Gestalt

Searching for the Standing Boy of Nagasaki

August 2020 •English

October 1945. A young Japanese boy in the devastated city of Nagasaki, two months after the atomic bomb, carries on his back the lifeless body of his younger brother. An American military photographer, Joe O'Donnell, took a picture of the boy standing stoically near a cremation pit. No one knows the subject's name, but the photo has become an iconic image of the human tragedy of nuclear war. This documentary follows the continuing efforts to deepen understanding of the photograph, while exploring the fate of thousands of atomic-bomb orphans and their struggles to survive the aftermath of World War II.

Story of a Dog

October 1945 •English

Story of a Dog is a 1945 short documentary film under the supervision of Gordon Hollingshead. In the film, a dog trains for the battlefield and becomes a crucial part of the United States military. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short, One-Reel.

Hitler Lives

December 1945 •English

This short film, produced at the end of WWII, warns that although Adolf Hitler is dead, his ideas live on.

The World's Biggest Bomb Revealed

July 2011 •English

National Geographic 2011 Documentary on the World's Biggest Bomb (UK).

Le Miracle du silence

January 2010 •French

Drancy 1941–1944, the Internment Camp Next Door

October 2012 •French

The untold story of a world-renowned place of remembrance of the Holocaust in France, the internment camp of Drancy, which was the central transit for the near totality of the 76 000 deported Jews of France during World War II.

The Bloody Hundredth

March 2024 •English

Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.

Lisbon and WWII Spies, Gold and Diplomacy

September 2022 •Dutch

Portugal managed to get through all of World War II without firing a single shot. Caught in a vise between the Axis and the Allies, Antonio Salazar, the country’s strongman, used every trick in the book to get his country through unscathed. In this war of nerves in which anything went, the Portuguese dictator took brilliant advantage of the only weapon available to maintain his country’s independence: neutrality.

The Same Snowy Ground

March 2020 •English

A journey through a place of an eternal past; where the grandson of a Jewish partisan sets out to experience the dramatic events and places that shaped his grandfather's war years

Manouchian et ceux de l'Affiche rouge

February 2024 •French

Colette

February 2020 •French

World War II. Not all warriors wore uniforms. Not all warriors were men. Meet ninety-year-old Colette Catherine who, as a young girl, fought the Nazis as a member of the French Resistance. Now she’s about to re-open old wounds, re-visting the terrors of that time. Some nightmares are too terrible to remember. But also, too dangerous to forget.

1st to Fight: Pacific War Marines

May 2020 •English

On the Pacific island of Guadalcanal in 1942, the famed 1st Marine Division — the oldest, largest and most decorated division of the U.S. Marine Corps — defeated Japanese forces in a turning point of WWII. This film documents the experiences of 1st Marine Division veterans who took part in the historic fight.

Les rafles d'août 1942 en zone libre, un crime de l'État Français

September 2009 •French

Les juifs d'Afrique du Nord pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale

May 2014 •French

David – Stories of Honour and Shame

November 1997 •Finnish

Documentary about Finnish Jews during WWII and their unique position as German allies.

Wartime Housing

January 1943 •English

During WWII, there was a need for affordable housing of decent quality. In response, small pre-fabricated homes were built quickly and efficiently to accommodate the influx of workers to urban areas.

Our Holy War

January 1942 •Romanian

A documentary about World War II, also known as the "Holy War" while Romania was an ally to Nazi Germany. The propagandistic nature of the film is evident through its overt anti-semitism and ultra-nationalist tone.

Goering: Nazi Number One

April 2020 •French

This is the story of an incredible rise to power, the most comprehensive documentary on Hermann Goering ever made. He was a man of many faces: vain, ambitious, more brutal than any other of Hitler's minions, yet the most popular Nazi official of all, at times even more popular than Hitler himself. He embodied the jovial side of the Third Reich. Yet the same man who organised dissolute bacchanals also founded the Gestapo, set up the first concentration camps, and had his own comrades murdered in the purge of 1934. These unique personal records form the largest and most important single film find from the Nazi era in past years.

Comrades under Edelweiss

January 1943 •German

This rare documentary was filmed with the participation and personal camera of Wolfgang Gorther, a German military cinematographer of the 1st mining division, who participated in the legendary ascent of Elbrus on the night of August 21, 1942. From the beginning of the Second World War and the last international winter sports week in Garmisch-Partenkirchen follows the invasion of the German troops into the Soviet Union: Dnieper, Zaporozhy, Kharkov, Rostov-on-Don, Nogaean Steppe, Caucasus – fighting at 50 degrees below zero, military expedition into the world of ice and snow; – ascent of mountain arrows and subsequent hoisting of flags on the Elbrus at an altitude of 5,633 meters.

Auschwitz Projekt

January 2018 •French