CTA’s response to Jamyang Norbu’s post on the controversial statement made by the PM is rather puzzling. Not the faintest argument is provided, not even an attempt to deny Norbu’s analysis. The reader is instead …

1969, France, Jean Pierre Melville
Great news for all freedom cinema fans. This ultimate feature film of the French resistance has been restored and re-released. Adapted from Joseph Kessel’s wartime novel the film is an exciting …

2002, France, Poland, Germany and UK, Roman Polanski
An adaptation of concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoirs about his experiences in Nazi occupied Warsaw. Incredibly moving film. No heroics. Sometimes all you can really do is just …

1969, Yugoslavia, Veljko Bulajic
Big budget nationalist film (with imported Hollywood actors) of Yugoslav partisans fighting against the Nazis, Italians and local Chetnik collaborators. A young man from Lhasa told me it was screened to the …

2001, UK, Gillian Armstrong
The fictional story of a British agent in Nazi occupied France who works with the French resistance to rescue her lover, a missing RAF pilot. God, what crap. Especially when you know …

1958, UK, Lewis Gilbert
Inspirational story of the allied spy Violette Szabo in Nazi occupied France. Standard story of wartime heroism and martyrdom, yet strangely moving because you know it really happened. Violette was captured by …

1957, USA, Lewis Gilbert
Based on the true story of the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich by Czech agents parachuted into occupied Czechoslovakia by British Intelligence. Standard WWII action film but scenes of Nazi reprisals …

Part III of a War Trilogy
1958, Poland, Andrzej Wajda. The final part of the trilogy features Cybulski (the Polish James Dean) as a fighter in the first days of peace waiting to assassinate a Communist …

Part II of a War Trilogy
1957, Poland, Andrzej Wajda
A group of partisans try to escape from the Nazis through the sewers of Warsaw. Very intense and dark but poetically uplifting at times.
See also A Generation …

1969, West Germany, Switzerland, Marcel Ophuls
A classic documentary depicting the life of a French town during the Nazi occupation. The story of cowardice and collaboration but also of heroism and the resistance. Powerful and insightful. …