The Way Back

The Burmese Harp

January 1956 •Japanese

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

Taxi for Tobruk

May 1961 •French

During World War II, French Commandos join forces with a German officer in order to survive the African desert.

Akitsu Hot Springs

June 1962 •Japanese

Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.

The Day Hitler Died

December 2015 •English

The story of Hitler’s final hours told by people who were there. This special features exclusive forgotten interviews, believed lost for 65 years, with members of Hitler’s inner circle who were trapped with him in his bunker as the Russians fought to take Berlin. These unique interviews from figures such as the leader of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann and Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, have never before been seen outside Germany. Using rarely seen archive footage and dramatic reconstruction, this special tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker.

Time in the Jungle

April 1988 •Vietnamese

Defectors from Hitler's army join the French Foreign Legion and end up in Vietnam in the late '40s.

The Battle of Monte Cassino

April 2024 •Polish

The story of the legendary battle through the eyes of Jedrek - a boy who went through the hell of the gulag and left Russia with the Polish Army as one of thousands of polish orphans. Soon a decisive attack on a monastery located on the hills of Monte Cassino is to take place at the front - this spectacular battle will decide the lives of many soldiers and the fate of the Allied offensive in Italy, and will change Jedrek's life forever.

Gejagt bis zum Morgen

December 1957 •German

Drama about an impoverished family, a widowed mother and her two sons, trying to get by.

The Sailor's Song

November 1958 •German

A film about the historical uprising of the seamen in Kiel: During the Russian October Revolution of 1917, German and Russian soldiers start to solidarize with each other. By disarming the officers, machinist Henne Lonke and stoker Jens Kasten prevent the attack on a Russian freighter. When German admiralty gives out orders for operation "Nibelungen", which would lead the German fleet into a suicidal attack against England and quell the revolutionary spirit, seamen and soldiers from different political backgrounds unite in protest.

The Russians Are Coming

February 1968 •German

It’s the spring of 1945 in a small resort town on the Baltic. Günter is 16 and firmly believes that the Germans will win the war. During the hunt for a forced labourer who is on the run, Günter catches him and watches as he is shot to death. He proudly accepts the award of an Iron Cross before being shipped to the nearby front as part of the last contingent of troops. He is quickly captured by Soviet soldiers, but manages to escape and return home. When the town is occupied by the Red Army, Günter is arrested for the murder of the forced labourer. The film was banned in 1968 before it was completed, and a large portion of the negative was later destroyed.

Comrade Pedersen

February 2006 •Norwegian

A drama focused on Norwegian society in the 1970s, an era politically influenced by Marxism and Leninism.

Boží soud

January 1972 •Czech

Two Thousand Women

November 1944 •English

During the Second World War, three downed English airmen hide out with women's internment camp in France.

Mao’s Last Dancer

October 2009 •English

At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he falls in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.

Farewell

September 2009 •French

An intricate thriller about an ordinary man thrust into the biggest theft of Soviet information of the Cold War. Right after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A French businessman based in Moscow, Pierre Froment, makes an unlikely connection with Grigoriev, a senior KGB officer disenchanted with what the Communist ideal has become under Brezhnev. Grigoriev begins passing Froment highly sensitive information about the Soviet spy network in the US.

King of the Hill

August 1993 •English

Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.

Cinecittà, de Mussolini à la Dolce Vita

May 2021 •French

Cinecitta is today known as the center of the Italian film industry. But there is a dark past. The film city was solemnly inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini. Here, propaganda films would be produced to strengthen the dictator's position.

Evening Bells

January 1986 •

Trials and tribulations of a Croatian communist intellectual in the turbulent years before, during and after the Second World War.

Balkan Spy

February 1984 •

Convinced that his subtenant is a spy and an enemy of the state, Ilija Čvorović falls into deep paranoia which leads to an absurd and destructive chain of events.

Fires on the Plain

November 1959 •Japanese

In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.

Ivan's Childhood

May 1962 •Russian

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.