20 best movies like Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

A German soldier tries to determine if the Dutch resistance has planted a spy to infiltrate the home of Kaiser Wilhelm in Holland during the onset of World War II, but falls for a young Jewish Dutch woman during his investigation.

The film follows the exploits of Jacques, a car-mechanic turned pro-thief, and his Jewish co-conspirator Simon as their robberies, beginning well before the Second World War, take on a political coloration under the occupation.

The rise of national socialism in Germany should not be regarded as a conspiracy of madmen. Millions of "good" people found themselves in a society spiralling into terrible chaos. A film about then, which illuminates the terrors of now.

Inspired by real events and spanning three eras of German history, film tells the story of Kurt, a young art student who falls in love with fellow student, Ellie. Ellie’s father, Professor Seeband, a famous doctor, is dismayed at his daughter’s choice of boyfriend, and vows to destroy the relationship. What neither of them knows is that their lives are already connected through a terrible crime Seeband committed decades ago.

In 1942, an intelligence officer in North Africa encounters a female French Resistance fighter on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. When they reunite in London, their relationship is tested by the pressures of war.

Free-spirited writer Juliet Ashton forms a life-changing bond with the delightful and eccentric Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she decides to write about the book club they formed during the occupation of Guernsey in WWII.

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.

The life of celebrated but reclusive author, J.D. Salinger, who gained worldwide fame with the publication of his novel, The Catcher in the Rye.

A beautiful story about youth, love, friendship and the pursuit of adventure during the bloody and brutal reality of the Warsaw Uprising.

France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifled existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband: a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' own homes. Lucile initially tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them. But soon, a powerful love draws them together and leads them into the tragedy of war.

The human tragedy and the suffering of the Crimean Turks who were taken hostage as prisoners of war in German prison camps during World War II.

During the Blitz of World War II, a female screenwriter (Gemma Arterton) works on a film celebrating England's resilience as a way to buoy a weary populace's spirits. Her efforts to dramatise the true story of two sisters (Lily Knight and Francesca Knight) who undertook their own maritime mission to rescue wounded soldiers are met with mixed feelings by a dismissive all-male staff.

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.

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?

Nick Condon, an American journalist in 1945 Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.

Passengers on a ship traveling from Mexico to Europe in the 1930s represent society at large in that era. The crew is German, including the ship's Dr. Schumann, who falls in love with one of the passengers, La Condesa. A young American woman, Jenny, is traveling with the man she loves, David. Jenny is fascinated and puzzled by just who some of the other passengers are.

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.

An epic tale of Poles, Ukrainians, Jews who are deported to Russia. Their fate is shown from the perspective of a young boy Staszek, who goes to Siberia with his family and neighbors from a small village in the eastern Polish borderlands. Together with his companions he starts hard struggle for survival, where the most fearsome opponent turns out to be terrible, merciless nature... Circumstances force the boy to reevaluate his life and grow up faster. Soon he will have to learn the essential struggle for survival and make decisions that will where rate will be life of his relatives. He will also have to choose between love for the Jewish Zinnia and the Russian Luybka.

Children of Glory will commemorate Hungary's heroic Revolution of 1956, and takes place in Budapest and at the Melbourne Olympic Games in October and November of that year. While Soviet tanks were destroying Hungary, the Hungarian water polo team was winning over the Soviets in the Olympic pool in Melbourne, in what has been described as the bloodiest water polo match in history.

In December 1941, Czech soldier Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into their occupied homeland to assassinate Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich

The story of a Jewish family living in Hungary—through three generations—rising from humble beginnings to positions of wealth and power in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The patriarch becomes a prominent judge but is torn when his government sanctions anti-Jewish persecutions. His son converts to Christianity to advance his career as a champion fencer and Olympic hero, but is caught up in the Holocaust. Finally, the grandson, after surviving war, revolution, loss and betrayal, realizes that his ultimate allegiance must be to himself and his heritage.

A woman during the Second World War opens her heart to an evacuee after initially resolving to be rid of him.

Run Boy Run is the true story of Jurek, an eight-year-old boy, who escapes from the Warsaw ghetto, then manages to survive in the woods and working as a farmhand, disguising himself as a Polish orphan. He encounters people who will betray him for a reward, who will beat him up or try to kill him, and he meets those, who will do and risk almost everything to help him. Jurek’s resilience is put to the ultimate test, when an accident cripples him, making it harder to find work. But he struggles on against all odds. Eventually the Russians reach his area and Jurek even finds a family where he could stay. Yet he is betrayed again, and a young man from a Jewish orphanage forcefully tries to bring Jurek back to his people and his faith.

From his childhood in Poland to his adolescence in Nice to his years as a student in Paris and his tough training as a pilot during World War II, this tragi-comedy tells the romantic story of Romain Gary, one of the most famous French novelists and sole writer to have won the Goncourt Prize for French literature two times.

It's 1943 and World War II is raging in Europe. In New York, Arturo and Flora the daughter of a restaurant owner are in love, but she is promised in marriage to the son of a Mafia boss. There is a way around this, but to be able to marry Flora, Arturo needs to get permission from her father, who lives in a village in Sicily. Arturo doesn't have any money, so the only way he can get to Sicily is to enlist in the U.S. Army, which is preparing for a landing on the island.

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.

After the fall of the September Campaign of 1939, two Polish pilots are forced to fight for their nation in foreign battlefronts.

Summer of 1945. A temporary orphanage is established in an abandoned palace surrounded by forests for the eight children liberated from the Gross-Rosen camp. Hanka, also a former inmate, becomes their guardian. After the atrocities of the camp, the protagonists slowly begin to regain what is left of their childhood but the horror returns quickly. Camp Alsatians roam the forests around. Released by the SS earlier on, they have gone feral and are starving. Looking for food they besiege the palace. The children are terrified and their camp survival instinct is triggered.

A 12-year-old Jewish boy hides with a family of Catholic peasant farmers to escape the Nazis.

Waldemar Nods, a young man from Suriname, meets the older Dutch woman Rika van der Lans and they fall in love. In pre-WWII Netherlands they could not be more different. The one black, the other white, 17 years between them and on top of that Rika already has four children with another man. They love each other, but then Rika appears to be pregnant...

The true story of British intelligence whistleblower Katharine Gun who—prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion—leaked a top-secret NSA memo exposing a joint US-UK illegal spying operation against members of the UN Security Council. The memo proposed blackmailing member states into voting for war.

Germany, 1944. Leyna, the 15-year old daughter of a white German mother and a black African father, meets Lutz, a compassionate member of the Hitler Youth whose father is a prominent Nazi soldier, and they form an unlikely connection in this quickly changing world.

Poland's winning battle against Soviet Russia as seen through the eyes of two young protagonists, Ola and Jan. She is a Warsaw cabaret dancer, while he is a cavalry officer and poet who believes in socialist ideals

Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.

In a small town in the West of France, during the German Occupation, a room is requisitioned by a Wehrmacht captain, Werner von Ebrennac. The house where he now stays is inhabited by young Jeanne, who makes a living by giving piano lessons, and by her grandfather. Quite upset, the two "hosts" decide to resist the occupier by never speaking a word to him. Now Werner is a lover of France and its culture, and he tries to persuade them that a rapprochement between Germany and France would be beneficial for the two nations. Quite unexpectedly Jeanne, little by little, falls in love with Werner. At the same time, the Francophile officer loses his illusions, realizing at last that what Nazi Germany actually wants is to thrall France and to stifle its culture...

Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists.

Toward the end of World War II, middle-aged soldier Keita is entrusted with a postcard from a comrade who is sure he will die in battle. After the war ends, Keita visits his comrade's wife Yuko and bears witness to the tragic life she has led. This year's Oscar entry from Japan finds SHINDO in top form and his 49th and reportedly last film as fresh and poignant as ever.

An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.

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

1945. Young German soldier is hiding from Soviet soldiers in abandoned house. Every day he sees a girl who moved to the house next door until finally he's failing in love with her.

An American pilot impulsively joins His Majesty's Royal Air Force in Britain in an attempt to impress his ex-girlfriend.

An unassuming young lawyer leads a fight against the Nazis near the end of the Second World War.

Eliane Devries is the seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation in French Indochina, circa 1930. Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask intended to hide her torrid love affairs from upper class society

An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.

Helena has worked as a kind of midwife on the eve of the Lapland War. She wants to leave everything behind, and a suitable opportunity arises when she falls in love with a German-Finnish officer Johannes, who is leaving to German-led Titovka prison camp in the Soviet Union. Helena enlists into the camp as a nurse, where she experiences the brutality of war.

After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds an ex-soldier living in her apartment. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.

As a 13-year-old, fledgling writer Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.

Julia travels to the Indo-Burma border to perform for the troops during the World War II, on the insistence of Billimoria, her lover. She finds herself in love with Jemadar Malik, a soldier there.

A radio correspondent tries to rescue a burlesque queen from her marriage to a Nazi official.

Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu star in director Jean-Paul Rappenau's amusing farce set on the eve of World War II, which follows the intersecting lives of four Parisians as they cope with the impending invasion of their city by German forces. As the French government braces for impact, the lives of a young writer, a vain movie star, a French politician and a young scientist are examined as they attempt to deal with war and evade German spies.