20 best movies like A Russian Youth (2020)

In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership.

Russia, 1917, WWI. This is the story of the 1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death, formed as part of an ill-conceived propaganda ploy by the Russian Provisional Government in late May of 1917.

USSR, Late November, 1941. Based on the account by reporter Vasiliy Koroteev that appeared in the Red Army's newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, shortly after the battle, this is the story of Panifilov's Twenty-Eight, a group of twenty-eight soldiers of the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division, under the command of General Ivan Panfilov, that stopped the advance on Moscow of a column of fifty-four Nazi tanks of the 11th Panzer Division for several days. Though armed only with standard issue Mosin-Nagant infantry rifles and DP and PM-M1910 machine guns, all useless against tanks, and with wholly inadequate RPG-40 anti-tank grenades and PTRD-41 anti-tank rifles, they fight tirelessly and defiantly, with uncommon bravery and unwavering dedication, to protect Moscow and their Motherland.

A war drama set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in which Russian troops held on to a border stronghold for nine days. The film shows the heroic defense of Brest Fortress, which has taken upon the first stroke of German fascist invaders on June 22 1941.

The breakout of the war shatters the world of a young student, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, forcing her to enlist in the army in 1941. The maiden turns out to be a natural-born sniper, her impressive skill and prowess make her stand out among men and women alike. Seeing Pavlichenko as a tangible threat, the German High Command gives orders to eliminate the girl whatever the cost. In the meanwhile, Lyudmila meets a man and falls in love. War fades into the background... Soon, however, another misfortune befalls Lyudmila leaving the man she loves on the brink of death and herself seriously wounded. The girl is pulled out of combat and later goes to the United States with a publicity visit. Eleanor Roosevelt welcomes Lyudmila in the White House and the two women soon become close. It won't be long before Pavlichenko stands before an audience in Chicago pressing for a second front. Will her words have the capacity to change the course of war?

The film is based on the eponymous book by Emmanuil Kazakevich. In the summer of 1944 the Nazi Armies prepare a massive Tank Division named 'Viking" for the offensive on occupied Russian land. The Russian Army's special group of seven snipers named "Zvezda" is sent for a reconnaissance operation behind the enemy lines in the back of the Nazi Tank Division. Two previous Russian groups never came back. The seven Russians know that they are going to an almost certain Death for the sake of Victory.

The picture opens in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in late 1988, when military trainees Petrovsky, Ryaba, Chugun, Stas, Pinochet, Lyutev and Vorobyev are whipped into shape at a training camp by the brutal, sadistic commander, Warrant Officer Dygalo - prior to being sent off to the front lines. After several one-by-one dalliances with the local whore, Snow White, and a cautionary lecture on the history, geography and culture of Afghanistan (which most of the men sleep through), the trainees head off to battle - first to the Bagram air base, then to the Afghani province of Khost to secure supply lines. But nothing can begin to prepare them for the brutal devastation into which they are plunged, or the relentless tide of slaughter that scatters thousands of Soviet victims in its wake.

A team of CIA agents and special forces head into Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in an attempt to dismantle the Taliban.

WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In 1944, a courageous group of Russian soldiers managed to escape from German captivity in a half-destroyed legendary T-34 tank. Those were the times of unforgettable bravery, fierce fighting, unbreakable love, and legendary miracles.

Untold and lost history. A true story of the American Pathfinders, the volunteer paratroopers whose deadly mission was to land 30 minutes before the Normandy invasion, locate and mark strategic "drop zones" and set up the top-secret navigation equipment needed to guide the main airborne assault on D-Day.

The film is based on the true story about a Soviet KV-1 crew of a Soviet KV-1 tank, under the command of Semyon Konovalov , whom despite being heavily outnumbered by German forces, destroyed 16 tanks, 2 armored vehicles and 8 other enemy vehicles at the village of Nizhnemytyakin, Tarasovsky district, Rostov region on July 13th, 1942.

September 1941. In a turn of events young lovebirds Kostya and Nastya find themselves on board of a barge that will evacuate people from sieged Leningrad. At night the barge gets into the storm. When it starts sinking, enemy planes - but not rescuers - are the first to arrive at the scene.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.

An examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940.

By miracle he avoided death and returns to the house where he was born. In the house now lives the love of his life. But the hope for happiness turns sour with a terrible discovery: his beloved is the daughter of his enemy.

After several months of fierce fighting, the Red Army finally knocks the enemy out of the village of Ovsyannikovo, which costs huge losses - only a third of the personnel remain from the company. Exhausted to the limit, the soldiers are waiting for reinforcements, but an order comes from the headquarters - to keep the village at all costs, and this is tantamount to a death sentence. The company commander faces a difficult choice - either to lose the remnants of the company, following a meaningless command order, or to withdraw his people from mortar fire, but at the same time leave their positions and go to the tribunal for violating the order. In extremely realistic details, only one fierce battle is shown, in which, like in a drop of water, the whole truth about the war is reflected.

The friendship of two boys is tested to its limits as they battle for survival during the Kosovo war.

In 1940, the Royal Air Force fights a desperate battle against the might of the Luftwaffe for control of the skies over Britain, thus preventing the Nazi invasion of Britain.

The Trench tells the story of a group of young British soldiers on the eve of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, the worst defeat in British military history. Against this ill-fated backdrop, the movie depicts the soldiers' experience as a mixture of boredom, fear, panic, and restlessness, confined to a trench on the front lines.

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

The story of the miraculous evacuation of Allied soldiers from Belgium, Britain, Canada and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German army from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk between May 26th and June 4th 1940 during World War II.

Based on the medieval fair called Mamankam, which was celebrated every 12 years between 800 AD and 1755 AD, the story of the film is supposedly about a brave warrior of Malabar and his loyal soldiers.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) was the Japanese Naval commander who was given the order to attack Pearl Harbour, an order he was duty bound to obey which went against his own personal beliefs. While this infamous attack is a low point in Japanese and US history it wouldn’t have happened if the Japanese government had listened to Yamamoto in 1939 and searched for a more peaceful way to end their war campaign, proving his many ominous presages of the outcomes of the attack to come true.

Spend time on both sides of World War I, partly with German flying ace Baron Manfred Von Richthofen (John Phillip Law), aka "The Red Baron," and his colorful "flying circus" of Fokker fighter planes, during the time from his arrival at the war front to his death in combat. On the other side is Roy Brown of the Royal Air Force, sometimes credited with shooting Richthofen down.

The love story of sixteen-year-old Arturs is interrupted by the First World War. After losing his mother and his home, he finds some consolation in joining the army, because this is the first time national battalions are allowed in the Russian Empire. But war is nothing like Arturs imagined – no glory, no fairness. It is brutal and painful. Arturs is now completely alone as war takes the lives of his father and brother. Also, no progress is made in the promised quick resolution of the war and timely return home. Within the notion that only he alone cares about returning home and that his homeland is just a playground for other nations, Arturs finds strength for the final battle and eventually returns home to start everything from scratch, just like his newly born country.

1988-1989. The end of the Soviet-Afghan war. The USSR begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Soviet General Vasiliev's son - a pilot named Alexander gets kidnapped by the mujahideen after his airplane crashes. As a result the 108th motorized infantry division's long awaited return home gets put on hold for one last mission: bring the General's son back. Based on true events the previously untold story of the courageous and tragic withdrawal campaign (through the Salang pass) reveals the danger the horror and the complexity of human nature during wartime.

During the bloody war in Chechnya, a British couple and two Russian soldiers are taken hostage by Chechen rebels. Two of the hostages are then released to bring the money for the British woman who is forced to wait for the ransom.

Yesterday's Leningrad schoolgirl Masha Yablochkina, after a fierce blockade winter of 1941-1942, comes to the railway courses hoping to survive and gain strength. From there, the girl is sent to the construction of the Shlisselburg highway, which connects the city with the mainland and is in direct sight of German artillery. So the heroine gets into the 48th locomotive column of the special reserve NKPS, which, at the cost of the deadly risk, will have to deliver 75% of all cargo and military equipment to Leningrad.

This is a story of a great love facing the greatest drama of the history of Russia. Admiral Kolchak is a true war hero and beloved husband and father. One day he meets Anna, the love of his life and the wife of his best friend. The revolution in his heart faces the revolution in his own country His destiny is to become the Supreme Rules of Russia.

The lifelong friendship between Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker is put to the ultimate test when the two ace fighter pilots become entangled in a love triangle with beautiful Naval nurse Evelyn Johnson. But the rivalry between the friends-turned-foes is immediately put on hold when they find themselves at the center of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

In the aftermath of WWI, a young German who grieves the death of her fiancé in France meets a mysterious French man who visits the fiance’s grave to lay flowers.

October 1941. Thousands of fascists troops are advancing on Kalinin to capture the city and therefore open a direct route to Moscow. There are two thousand people able to defend the city and they are without tanks or artillery. The only hope of holding the enemy off is in the fifth infantry division convoy, who are about to pass through Kalinin station. But saboteurs intend to do everything to keep this from happening. The head of the Kalinin garrison, Major Sysoyev, struggles to keep order and calm in the city, and himself falls under suspicion of involvement with the subversive enemy group.

During the Second World War, a special project is begun by the US Army Air Corps to integrate African American pilots into the Fighter Pilot Program. Known as the "Tuskegee Airman" for the name of the airbase at which they were trained, these men were forced to constantly endure harassement, prejudice, and much behind the scenes politics until at last they were able to prove themselves in combat.

Based on the 1836 standoff between a group of Texan and Tejano men, led by Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, and Mexican dictator Santa Anna's forces at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.

Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they purposely lose a soccer game against a South Vietnamese team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines.

Michael's perfect life changes dramatically when he discovers a portal wich allows him to travel in time. He travels back to the World War II to go through the quest of time and find his one and only beloved.

A civil war broke out in the 1950s between North and South Korea which changed the country forever. 71: Into the Fire centers on the struggles of 71 student soldiers who fought through the Korean War. Using real people and events based on the opening moves of the Battle of P'ohang-dong, the film exposes the personal and physical conflicts that these students faced when finding themselves on the last line of defense at P'ohang-dong Girl's Middle School against the NKPA's advancement, needing to hold out until back up from other Korean troops and the Allies arrived.

1999, Serbia is bombed and Kosovo region is left for plunder by bandits under command of Albanian warlord, Smuk. The removal of the human organs take place within the territories bandits have taken, the robberies, mass assassinations and genocide. Russian intelligence officer Bek Ethoev and former paratrooper turned mercenary Andrey Shatalov head a small detachment tasked with the dangerous mission to stop the terrorism, recapture the airfield used by the bandits and rescue Shatalov's love interest Yasna, who was captured to be harvested for organs, like the rest of the Serbian prisoners.

Directed by Shen Dong and starring Ray Lui, An Yixuan and Yuan Wenkang, Death and Glory in Changde recalls one of the most cruel and controversial battles during China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), Changde Battle, in November 1943.

A story about two young men during the last days of WWII.

Sergeant Michael Dunne fights in the 10th Battalion, AKA The "Fighting Tenth" with the 1st Canadian Division and participated in all major Canadian battles of the war, and set the record for highest number of individual bravery awards for a single battle

A story of three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s Taiwan and Shanghai, centered around the 1949 sinking of Taiping.

After a story of Tamara Tinberg, "Seventh Symphony". The Leningrad block. February 1942. Ends the worst blockade winter. Nina Voronova completely desperate. Her three-year-old son, Mitya, has weakened, and the ration cards have already been delivered two days in advance. Last hope - evacuation. But with small children do not take. Then the woman goes to a monstrous step - is evacuated, leaving her son alone in a frozen apartment. During the raid, the boy is saved by a teenage girl Katya Nikonorova. The girl gives Mitya for her brother and promises herself to do everything so that Mitya survived. No matter what.

Year 1206. Norway is ravaged by civil war. The King's illegitimate son is guarded in deep secret. A boy that half of the kingdom wants to kill and two men will protect to the death. A boy named Earl Håkonsson. Birkebeiners is the story of the escape that changed Norway's history forever.

The Nomad is a historical epic set in 18th-century Kazakhstan. The film is a fictionalised account of the youth and coming-of-age of Ablai Khan, as he grows and fights to defend the fortress at Hazrat-e Turkestan from Dzungar invaders.

In 1951 ceasefire is declared, but two remaining armies fought their final battle on the front line Towards the end of the Korean War, a South Korean battalion is fiercely battling over a hill on the front line border against the North in order to capture a strategic point that would determine the new border between two nations. The ownership of this small patch of land would swap multiple times each day. Kang is dispatched to the front line in order to investigate the tacit case that’s been happening there. But he gets spiraled into the war that’s more terrifying than death itself when he meets his friend Kim, who has transformed into a war machine, and his unit. As the countdown for ceasefire begins, both sides become more vicious, resulting in deaths of countless lives until the last man could claim the land.

Drama set in 1942, during one of the most important battles of World War II, which stopped the progress of Nazi forces and turned the tide of war in favor of the Allies. The Soviet army mounts a counter-attack on the Nazi forces that occupy half of Stalingrad on the other side of the Volga, but the operation to cross the river is unsuccessful. A few soldiers who managed to get to the other side take refuge in a house on the bank of Volga. Here they find a girl who didn’t escape when the Germans came. While the whole might of the German army descends onto them, the heroes of Stalingrad experience love, loss, joy and the sense of ultimate freedom that can only be felt by those about to die. They defend the house at all costs while the Red Army prepares for another attack.

The culmination of Orson Welles’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero, Sir John Falstaff; the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The story recounts the early life of Genghis Khan, a slave who went on to conquer half the world in the 11th century.