20 best movies like Bomb Girls (2012)

A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.

In 1942, Henan Province was devastated by the most tragic famine in modern Chinese history, resulting in the deaths of at least three million men, women and children. Although the primary cause of the famine was a severe drought, it was exacerbated by locusts, windstorms, earthquakes, epidemic disease and the corruption of the ruling Kuomintang government.

Six vignettes follow the Allied invasion from July 1943 to winter 1944, from Sicily north to Venice.

Regent Horthy is the leader of Hungary and a German ally, but his favorable standing with Hitler changes as the war comes to an end. Forced to cede Hungary’s power or else witness the execution of his son, Regent Horthy gives up control of his country to the Nazis, who quickly move Hungarians to ghettos and death camps, with no hope in sight. But the despair changes when a young man named Elek emerges. Separated from his family during the relocations and aided by the woman he loves , Elek defies the enemy by becoming one of them. In a race against time, disguised as a Nazi Officer he embarks on a mission to save his family and thousands of his countrymen.

To be defeated and not be - a victory. This is the motto that life is guided by three young friends: Alek, Sophy and Rudy. Scouts, high school graduates high school in Warsaw drifting ambitious plans for the future broken through September 1939. Entering adulthood in a very dramatic times, which puts them a choice - to survive at any cost, or to join the fighting for a free homeland, risking everything. The boys brought up in patriotic homes, shaped by the ideals of scouting, they decide to fight. They become soldiers, and although every scrape with death, they can live a full life.

The story of legendary blues performer, Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the 1920s and '30s.

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

Thirty years on from the 1984 Union Carbide plant malfunction, the consequences of which are tragically ongoing, A Prayer for Rain is the powerful and moving story of the Bhopal tragedy, one of the great corporate and environmental scandals of the last half-century. It dramatises the dependence of the local community on the chemical plant that will eventually cause catastrophe, and the series of oversights that led to an event that stands as a benchmark for corporate irresponsibility in the developing world.

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.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

A look inside the story of two newlyweds who are parted from each other and spend the next half-century of their lives trying to reunite.

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.

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.

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.

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

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

Knut Hamsun is Norway's most famous and admired author. Ever since he was young he has hated the English for the starvation they caused Norway during WWI. When the Germans occupy Norway 9 April 1940 he welcomes them and the protection they can give from Great Britain. He supports the national socialist ideals, but opposes the way these ideals are turned into action - that Norwegians are jailed and executed. His wife Marie travels in Germany during the war as a sign of support from Knut and herself.

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

A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.

A chronicle of the Cristeros War (1926-1929), which was touched off by a rebellion against the Mexican government's attempt to secularize the country.

Hannah Stern, an American-born Jewish adolescent, is uninterested in the culture, faith and customs of her relatives; however, Hannah begins to revaluate her heritage when she has a supernatural experience that transports her back to a Nazi death camp in 1941. There, she meets a young girl named Rivkah, a fellow captive in the camp. As Rivkah and Hannah struggle to survive in the face of daily atrocities, they form an unbreakable bond.

Epic story about two families and their friendship and common destiny in Sweden's Gothenburg in the 1940s and 1950s. Told from the perspective of young Simon Larsson, who learns that he's an adopted child who has a Jewish father from Germany. After WWII Simon travels to explore his roots - a journey that leads to the basic mysteries of the human life. After the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson.

Germany, May 1945, deep in the Harz Mountains a U.S. tank crew discovers a platoon of Germans preparing to ambush U.S. supply trucks.

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.

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

Based upon the true story of Olga Benário, the German-born wife of Brazilian communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes. During the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945) she was arrested and sent to Nazi Germany, where she was put to death in a concentration camp. After World War II began, Vargas decided to uphold the Allies.

The dramatic story of US marines in training, in combat and in love during World War II. The story centres on a major who guides the raw recruits from their training to combat. Based on the novel by Leon Uris.

The story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots to fly in a combat squadron during World War II.

Set in the 1950s, a a group of young girls in upstate New York form their own gang.

Allide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually, and their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.

Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism.

Immigrants from around the world enter Los Angeles every day, with hopeful visions of a better life, but little notion of what that life may cost. Their desperate scenarios test the humanity of immigration enforcement officers. In Crossing Over, writer-director Wayne Kramer explores the allure of the American dream, and the reality that immigrants find – and create -- in 21st century L.A.

An epic love story: Olanna and Kainene are glamorous twins, living a privileged city life in newly independent 1960s Nigeria. The two women make very different choices of lovers, but rivalry and betrayal must be set aside as their lives are swept up in the turbulence of war.

Inspired by global phenomenon of military wives choirs, the story celebrates a band of misfit women who form a choir on a military base. As unexpected bonds of friendship flourish, music and laughter transform their lives, helping each other to overcome their fears for loved ones in combat.

In the late 1930s, a young machinist named Maurice Richard distinguished himself as a ice hockey player of preternatural talent. Although that was enough to get him into the Montreal Canadiens, his frequent injuries cost him the confidence of his team and the fans. In the face of these doubts, Richard eventually shows the kind of aggressive and skillful play that would make him one of the greatest players of all time as "The Rocket." However for all his success, Richard and his fellow French Canadians face constant discrimination in a league dominated by the English speaking. Although a man of few words, Richard begins to speak his own mind about the injustice which creates a organizational conflict that would culminate in his infamous 1955 season suspension that sparks an ethnic riot in protest. In the face of these challenges, Richard must decide who exactly is he playing for.

The story of a pair of children born within moments of India gaining independence from England, growing up in the country that is nothing like their parent's generation. A Canadian-British film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel of the same name.

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.

This is a film about a troubled teen, Sean Randall, who is falsely accused of planning a Columbine shooting scenario. It all begins when an unlikely bond forms between Sean (Connor Jessup) and a preppy teenage girl named Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast). Deanna's boyfriend is deeply threatened by Sean and Deanna's friendship, resulting in a violent confrontation. Seeking to protect himself, Sean issues a death threat online - and is swiftly arrested. When the police raid Sean's home, they find rifles, shotguns, knives and ammunition - all property of Sean's father Ricky (Michael Buie), an avid hunter. They also find a supposed "hit list" with twenty names of people who have tormented Sean. The authorities and the media proclaim another Columbine has been narrowly averted, and soon Sean faces a terrifying imprisonment in a youth detention facility. Sean's only hope is to overcome his dark image, and prove his innocence to Deanna and to his community.

A thrilling love story between the young boxer Vincent and the German Eva, who soon has to marry with the middle-aged Dirk to save her family. While the war starts in the Netherlands their impossible love inflames. May 14, 1940, the day that the centre of Rotterdam is bombed and the young lovers lose sight of each other.

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.

In 1955, young photographer Dennis Stock develops a close bond with actor James Dean while shooting pictures of the rising Hollywood star.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

The real-life story of Gisella Perl, a Jewish Hungarian doctor imprisoned in the notorious Auschwitz death camp of World War II.

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

A man searching for his childhood best friend — a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust — who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

A portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden, queen from age six, who fights the conservative forces that are against her ideas to modernize Sweden and who have no tolerance for her awakening sexuality.

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 story of a lone father's relationship with his daughter, of the destructive power of alcohol, of a child's vulnerability, but also of love, betrayal and socialist politics in 1970s Sweden. A unique and moving story freely based on Åsa Linderborg's best-selling novel.