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Subject: World War I

The first truly world war is narrowly defined as being between the years of 1914 and 1918 and has produced legendary tales that grew out of its horrors and its triumphs.

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  • Director: Özhan Eren, Murat Saraçoglu
  • Release Date: 2008
  • Production Country: Turkey

It is winter in the Caucasus Mountains, and the only people left in a village able to carry aid to besieged Ottoman soldiers are the children.

A Farewell to Arms

  • Director: Frank Borzage
  • Release Date: 1932
  • Production Country: United States

Frederick Henry and Catherine, the army nurse who took care of him, have become lovers, but when he returns to the front amidst a misunderstanding between them, Henry begins marking time until he is free to search for the woman he has never stopped loving.

All Quiet on the Western Front

  • Director: Lewis Milestone
  • Release Date: 1930
  • Production Country: United States

Young German boys are recruited to fight for the glory of the Fatherland, but once they arrive at the front, their experiences prove that warfare is anything but glorious.

Anzacs

  • Director: Pino Amenta, John Dixon, George Miller
  • Release Date: 1985
  • Production Country: Australia

After war is declared, a dozen young men in Australia are recruited for the army. Brought together in boot camp, the young men eventually ship out for war, together facing battle, loss, and victory—for those who survive.

Arsenal (January Uprising in Kiev in 1918)

  • Director: Aleksandr Dovzhenko
  • Release Date: 1929
  • Production Country: Soviet Union

The Russian Empire is disintegrating and the Bolsheviks are everywhere, including in the newly declared Ukrainian state. Former soldier-turned-revolutionary Tymosh and his troops have set up their headquarters at the arsenal in Kiev and stand ready to take on the military and any others who might stand in the way of the people's victory in Ukraine.

Beneath Hill 60

  • Director: Jeremy Sims
  • Release Date: 2010
  • Production Country: Australia

A reluctant Australian miner is recruited to be the head of a secret battalion of explosives and tunneling experts in support of the British Army on the Western Front, but the massive, leaking labyrinth of tunnels beneath Hill 60 proves to be a daunting project, one in which his success supporting the British army might mean sacrificing his own—and the lives of the rest of his fellow tunnelers'.

Blood and Oil: The Middle East in World War I

  • Director: Marty Callaghan
  • Release Date: 2006
  • Production Country: United States

Numerous aspects of the Middle East are examined, including Western political intrigues from World War I, the demise of the Ottoman Empire, and the birth of the Republic of Turkey as the foundation for current events in the Middle East.

Gallipoli

  • Director: Peter Weir
  • Release Date: 1981
  • Production Country: Australia

Two Australians participate in the brutal Gallipoli campaign against the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

La grande illusion (Grand Illusion)

  • Director: Jean Renoir
  • Release Date: 1937
  • Production Country: France

After several attempts at escape, three French P.O.W.s are sent to an impenetrable, escape-proof fortress--but appearances can be deceiving and aristocrats can be useful for more than simply ordering their inferiors about.

Lawrence of Arabia

  • Director: David Lean
  • Release Date: 1962
  • Production Country: United Kingdom

A young Englishman goes from British intelligence officer to rebel leader in the Arab insurgence against the Ottoman Empire.

Marthe

  • Director: Jean-Loup Hubert
  • Release Date: 1997
  • Production Country: France

Recovering from wounds receiving in battle, Simon meets and falls in love with a local schoolteacher, Marthe, but as the time approaches for him to return to the front, Marthe is torn between her new love for Simon and her loyalty to her fiancé, also a soldier at the front; soon both Simon and Marthe must choose between honor, loyalty, and love.

Noirs et blancs en couleur (Black and White in Color)

  • Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
  • Release Date: 1976
  • Production Country: Ivory Coast, France, West Germany, Switzerland

When they finally catch up with the news from home, French settlers in the Ivory Coast realize that they have been at war with their German neighbors for several months, so they draft the local Africans to be their troops and set out to make war, not love.

Oh! What a Lovely War

  • Director: Richard Attenborough
  • Release Date: 1969
  • Production Country: United Kingdom

The grim and brutal realities of World War I and the foibles of the English upper crust at that time are cheekily told through the eyes of the Smith family, whose four sons march off to war with something less than the enthusiasm the recorded popular culture of the day would suggest.

Okraina (Outskirts or The Patriots)

  • Director: Boris Barnet
  • Release Date: 1933
  • Production Country: Soviet Union

The home front and the battle front are two different worlds, but peasants fighting on differing sides have more in common with each other than the ideologies of their leaders would have them believe.

Passchendaele

  • Director: Paul Gross
  • Release Date: 2008
  • Production Country: Canada

When his girlfriend's younger brother, Daniel, runs away to join the army, Dunne re-enlists in order to find the boy and bring him home, but when he finally locates Daniel in Belgium it may be too late, for the bloody "attrition warfare" of Paschendaele has taken its toll on the Canadian forces and Daniel is wholly unprepared to face the awful realities of trench warfare.

Paths of Glory

  • Director: Stanley Kubrick
  • Release Date: 1957
  • Production Country: United States

After seeing most of their fellow soldiers die in a doomed assault on a fortified hilltop, a small group of French soldiers retreat to their trench and refuse to return to the battle. Despite the best efforts of their immediate commander to prove it was the general's vainglorious ambition caused the situation, there seems to be no means at hand to prevent the planned execution.

Rigas Sargi (Defenders of Riga)

  • Director: Aigars Grauba
  • Release Date: 2007
  • Production Country: Latvia

Returning home to his fiance after fighting as part of the Russian defense in World War I, Martins finds himself in the midst of another war, as Latvia asserts its independence from the Russian Empire. The untrained Latvian volunteers, who are in desperate need of trained soldiers in their ranks as Russian troops bear down upon them, may not have time for Martins to convince his fiance to wait for him through yet another war.

Sarajevski atentat (The Day That Shook the World)

  • Director: Veljko Bulajic
  • Release Date: 1975
  • Production Country: Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, West Germany

As the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie inspect Austrian troops in Sarajevo, Serbian nationalists plot in the background, looking for a way to free the southern Slavs from Austrian control and establish a pan-Serbian nation in the Balkans—and on the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, one Bosnian finds himself in the right place at the right time to strike.

Sergeant York

  • Director: Howard Hawks
  • Release Date: 1941
  • Production Country: United States

Having turned his life around with religion, Alvin York isn't interested in going off to fight a war that will require him to take the lives of his fellow man. However, unable to avoid the draft, Alvin finds himself shipped out to Europe, and when he and his fellow troops are pinned down by German fire, Alvin realizes that sometimes life is just a turkey shoot after all.

Son Osmanli Yandim Ali (The Last Ottoman: Yandim Ali)

  • Director: Mustafa Sevki Dogan
  • Release Date: 2007
  • Production Country: Turkey

A rouge deserter joins Atatürk in the resistance against the Allies as well as the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

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