History Movies

Shakespeare’s King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an ageing warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

This big-budget historical epic from acclaimed Egyptian director Youssef Chahine features a crazed turn by Patrice Chereau as Napoleon Bonaparte. The film, an Egyptian-French co-production, deals with Napoleon’s occupation of…

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses…

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983. In the last and turbulent days of the military dictatorship, Alicia, a high school history teacher, begins to ask uncomfortable questions about the dark origins of…

This is a movie about the life of Israel’s king David.

Set during the fading glory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the film tells of the rise and fall of Alfred Redl, an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to…

A tale centered on the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302 where the Flemish rank and file won a major victory over the glorious French knights.

Set during the period of growing influence of the Indian independence movement in the British Raj, the story begins with the arrival in India of a British woman, Miss Adela…

This is based on a true story. Solomon Northrop is a black man in the mid 19th century before slavery was abolished. He’s a born free man who works as…

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and…

The reign of England’s King John is threatened by Philip of France who demands that John’s nephew Arthur be placed on the throne. Pragmatic and decisive, King John moves to…

New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S….

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

New York City’s Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police…

The tragic medieval tale of a man of inhuman strength, fierce temper and a desire for noble knighthood. While on the run as a murderer, he finds new life as…

In the German-occupied Paris, Helene is torn between the love for her boyfriend Jean, working for the resistance and the German administrator Bergmann, who will do anything to gain her…

In New Zealand in the 1860s the native Māori people fought the British colonials to keep the land guaranteed to them by treaty. The warrior Te Wheke fights for the…

The familiar story of Lieutenant Bligh, whose cruelty leads to a mutiny on his ship. This version follows both the efforts of Fletcher Christian to get his men beyond the…

As the Space Race ensues, seven pilots set off on a path to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings forth momentous…

The true story of German-Czech businessman Oskar Schindler (1908-74) as told by some of the Jews — more than a thousand people — whose lives he saved from extermination during…

A family saga taking place mostly in a small Slovak village over a period of thirty years (1887–1917). The first part captures the life of Martin Pichandu in the development…

Forced to run from Texas Rangers after a heated misunderstanding leads to the death of a lawman, Mexican American farmer Gregorio Cortez sets off in desperate flight, evading a massive…

Phar Lap, the big bold chestnut reigned as the king of the turf in the depression that gripped Australia of the 1930s. From his humble beginnings the New Zealand bred…

A story about the effect of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on a boy’s life and the lives of the Japanese people.

The story of Japan’s victory in the battle of Tsushima Strait.

Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a…

A biplane pilot is saddled with a spoiled industrialist’s daughter on a search for her missing father through Asia that eventually involves them in a struggle against a Chinese warlord.

Fr. Hugh O’Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the…

The life of King Henry the Sixth, in three parts.

Danton and Robespierre were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France’s ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass…

The life of King Henry the Sixth, in three parts.

The first and only Indian movie to be made in Sanskrit. The movie follows the life and times of Sankara – the founder of the non-duality (Advaita) school of Indian…

In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance…

A young artist is commissioned by the wife of a wealthy landowner to make a series of drawings of the estate while her husband is away.

Hedwig, a young wealthy woman growing up in the straight-jacket of bourgeois morality in the Victorian era, descends into madness after years of sexual repression and tragedy.

During the Second World War, a small group of students at Munich University begin to question the decisions and sanity of Germany’s Nazi government. The students form a resistance cell…

During World War II, an orphaned young girl seeks to survive and perhaps even help resistance fighters battle the Nazis.

During the French Revolution, a surprising company shares a coach, trying to catch up something – the time itself, perhaps.

Village of Artigat, southern France, summer 1542, during the reign of Francis I. Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols marry. A few years later, accused of having committed a robbery,…

A dramatization of the life of Albert Speer, Hitler’s young architect and onetime confidant, and his meteoric rise into the Nazi hierarchy. Based upon Speer’s own monograph of the same…