20 best movies like Army of Shadows (1969)

List of the best movies like Army of Shadows (1969): The Burmese Harp, Kapo, Is Paris Burning?, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Soldier of Orange, This Land Is Mine, The Round Up, Katyn, Rome, Open City, Germany Year Zero.

Tags: movies similar to Army of Shadows (1969) - full list

Markimdb: 8
Genredrama, military, music
CountryJapan

In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

Markimdb: 7.6
Genredrama, military
CountryItaly, France, Yugoslavia

Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genredrama, military, history
CountryFrance, USA
Duration02:54

Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he cannot maintain control of the city. After much contemplation Choltitz decides to ignore his orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a resistance leader organize his forces.

Markimdb: 8
Genredrama, documentary, military, biography
CountryGermany, United Kingdom, France
Duration01:20

In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped. Barefoot, surviving monsoons, leeches, and machete-wielding villagers, he was rescued. Now, near 60, living on Mt. Tamalpais, Dengler tells his story: a German lad surviving Allied bombings in World War II, postwar poverty, apprenticed to a smith, beaten regularly. At 18, he emigrates and peels potatoes in the U.S. Air Force. He leaves for California and college, then enlistment in the Navy to learn to fly. A quiet man of sorrows tells his story: war, capture, harrowing conditions, escape, and miraculous rescue. Where did he find the strength; how does he now live with his memories?

Markimdb: 7.6
Genrethriller, melodrama, drama, military
CountryNetherlands, Belgium
Duration02:47

The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.

Markimdb: 7.5
Genredrama, military
CountryUSA
Duration01:43

Somewhere in Europe, in a city occupied by the Nazis, a gentle school teacher finds himself torn between collaboration and resistance, cowardice and courage.

Markimdb: 7
Genredrama, military, history
CountryFrance, Germany, Hungary
Duration01:55

Joseph is eleven. And this June morning, he must go to school, a yellow star sown on his chest. He receives the support of a goods dealer. The mockery of a baker. Between kindness and contempt, Jo, his Jewish friends, their families, learn of life in an occupied Paris, on the Butte Montmartre, where they've taken shelter. At least that's what they think, until that morning on July 16th 1942, when their fragile happiness is toppled over.

Markimdb: 7
Genredrama, military, history
CountryPoland
Duration01:59

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

Markimdb: 8
Genrethriller, drama, military
CountryItaly
Duration01:43

A realistic portrayal of the underground resistance in Italy in 1945. The film has strong impacting imagery with its mix of fiction and reality that strengthened Italian Neo-realism and the film industry.

Markimdb: 7.8
Genredrama, military
CountryItaly, France, Germany

The final film in Rossellini's war film trilogy (the first two being Rome, Open City and Paisà). Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and post-war Italy, respectively. The story follows a twelve-year-old boy, Edmund Kohler, who is mainly left to his own devices in order to survive and to help his family do the same.

Markimdb: 6.7
Genredrama, military, history
CountryFrance

This gripping historical drama recounts the story of Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist who led an immigrant laborer division of the Parisian Resistance on 30 operations against the Nazis in 1943. The Nazis branded the group an Army of Crime, an anti-immigrant propaganda stunt that backfired as the team's members became martyrs for the Resistance.

Markimdb: 8
Genredrama, military
CountryFrance, West Germany, Italy
Duration01:44

Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.

Markimdb: 7.4
Genrethriller, drama, film noir, military
CountryUSA
Duration01:57

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.

Markimdb: 6.9
Genredrama, military
CountryIsrael, France, Germany, United Kingdom
Duration01:33

During the First Lebanon War in 1982, a lone tank and a paratroopers platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town.

Markimdb: 7.4
Genremelodrama, drama, biography, history
CountryFrance, Italy, Germany
Duration02:39

The night of August 24, 1572, is known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. In France a religious war is raging. In order to impose peace a forced wedding is arranged between Margot de Valois, sister of the immature Catholic King Charles IX, and the Hugenot King Henri of Navarre. Catherine of Medici maintains her behind-the-scenes power by ordering assaults, poisonings, and instigations to incest.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama, military, biography, history
CountryFrance, China, Germany
Duration02:14

A true-story account of a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937-38.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genredrama, military, history
CountryAustralia, USA
Duration02:02

A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.

Markimdb: 7
Genredrama, military, history
CountryNetherlands, Belgium

During World War II in the freezing winter of 1944-45 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.

Markimdb: 8.1
Genredrama, military
CountryItaly, Algeria
Duration02:01

Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.

Markimdb: 6.5
Genreaction, drama, military, biography, history
CountryGermany, France, Austria
Duration02:00

The story of the final seven months in the life of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genredrama, military
CountryItaly

War seen through the eyes of Serra, a university student from Palermo who volunteers in 1942 to fight in Africa. He is assigned to the Pavia Division on the southern line in Egypt. Rommel and the Axis forces are bogged down; it's October, the British prepare an offensive. At first, boredom, heat, hunger, and thirst bedevil the Italians; then the Brits attack, and there's no luck or heroism in death. Finally, it's retreat in confusion. Serra, his sergeant Rizzo, and his lieutenant Fiori take a last walk toward home. It's said that each soldier gets three miracles; when Serra's are used up, what then?

Markimdb: 7
Genredrama, military, history
CountryItaly, Yugoslavia, West Germany
Duration02:24

In January 1943 the German army, afraid of an Allied invasion of the Balkans, launched a great offensive against Yugoslav Partisans in Western Bosnia. The only way out for the Partisan forces and thousands of refugees was the bridge on the river Neretva.

Markimdb: 6.7
Genredrama, military, history
CountryRussia, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Belarus
Duration02:07

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.

Markimdb: 7.5
Genreaction, drama, military, history
CountryBelarus, Russia
Duration02:11

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.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genredrama, military
CountryUSA
Duration01:53

A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genrethriller, melodrama, drama, military
CountryUnited Kingdom, Australia, Germany
Duration02:01

This is a drama set in Nazi-occupied France at the height of World War II. Charlotte Gray tells the compelling story of a young Scottish woman working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover, a missing RAF pilot. Based on the best-selling novel by Sebastian Faulks.

Markimdb: 5.6
Genreaction, drama, military
CountryRussia
Duration02:15

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.

Markimdb: 7.5
Genredrama, military
CountryUnited Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Italy, France
Duration01:49

David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.

Markimdb: 6.1
Genredrama, military, history
CountryChina, France
Duration02:07

Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.

Markimdb: 8
Genredrama, military
CountrySoviet Union
Duration01:36

Poetic journey through the shards and shadows of one boy's war-ravaged youth.

Markimdb: 7.5
Genredrama, military
CountryPoland
Duration01:37

This harrowing tale of survival centers on Rose, a Masurian woman, whose German soldier husband was killed in the war, leaving her alone on their farm. A single woman had no defense against Russian soldiers who raped as a form of revenge, nor against plundering Poles who found themselves in desperate straits. Help arrives for Rose in the form of Tadeusz, a former officer in the Polish Home Army who deserted after he saw his wife raped and murdered by Russian troops and is attempting to hide his identity.

Markimdb: 6.5
Genredrama, military, biography
CountrySweden, Hungary
Duration01:55

Swedish account of Raoul Wallenberg, the man responsible for the largest rescue of Jews during World War II.

Markimdb: 6.9
Genredrama, military, biography
CountryNetherlands, Belgium
Duration02:09

In the occupied Netherlands during World War II, banker Walraven van Hall is asked to use his financial contacts to help the Dutch resistance. With his brother Gijs, he comes up with a risky plan to take out huge loans and use the money to finance the Resistance.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genredrama, military
CountryUnited Kingdom
Duration02:03

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genreaction, drama, military, biography, history
CountryUSA, United Kingdom, France
Duration02:20

Le Ly lives in a small Vietnamese village whose serenity is shattered when war breaks out. Caught between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese army, the village is all but destroyed. After being both brutalized and raped, Le Ly resolves to flee. She leaves for the city, surviving desperate situations, but surviving nonetheless. Eventually she meets a U.S. Marine named Steve Butler who treats her kindly and tells her he would like to be married -- maybe to her.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genredrama, military
CountryAustralia, Germany, United Kingdom
Duration01:48

Lore leads her four younger siblings across a war-torn Germany in 1945. Amidst the chaos she encounters a mysterious refugee who shatters her fragile reality with hatred and desire.

Markimdb: 7
Genredrama, military, biography
CountryUSA

Based on the story about Guy Gabaldon, a Los Angeles Hispanic boy raised in the 1930s by a Japanese-American foster family. After Pearl Harbor, his foster family is interned at the Manzanar camp for Japanese Americans, while he enlists in the Marines, where his ability to speak Japanese becomes a vital asset. During the Battle of Saipan, he convinces 800 Japanese to surrender after their general commits suicide.

Markimdb: 6.6
Genremelodrama, drama, military, history
CountryFrance
Duration01:39

In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.

Markimdb: 6.7
Genremelodrama, drama, military
CountryUSA
Duration02:18

Come See The Paradise is a deeply touching love story set against the backdrop of a dramatic and controversial period in American history, It follows the romance and eventual marriage of Jack McGurn (Dennis Quad), a hot blooded Irish American, and a beautiful Japanese American Lily Dawanura (Tamlyn Tomita), at the outset of World War II. The clash of cultures, at once painful for the two lovers, becomes insurmountable after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Lily and the Kawamuras are relocated To a bleak, outdoor internment camp in California, Jack is drafted into the Army, powerless to help the woman he loves abandoning all hope of ever winning her family's approval.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genremelodrama, drama, military, biography
CountryAustralia, United Kingdom
Duration01:56

A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genreaction, thriller, drama, military
CountryFrance, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Belgium

A private security contractor in Iraq rejects the official explanation of his friend's death and decides to investigate.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genrecomedy, adventure, military
CountryFrance, United Kingdom
Duration02:03

During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops - and the consequences of their own blunders.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genredrama
CountryItaly, France, West Germany
Duration01:51

A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genreaction, thriller, melodrama, drama, military, history
CountryDenmark, Germany, Norway, France, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic
Duration02:10

During Nazi occupation, red-headed Bent Faurschou-Hviid ("Flame") and Jørgen Haagen Schmith ("Citron"), assassins in the Danish resistance, take orders from Winther, who's in direct contact with Allied leaders. One shoots, the other drives. Until 1944, they kill only Danes; then Winther gives orders to kill Germans. When a target tells Bent that Winther's using them to settle private scores, doubt sets in, complicated by Bent's relationship with the mysterious Kitty Selmer, who may be a double agent. Also, someone in their circle is a traitor. Can Bent and Jørgen kill an über-target, evade capture, and survive the war? And is this heroism, naiveté, or mere hatred?

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama, military
CountryUSA, West Germany
Duration01:59

WWII is entering its last phase: Germany is in ruins, but does not yield. The US army lacks crucial knowledge about the German units operating on the opposite side of the Rhine, and decides to send two German prisoners to gather information. The scheme is risky: the Gestapo retains a terribly efficient network to identify and capture spies and deserters. Moreover, it is not clear that "Tiger", who does not mind any dirty work as long as the price is right, and war-weary "Happy", who might be easily betrayed by his feelings, are dependable agents. After Tiger and another American agent are successfully infiltrated, Happy is parachuted in Bavaria. His duty: find out the whereabouts of a powerful German armored unit moving towards the western front.

Markimdb: 8
Genredrama, military
CountrySoviet Union
Duration01:37

The story of a man (Andrey Sokolov) whose life was ruthlessly crippled by World War II. His wife and daughters were killed during the bombing of his village, he spent some time as a prisoner, and his only son was killed in action only a few days before the victory...

Markimdb: 7.4
Genredrama, military, biography, history
CountryPoland, Germany, United Kingdom

The story of Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak and his dedication to protecting Jewish orphans during the war.

Markimdb: 7.6
Genredrama, military, history
CountryGermany, France, Poland
Duration01:52

A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.

Markimdb: 7.4
Genremelodrama, drama, military
CountryFrance
Duration02:10

In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.

Markimdb: 7
Genreaction, drama, military
CountryUSA
Duration01:35

In WWII Western Germany, Private David Manning reluctantly leaves behind a mortally wounded fellow soldier and searches for survivors from his platoon, only to learn from commanding officer Captain Pritchett that they have all been killed in action. Despite requesting a discharge on the grounds of mental disability, Manning is promoted to sergeant and assigned to lead a new platoon of young inductees.




MoviesList