Son of Saul
M
Hungary, 2015
Genre: Drama, Thriller, War
Language: German, Hungarian, Yiddish
Director: Laszlo Nemes
What's it about?
An Oscar-winning masterpiece, Son of Saul internalises the horrors of internment at Auschwitz in 1944. The film is widely acclaimed for capturing the reality of the Holocaust. The film tells the story of Saul Auslander, a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from Auschwitz in 1944 who were forced to assist the Nazis by cremating the bodies of the dead. Saul discovers the corpse of a boy he believes is his young son. As the other Sonderkommando plan a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.
[link title="How 'Son of Saul' captures the reality of the Holocaust" url="node/56786"]
[link title="Son of Saul review: An unforgettable experience" url="node/59885"]
Full Metal Jacket
MA15+, 1987
Genre: Drama, War
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin
What's it about?
Stanley Kubrick's seminal story of the dehumanising process that turned new recruits into trained killers. Joker, Animal Mother, Gomer, Eightball, Cowboy and more are all plunged into a boot-camp hell pitbulled by a leatherlung D.I. (Lee Ermey) who views the would-be devil dogs as grunts, maggots or something less.
[link title="Full Metal Jacket review" url="node/22145"]
[link title="R. Lee Ermey, 'Full Metal Jacket' Golden Globe Nominee, Dies at 74" url="node/192753"]
Testament of Youth
Denmark, United Kingdom, 2014
Genre: History, Drama, War
Language: English
Director: James Kent
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Colin Morgan, Dominic West, Emily Watson, Hayley Atwell,
What's it about?
A powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.
Sophie's Choice
MA 15+
United Kingdom, United States of America, 1982
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: Czech, English, French, German, Polish, Russian
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman, Greta Turken, Josh Mostel, Marcell Rosenblatt, Moishe Rosenfeld, Robin Bartlett, Eugene Lipinski, John Rothman, Joseph Leon, David Wohl, Nina Polan
What's it about?
Meryl Streep won an Oscar for her acclaimed performance as Sophie, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who lives in Brooklyn with her lover Nathan, an American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stingo, the movie's narrator, a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions.
The Killing Fields
M
United Kingdom, 1984
Genre: Drama, History, War
Language: English, French, Cambodian, Russian
Director: Roland Joffe
Starring: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, Craig T. Nelson, John Malkovich, Athol Fugard, Julian Sands, Spalding Gray, Bill Paterson, Graham Kennedy, Katherine Krapum Chey, Oliver Pierpaoli, Edward Entero Chey, Tom Bird, Monirak Sisowath, Lambool Dtangpaibool, Ira Wheeler, David Henry, Patrick Malahide, Nell Campbell, Joan Harris, Joanna Merlin, Jay Barney, Mark Long, Sayo Inaba, Mow Leng, Chinsaure Sa, Hout Ming Tran, Thach Suon, Neevy Pal
What's it about?
In this true story, New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg is sent to Cambodia in 1973 to cover the war between the revolutionary Khmer Rouge and the government. He meets Dith Pran, a local journalist who becomes his trusted assistant, interpreter, and friend. When the Khmer Rouge seize control of the country, Pran throws himself at their mercy to save the lives of his colleagues. What follows is unspeakable horror.
Paradise Road
MA15+
1997
Genre: War, Drama, History
Language: English
Director: Bruce Beresford
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Pauline Collins, Frances McDormand, Glenn Close
What's it about?
The story of a group of women imprisoned by the Japanese in Sumatra during World War II, who form a choir, using music recalled by a fellow inmate, as a way of coping with the trauma of their situation.
Diplomacy
France, 2018
Genre: Drama, war
Language: French, German
Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Starring: Niels Arestrup, Andre Dussolier
What's it about?
A career diplomat has his work cut out for him in trying to convince a high-ranking Nazi to overrule a Hitler hissy fit, in the riveting historical drama. The film is a fictionalised account of a Swedish consular official (Andre Dussollier)’s actual attempts to dissuade Hitler’s man in Paris (the ever-dependable Niels Arestrup) from destroying the city in the final days of WWII. Hitler has issued a ‘scorched earth’ directive to blow up Paris’ great monuments and bridges; in the failing Fuhrer’s reductive logic, the city ought not survive the war architecturally unscathed when his beloved Berlin lies in ruins. The two formidable actors (reprising their stage roles) make Diplomacy absorbing to the end, despite the film’s obvious outcome. (Spoiler: the Eiffel Tower doesn’t blow up.) (Fiona Williams)
