Hotel Imperial

Grand Illusion

June 1937 •French

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.

The African Queen

January 1952 •English

At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.

Women's Letters

May 2014 •French

On the front lines of the Great War, nurse Simon repairs the broken faces of the soldiers every day with love letters, words from women that have the power to heal the wounds of these paper soldiers. Simon himself seems impervious to holes, uncreasable, untearable in his white coat. His secret is his war godmother, who occupies all his thoughts whenever he has a moment to breathe. But when death strikes where it is least expected, can words written on paper still erase the pain?

Fighting Fred Funston

April 2017 •English

On April 18th, 1906, San Francisco witnessed its most devastating natural disaster – an earthquake that initiated a city-wide fire. The commanding officer of the U.S. Army base at the Presidio, Fred Funston, gathered citizens to fight the fire, patrol the streets, and rebuild the city – all without authorization.

Awake and Sing!

March 1972 •English

The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.

Flyboys

September 2006 •English

The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.

The Great War

December 2019 •English

In November of 1918 as World War I was ending, a unit of American soldiers goes behind enemy lines to find a lost platoon of African American soldiers.

Queen Marie of Romania

November 2019 •Romanian

Devastated by the First World War and plunged into political controversy, Romania's every hope accompanies its Queen on her mission to Paris, to lobby for its great unification's international recognition at the 1919 Peace Talks.

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

May 1995 •English

When an English cartographer arrives in Wales to tell the residents of the Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw that their 'mountain' is only a hill, the offended community sets out to remedy the situation.

The Green Room

April 1978 •French

A widower maintains a memorial room filled with his late wife's belongings. When fire destroys it, he transforms a chapel into a new shrine to preserve her memory.

Field Punishment No.1

April 2014 •English

In 1916, the New Zealand Government secretly shipped 14 of the country's most outspoken conscientious objectors to the Western Front in an attempt to convert, silence, or quite possibly kill them. This is their story.

The Red Baron

March 2008 •German

Richthofen goes off to war like thousands of other men. As fighter pilots, they become cult heroes for the soldiers on the battlefields. Marked by sportsmanlike conduct, technical exactitude and knightly propriety, they have their own code of honour. Before long he begins to understand that his hero status is deceptive. His love for Kate, a nurse, opens his eyes to the brutality of war.

Der brave Soldat Schwejk

September 1960 •German

All Quiet on the Western Front

November 1979 •English

At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.

The Blue Max

June 1966 •English

A young pilot in the German air force of 1918, disliked as lower-class and unchivalrous, tries ambitiously to earn the medal offered for 20 kills.

The Great Waldo Pepper

March 1975 •English

A biplane pilot and WWI veteran takes up barnstorming and later a movie career in his quest for the glory days he misses.

King of Hearts

December 1966 •French

An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the resistance about a bomb which the departing Germans have set to blow up a weapons cache.

Pershing's Crusaders

January 1918 •

Documentary on American troops in France in the First World War.

The Lighthorsemen

September 1987 •English

In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestine they rely on the Australian light horse regiment to break the deadlock.

Reds

December 1981 •English

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.