war

West Beirut (1998)
In April, 1975, civil war breaks out; Beirut is partitioned along a Moslem-Christian line. Tarek is in high school, making Super 8 movies with his friend, Omar. At first the war is a lark: school has closed, the violence is fascinating, getting from West to East is a game. His mother wants to leave; his father refuses. Tarek spends time with May, a Christian, orphaned and living in his building. By accident, Tarek goes to an infamous brothel in the war-torn Olive Quarter, meeting its legendary madam, Oum Walid. He then takes Omar and May there using her underwear as a white flag for safe passage. Family tensions rise. As he comes of age, the war moves inexorably from adventure to tragedy.
Arna's Children (2004)

Juliano Mer Khamis' documentary on his mother, Arna, an activist against the Israeli occupation who founded an alternative education system for Palestinian children.

Directors: Danniel Danniel, Juliano Mer-Khamis
Armadillo (2010)

In February 2009 a group of Danish soldiers accompanied by documentary filmmaker Janus Metz arrived at Armadillo, an army base in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Metz and cameraman Lars Skree spent six months following the lives of young soldiers situated less than a kilometer away from Taliban positions. The outcome of their work is a gripping and highly authentic war drama.


Director: Janus Metz Pedersen 
Beats of the Antonov (2014)

While conflict is nearly an everyday occurrence in Sudan, "Beats of Antonov" focuses less on the air raids and more on the thriving culture that exists in parts of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions, fostered by farmers, herders and rebels who turn to music and laughter as a form of both defiance and expression. Bonus: the film shines a spotlight on "Girls Music," the music created by young women taking part in the country's rebellion. 


Directed by Hajooj Kuka.
Beyond Right and Wrong (2012)

"Beyond Right & Wrong" looks at areas of conflict around the world and asks what it takes to forgive, and what it takes to ask for forgiveness under the most difficult of circumstances. Paired personal interviews of aggressors and victims from Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Israel, and Palestine, BEYOND RIGHT AND WRONG examines anger, understanding, remorse, tolerance, and sometimes clemency. The survivors' stories are haunting and inspiring, and the film is a meditation on justice and its role in national and personal healing. 

Directors: Lekha Singh, Roger Spottiswoode


Black Book (2006)

In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.

Director: Paul Verhoeven


Children of War (2009)

A unique and incandescent documentary which follows a group of former child soldiers as they undergo a process of trauma therapy and emotional healing while in a rehabilitation center.

Director: Bryan Single


Emitai (1971)

As World War II is going on in Europe, a conflict arises between the French and the Diola-speaking tribe of Africa, prompting the village women to organize their men to sit beneath a tree to pray.

Director: Ousmane Sembene


Empire of the Sun (1987)

A young English boy struggles to survive under Japanese occupation during World War II.

Director: Steven Spielberg 


Grbavica (2006)

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.

Director: Jasmila Zbanic


Guelewaar (1992)

Burial of a Christian political activist in a Muslim cemetary forces a conflict imbued with religious fervor. A satiric portrayal of religion and politics, sometimes humorous, sometimes deadly serious. 

Director: 

Hotel Terminus (1988)

A documentary about Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief of Lyon, and his life after the war.

Director: Marcel Ophuls


Inglorious Basterds (2009)

In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same.

Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth

Iraq in Fragments

Stories from modern day Iraq as told by Iraqis living in a time of war, occupation and ethnic tension.

Director: James Longley
Iron Ladies of Liberia (2007)

Iron Ladies of Liberia is an intimate observational documentary that goes behind the scenes with Africa's first freely elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia. The film explores the challenges facing the President and the extraordinary women surrounding her as they develop and implement policy to rebuild their ravaged country, and prevent a descent back into civil war. 

Directors: Henry Ansbacher, Siatta Scott Johnson


Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

Director: Clint Eastwood


Lions for Lambs (2007)

Injuries sustained by two Army rangers behind enemy lines in Afghanistan set off a sequence of events involving a congressman, a journalist and a professor.

Director: Robert Redford


Lone Survivor (2013)

Marcus Luttrell and his team set out on a mission to capture or kill notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, in late June 2005. Marcus and his team are left to fight for their lives in one of the most valiant efforts of modern warfare.

Director: Peter Berg


Lumumba (2006)

he true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba.

Director: Raoul Peck


No End in Sight (2007)

A comprehensive look at the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq war and its occupation of the country.

Director: Charles Ferguson 


Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (2007)

A unique documentary about troops' experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, based on writings by soldiers, Marines, and air men. Some writings were published in the New Yorker in summer 2006. 

Director: Richard Robbins


The Monuments Men (2014)

An unlikely World War II platoon is tasked to rescue art masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their owners.

Director: George Clooney


The Mushroom Club (2005)

The short film is about the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and its effects on the residents of that city sixty years later.

Director: Steven Okazaki


The Wanted 18

The Wanted 18  tells the unlikely story of 18 celebrity cows producing milk on a Palestinian co-operative farm in the town of Beit Sahour that was declared a "threat to the national security of Israel." Upon being deemed an illegal security threat, the cows go underground, continuing to produce their "Intifada milk" while Israeli officials go to great lengths to stop it. 

Director: Paul Cowan


United 93 

A real time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.

Director: Paul Greengrass
Unfinished Business (1986)

Spring, 1942: F.D.R. signs executive order 9066, and more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, are sent to internment camps. Three young men - Min Yasui, an attorney from Oregon, Gordon Hirabayashi, a Quaker college student in Washington, and Fred Korematsu, a Bay Area welder - serve jail sentences for violating laws against Japanese Americans; the U.S. Supreme Court upholds their convictions. Forty years later, the three file suits to have their sentences overturned. This documentary tells their stories and helps break 40 years of silence and shame. By the end of the documentary, the court proceedings remain unfinished.

Director: Steven Okazaki
Welcome to Sarajevo (1997)

Journalist Floyd from US, Michael Henderson from UK and their teams meet the beginning of Bosnian war in Sarajevo. During their reports they find an orphanage run by devoted Mrs. Savic near the front line. Henderson gets so involved in kids' problems that he decides to take on the children, Emira, illegally back to England. He is assisted by American aid worker Nina. 

Director: Michael Winterbottom
White Light / Black Rain (2007)

As global tensions rise, the unthinkable threat of nuclear war has become very real--and very frightening. Through the powerful recollections of the survivors of the atomic bombs that leveled two Japanese cities in 1945, this film presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first--and hopefully last--uses of thermonuclear weapons in war. Directed by Oscar(R)-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki (1990's 'Days of Waiting'), 'White Light, Black Rain' provides a comprehensive, moving account of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the unique points of view of the people, both Japanese and American, who were there. 

Director: Steven Okazaki


The Square (2013)

A group of Egyptian revolutionaries battle leaders and regimes, risking their lives to build a new society of conscience.

Director: Jehane Noujaim