1. Beasts of War (Bêtes de guerre)
The military history of animals is surprising and little-known. Starting from a strange London memorial dedicated to war animals, the evocative power of animation and the testimonies of those who are passionate about this long history, this documentary sets out to meet these anonymous heroes.
It has an average vote of 8.5 on TMDB.
2. The Walk (The Walk)
Asil is a young Syrian refugee awaiting documents in Turkey while processing the trauma of losing her home and family. Her story gives voice to a charming gigantic puppet named Amal, who represents millions of migrant and displaced children in a walk from the Syrian border in Turkey all the way across Europe. Escorted and animated by a group of puppeteers who are themselves refugees, Amal’s epic journey is one of compassion and discovery.
3. I Refuse to Kill: He Went to War with War
At the risk of a 5-year prison term, Francesco Da Vinci struggles with his Virginia draft board to be recognized as a sincere conscientious objector to the Vietnam war.
4. Drawing from Memory (Aus meinem Leben)
An autobiographical film about my childhood in Syria, the war and my escape from it. My childhood was happy but unusual: my mother raised me as a girl. When I became a teenager I was buoyed up by the energy of youth and a desire to change the world. Then the war broke out and I had to leave everything behind.
5. Evacuation (Евакуація)
In 2014, the war begins. Immediately, a system of evacuation of the wounded and killed is being built, the outpost of which is the Dnieper - it is here that the first will be delivered, it is here that they are still received. Tatiana Guba has been coordinating the evacuation for 5 years. She is called "Mom Tanya". Thousands of people are grateful to her for her life. Serhiy Kryvorotchenko, director of the Dnipro Airport, has deployed a helicopter evacuation system since the beginning of the war. Eugene Titarenko, the film's director, in 2014-2015 was part of a volunteer medical battalion, communicates with the heroes of the film about the evacuation system. The viewer will see the whole way of saving lives, will be directly in the vortex of events and will understand how many people are involved in the process of saving one person.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
6. The Son
Using unpublished photos taken by Italian war photographer Enrico Sarsini, and the reconstruction of key events, this film examines the battle for a strategically-located church that was defended by Azerbaijani teenager Natig Gasimov. After his surrender and interrogation by Armenian forces, he was never heard of again. This film finds out what happened to Natig and who may be responsible. Filmed over a period of three years, filmmaker Karan Singh spoke to witnesses in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Italy and Russia in his search for the truth.
7. Otelina e Lutoy
Otelinda and Lutoy, married for almost 50 years, are reminded of the moments of greatest tension they experienced, in the Angolan civil war, when confronted with the images on the news about the war in Ukraine. Narrated by Otelinda, her story, we learn her story from the 25th of April, until the day she waited alone for her husband on the verge of misfortune, in Cabinda. Her narration is accompanied by the contrasting images of their daily lives in 2023, as well as the landscapes and people of the country where they now reside. Their relationship initially appears distant, but becomes closer towards the end of the narrative, through the memories of everything they suffered together.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
8. Donga (دونقا)
“There was excitement in the air,” says Donga, now in his late twenties, describing his feelings when the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule broke out in 2011. He was 19, living in Misrata, and boldly went to film the fighting with a friend. A decade later, in a hotel in Istanbul, where he has been living since he was wounded in battle, he looks back on the past ten years through excerpts from his videos. And he reflects on how that period has affected him.
9. SuperHeroes (SuperHeroes)
When on February 24, 2022, Russian troops attacked Ukraine, the world stopped. The first shock, however, quickly turned into action. It was a natural impulse of the heart, Poles could not leave their neighbors, their friends from Ukraine completely alone. Almost everyone, residents of small and large cities, young and old, rich and poor, became involved in helping Ukrainians, opened their homes for those fleeing the war, and began to organize humanitarian aid. Did they pass the humanity test?
It has an average vote of 6.8 on TMDB.
10. Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed
Benedict Arnold is not the villain of American history most people were taught to believe. New facts and never before presented material illuminate his heroic contributions to the American Revolution and explains his later change of allegiance.
11. I Did Not Want to Make a War Film (Я не хотіла робити фільм про війну)
A full-scale invasion found the Kyiv director in a small Bedouin village in the Middle East. It was warm, safe, and unbearably far from home. Once the director had a prophetic dream. She decided to return to Kyiv, still the hostilities were unfolding. Despite the condemnation of relatives and the long journey, she finally managed to cross the threshold of her home. But the house itself has now become forever different.
It has an average vote of 4 on TMDB.
12. DER KERN, DER DICH ZUSAMMENHÄLT (DER KERN, DER DICH ZUSAMMENHÄLT)
(DER KERN, DER DICH ZUSAMMENHÄLT)
13. Flash Wars - Autonomous Weapons, A.I. and the Future of Warfare (Flash Wars - KI im Krieg)
“Fear AI!” – “ warns Elon Musk back in 2014, joining other opinion leaders like Steve Wozniak, Noam Chomsky and Stephen Hawking in backing a petition against the development of autonomous weapons. As Vladimir Putin stated in 2017, “Whoever leads in AI, rules the world.”
It has an average vote of 8.7 on TMDB.
14. Prinz Eugen und das Osmanische Reich – Mehr als nur Feinde (Prinz Eugen und das Osmanische Reich – Mehr als nur Feinde)
(Prinz Eugen und das Osmanische Reich – Mehr als nur Feinde)
15. Plasticine Dreams (Пластилінові мрії)
In the polyphony of voices, a search for home unfolds. What is home? What is its purpose? Is there anything bigger than home? What are the sounds, colours, and smells that let it live in our memory? The collective and the individual is expressed through the voices of those who lost it in the Russian war in Ukraine. Associations, memories, meanings: four letters, four hundred things between them — home.
16. Stones in Cold Water
Filmed throughout Ukraine just months before the full-scale Russian invasion, this vérité visual ethnography explores the overlaps of memory, hope, progress, and nostalgia at the scale of everyday life.
17. La scelta di Maria (La scelta di Maria)
In a stirring blend of archival footage, fictional recreations, interviews, and animation, the film delves into the story of Italy’s ‘Unknown Soldier’. November 4, 2021, in fact, is the hundredth anniversary of the burial of the Unknown Soldier in the Altare della Patria in Rome. Thanks to a collaboration with the Ministry of Defense, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, the city of Aquileia, and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà, this film reconstructs the events that led up to that event in 1921
It has an average vote of 7.2 on TMDB.
18. Ford at Pearl
A look at the recently discovered fascinating behind the scenes footage shot by the legendary Hollywood director John Ford at Pearl Harbor in 1942 while filming his popular World War II documentaries December 7th and The Battle of Midway.
19. Newfoundland at Armageddon
On July 1st, 1916, the Newfoundland Regiment took part in a massive First World War offensive on the Somme, led by the British. At Beaumont Hamel the regiment was nearly wiped out, as only 110 of 780 soldiers survived the day. To commemorate its 100th anniversary, Brian McKenna’s documentary film tells the story of this epic tragedy. Using a technique that brings new meaning to reenactment, McKenna recruits descendants of soldiers who fought this battle, offering them a unique opportunity to relive the experience of their ancestors in trenches built specifically for the film.
20. Soldier’s Fortune (Soldatenglück und Gottes Segen)
Documentary about the first German foreign deployment of German soldiers in Kosovo since the Second World War in 1995.
