War
see all genres ›In war films, notice the marked tension between those who give the orders and those who carry them out. Common war motifs include military training, the platoon, civilian casualties, espionage, aviation, the prisoner-of-war and daring escapes. Filmmakers have engaged in recreations of war since at least the Spanish-American War in 1898. Whether deemed propagandistic or antiwar, war films are almost always concerned with power, the nation and moral values.
Discover War Films
Genres / War
SUB-GENRES · Korean War · U.S. Civil War · Vietnam War · WWI · WWII
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Abraham Lincoln
Returning to the historic era of his greatest success, D.W. Griffith paid homage to the sixteenth President in this moving drama (his first talking picture) starring Walter Huston. Focusing on Abraham Lincoln’s personal tragedies as well as his great accomplishments, Griffith’s film depicts the American icon with a...Start your free trial to watch -
Acholiland
Northern Uganda, 1999. War has raged for thirteen years. Thousands are killed, millions are displaced and everyone is starving. Set in the heart of this turmoil, four UN workers must embark on a frantic food delivery to a mass of desperate villagers. But when the militia strike and the situation explodes, these men will face...Start your free trial to watch -
Across the Border
ACROSS THE BORDER is a collage of found footage and documentary images, radio Spanish/English tracks and commentary by Philippe Bourgois, a Stanford Anthropologist trapped in an offensive by the United States-backed Salvadoran Military forces. The film’s position against U.S. intervention in the third...Start your free trial to watch
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Against the Odds
Of the thousands of men and women imprisoned under inhuman conditions behind the wires of the German concentration camps some found the strength to fight back. They collected evidence about German crimes in the camps, sabotaged equipment they were forced to manufacture, prepared uprisings and even tried to...Start your free trial to watch -
Alexandra
In a desolate, sun-scorched corner of the world, an elderly woman has come to see her beloved grandson, a young officer stationed at a remote military outpost. With the enemy just beyond the compound, she wanders the barracks, observing the routines of military life before making a sudden trip into the outlying countryside....Start your free trial to watch
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Ambush
AMBUSH takes place in the first days of World War II in Russian Karelia by the Finnish border. A young lieutenant is sent on a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines, leaving his beautiful fiancee behind. During his mission he receives the tragic news that she has been killed by the Russians. Now the war is personal and...Start your free trial to watch -
Among the Missing
Vietnam is often called “the war that won’t go away”, largely because of the continuing controversy of the POW/MIA (Prisoners of War/Missing in Action) issue. Families of those who were POW/MIA in Vietnam organized an activist movement which went on to pursue a question which still haunts America nearly...Start your free trial to watch -
Ants in the Plants
This backyard kingdom of the ants is a very civilized place, with all mod cons and Munchkin-like voices raised in cheerful song. But there's an eternal threat: that dreaded foe, the anteater. The insects deploy all their ingenuity to outwit him, engaging in a war not too far removed from the realities of...Start your free trial to watch
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Armadillo
The first documentary ever chosen to compete in the International Critics' Week at Cannes (where it won the Grand Prize), Janus Metz's ARMADILLO follows a platoon of Danish soldiers on a six-month tour of Afghanistan in 2009. An intimate, visually stunning account of both the horror and growing cynicism of modern warfare, the...Start your free trial to watch -
Army of Crime
In Robert Guédiguian’s taut, internationally acclaimed thriller, set during the French Resistance, Armenian poet Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian) and his French wife (Virginie Ledoyen) lead a ragtag assortment of volunteers (Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Spaniards and Armenians) in an assassination plot against the...Start your free trial to watch -
Ave Maria
Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s condemnation of the American war in Vietnam trades in some of the crude images one associates with Soviet propaganda: a soldier gunning down a child; clamoring capitalists superimposed over the killing fields. And yet its animation style is surprisingly subtle and its tone more elegiac than one might...Start your free trial to watch
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Balcancan
Boldly antic and filled with flights of fancy, director Darko Mitrevski's epic comedy has a whirlwind comic energy of its own. Humor modulates from the surreal to the fantastic, yet as the film progresses and issues of Balkan identity come to the fore, the line between comedy and tragedy becomes exhilaratingly tangled. When...Start your free trial to watch -
The Battle
Unlike many of D.W. Griffith’s early Civil War melodramas, THE BATTLE focuses on actual combat. A Union soldier panics during his first fight and flees to his girlfriend's house. She bullies him back into harm's way as the balance of war begins to shift. Dynamic battle scenes jammed with uniformed extras anticipate Griffith's...Start your free trial to watch -
The Battle of Britain
Originally released in 1943, THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN represents the fourth movie in Frank Capra's epic WHY WE FIGHT documentary series. This film traces the fate of the British during the dark days of the Blitz. It is a portrait of the desperate, but ultimately successful struggle to prevent a Nazi invasion...Start your free trial to watch
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The Battle of Midway
The stars and director of THE GRAPES OF WRATH re-united under very different circumstances two years later for this undeniably hyperbolic yet stirring portrait of U.S. Naval forces rallying to defeat Axis conquerors. "Tom Joad" (Henry Fonda) and "Ma Joad" (Jane Darwell) were among the voice actors...Start your free trial to watch -
The Battle of San Pietro
Starting with an unusually romantic depiction of the region that became key to the Allies' capture of Italian territory from German forces, this was director/narrator John Huston's government-produced chronicle of the late 1943 battle. His film crew shot right alongside U.S. Army troops and (partly as a...Start your free trial to watch -
Beat the Fascist Pirates
This animated "political poster" grants "no mercy for Hitler's bloodthirsty sharks," which are depicted prowling international waters to sneakily "bite" Allied ships from beneath. Calling for patriots to “"Smash the fascist rats relentlessly! In the air, on land and at sea," it's a striking piece of...Start your free trial to watch




