gaillard & Arnaud de Mezamat • Documentary • With Simone Lagrange • 2009 • 88 minutes

    In AS A YOUNG GIRL OF 13, Holocaust survivor Simone Lagrange recounts in detail her life before the war, her deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and her role in bringing N...

  • Black Sun

    Directed by Rudiger Sunner • Documentary • 2009 • 90 minutes

    For more than sixty years, thousands of historians, political scientists, psychologists and others have attempted to explain the murderous ideology of National Socialism-in particular the theories of its founders Adolf Hitler, Heinrich...

  • The Champagne Safari

    Directed by George Ungar • Documentary • 1995 • 94 minutes

    What was a reputed Nazi collaborator doing reconnoitering the Canadian Northwest in 1934? In that year, mogul Charles Bedaux embarked on an ill-fated journey across through the Canadian Rockies. His upper-crust caravan, called "The Champ...

  • The Apology

    Directed by Tiffany Hsiung • Documentary • 2016 • 104 minutes

    THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former 'comfort women' who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

    Some 70 ...

  • Churchill's Island

    Directed by Stuart Legg • Documentary • With Lorne Greene • 1941 • 22 minutes

    Winner of the first Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject! It presents the strategy of the Battle of Britain, showing with penetrating clarity the relationships between the various forces made up the island's defens...

  • A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings)

    Directed by Humphrey Jennings • Documentary • 1946 • 38 minutes

    A diary for the first six months in the life of a baby born 3rd September 1944, illustrating events and daily life during this period of the war. Directed by Humphrey Jennings.

  • 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...

  • A Film Unfinished

    Directed by Yael Hersonski • Documentary • 2010 • 90 minutes

    This potent documentary uses a long-lost film reel to illustrate how the Nazis controlled images of Jewish life during World War II. Though the Nazis made a propaganda movie of contented Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, the missing spool exp...

  • Forgiving Dr. Mengele

    Directed by Bob Hercules & Cheri Pugh • Documentary • With Eva Mozes Kor, Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On, Michael Berenbaum, Albert H. Friedlander • 2007 • 82 minutes

    Eva Kor and her twin sister were victims of the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who conducted sadistic experiments on human beings at...

  • Francofonia (Alexander Sokurov)

    Directed by Alexander Sokurov • Documentary • With Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Benjamin Utzerath, Vincent Nemeth • 2016 • 87 minutes

    Set against the backdrop of the Louvre Museum’s history and artworks, master director Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) applies his uniquely personal vision onto stage...

  • The German Neighbor

    Directed by Rosario Cervio, Martin Liji • Documentary • With Antonella Saldicco • 2017 • 94 minutes

    Integrating impressive archive material, The German Neighbor follows the steps of Adolf Eichmann’s awkward and unusual life in Argentina and his remarkable defense at the trial in Jerusalem. Rober...

  • The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It

    Directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada-Flores • Documentary • With Ed Asner • 2002 • 57 minutes

    Millions of people from Allied countries fought to liberate Europe from Hitler’s grip during World War II . Yet 40,000 Americans refused to shoulder weapons in “the good war.” 

    Narrated by Ed Asn...

  • Harbour of Hope

    Directed by Magnus Gertten • Documentary • With Irene Krausz-Fainman • 2013 • 76 minutes

    In Spring 1945 Red Cross liberated thousands of concentration camp survivors and rescued them to the Malmö Harbour, Sweden. Among the thousands of survivors brought to Malmö were Irene Krausz-Fainman, Ewa Ka...

  • Heimat is a Space in Time

    Directed by Thomas Heise • Documentary • 2019 • 218 minutes

    In HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words.

    Heise sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, whe...

  • 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...

  • The Hitler Chronicles

    4 items

    Mixing political fatigue with populist theses, post-factual arguments and lies, along with emotional appeals ridiculing democratic processes and defaming opponents is not new. Seeing signs repeat themselves is a disturbing experience with a clear political statement and society needs to act again...

  • Hotel Terminus: The Life And Times Of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophüls)

    5 items

    Directed by Marcel Ophüls • Documentary • With Klaus Barbie, Claude Lanzmann, Marcel Ophüls • 1988 • 267 minutes

    A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE weaves t...

  • I Am Become Death: They Made the Bomb

    Directed by Arthur MacCaig • Documentary • 1995 • 55 minutes

    On July 16, 1945 at 5.30 a.m., in a remote site in the New Mexico desert, America successfully detonates its first atomic bomb. In El Paso, Texas, one hundred miles away, the city's residents are awakened by a silent but blinding light...

  • Imaginary Feasts

    Directed by Anne Georget • Documentary • 2014 • 70 minutes

    IMAGINARY FEASTS explores how in Nazi concentration cmaps, Soviet Gulags and Japanese prison camps, starving prisoners shared and recorded favorite meals and recipes. By examing how these objects of survival, the film shows quiet acts of...