In 1935, at the age of 13, Simon Chalumot is enrolled in a military school by his father. His reluctance to become a soldier is apparent to all and he is bullied and abused by the military staff and his fellow pupils. At 15, he runs away, but is captured and returned to the school by his father, a patriotic veteran of the last war. Soon after, Chalumot graduates to a higher military school, but now the bullying is so brutal that he can take no more…
Category: War
The Wars focuses on rebellious Robert Ross, who battles against the uptight, upper-crust Rosedale society he was born into; when war is declared in 1914, he enlists in the Canadian army to escape from personal tragedy. Though it recreates the horrors of WWI trench warfare with harrowing realism, the film is more interested in how war replicates, and even amplifies, the class divisions of the homefront; in one of many telling details, Robert is the only man in his unit with a handgun because he is the only man wealthy enough to afford one.
In this melodrama, set in German-occupied Italy during WW II, a Yankee spy is concealed in the attic of an underground contact’s house. The contact’s wife does not want him there as she is having an affair with the German Officer who is looking for him. He remains in the attic, hidden by the woman’s son. Trouble ensues when the American is seen by the woman and her lover. He must escape across the slippery rain-soaked tile roof tops.
In April, 1975, civil war breaks out; Beirut is partitioned along a Moslem-Christian line. Tarek is in high school, making Super 8 movies with his friend, Omar. At first the war is a lark: school has closed, the violence is fascinating, getting from West to East is a game. His mother wants to leave; his father refuses. Tarek spends time with May, a Christian, orphaned and living in his building. By accident, Tarek goes to an infamous brothel in the war-torn Olive Quarter, meeting its legendary madam, Oum Walid. He then takes Omar and May there using her underwear as a white flag for safe passage. Family tensions rise. As he comes of age, the war moves inexorably from adventure to tragedy.
German spies, using Freya Talberg as bait, convince neutral Spaniard Ulysses Ferragut to navigate a ship to refuel German U-boats, telling him they would never fire on passenger ships. But one torpedoes the ship his son, Esteban, was on, killing him and many others. He sets out to punish the ones responsible.
In February of 1941, South African troops are in action against the Italian forces on the northern frontier of Kenya. An Italian invasion, aimed at pushing the Allied Forces out of Central and East Africa, is imminent. The South African Command realizes it has no forces at its disposal capable of stopping the Italian objective. The Command resorts to a grand bluff, designed to mislead the Italians into believing that heavy concentrations of South African troops are placed at strategic points—thus making the planned advanced impossible.
Daniel Thatcher is an American sergeant serving with a British tank corps in North Africa. He and most of his unit are captured by the Germans, who learn his identity as a man who once tried to assassinate Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s right-hand man. Thatcher’s wife was killed in the concentration camps, and now, after his failed attempt to kill the Nazi leader, Thatcher is a real prize for his captors. But Thatcher prefers not to go back to Germany as a prize, so he leads his fellow tankers in an escape attempt.
The film tells the story of a grounded American pilot during the Second World War who learns about the noble spirit of the Chinese poeple when he is rescued by the communist-led Chinese army after an emergency landing near the Great Wall. On the way to the Communist base, the pilot falls in love with a girl soldier whose lingering memory of being raped by the Japanese makes her a determined fighter. Half a century later, the American pilot returns to the Yellow River to pay his respects to the native people who rescued him.