Babushka Aleksandra moseys on down to the war zone in Chechnya to search for her soldier boy grandson. Here the old biddy, poking her nose in places it wouldn't normally go, brings peace and love, chilling out the grunts in the soldier camp and even making friends amongst the Chechens when she briefly takes a trip to the market. On many critics' lists as one of the best films of 2008; one for serious connoisseurs of film. find out more...

Nick Broomfield's docu-dramatisation of the massacre of twenty-four men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq, killed by US Marines in retaliation for the death of one of their number in a roadside bomb. Characteristically broad in its approach, following as it does with equal lack of judgement the soldiers, the Iraqi families and the insurgents. A traumatic, gripping and thoughtful re-enactment of events. find out more...

Mind those steps! Perhaps the most famous movie scene in the history of cinema. The documentary style story of mutiny aboard the Potemkin as the sailors fight oppression and fire on Tzarist troops attempting to quell rebellion in the city of Oddessa. Almost every shot is so beautiful it could work as a still. find out more...

The original big screen romantic epic that fired the hearts of generations to come. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and telling the tale of the love between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, it's the history of a selfish woman who doesn't want to admit her feelings about the man she loves, and finally loses. Won Best Picture at 1939 Academy Awards. find out more...

Originally released in 1988, the wait is over for the UK release of this anime classic, superb animated feature from the Studio Ghibli studio (Miyazaki's animation stable). What sets this film apart from the fantastical films made in the tradition of his peers, it its historical and emotional realism. The focus in Takahata's film is on the story of its two young protagonists, brother and sister Seita and Setsuko, as they flee the destruction of their home and family after the American firebombin find out more...

I Am Cuba is an epic poem to Communist kitsch - a dramatic journey though the decadence of Batista Havana set against the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people. find out more...

1941; a Jewish girl witnesses the murder of her family by a Nazi officer and a Jewish American guerrilla team roam Occupied France operating with a Geneva Accord breaking ferocity. find out more...

Based on the novel 'Post Mortem: The Story of Katyn' by Andrzej Mularczyk this film tells the horrific story of the 1940 Soviet NKVD's massacre, and subsequent cover-up, of an estimated 22,000, mainly Polish, military officers, police and intellectuals. Rarely does a film about the horrors of organised genocide achieve in its representation such an honest and harrowing account of crimes against humanity. find out more...

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Ran, Kurosawa's last great epic, is a Jidaigeki (Japanese period drama) depicting the fall of Hidetora Ichimonj, an ageing Sengoku-era warlord who abdicates as ruler in favor of his three sons. His kingdom slowly disintegrates as the sons struggle for power, murdering rivals and laying waste to the land, and Hidetora goes insane after watching his retainers slaughtered in an epic massacre, the centrepiece of the film. As the kingdom crumbles and rival warlords move in for the kill, the Ichimonji find out more...