When newly-commissioned SS Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) witnesses the chemical disinfectant he's helped perfect being used to systematically murder interred Jews, he has no choice but to act. The only sympathetic ear Gerstein is able to find is that of young Father Riccardo (Mathieu Kassovitz), a priest with deep ties to the Vatican. While Riccardo takes on the obstructive Vatican hierarchy, Gerstein must walk a tightrope between documenting and enabling the atrocities his fellow SS o find out more...

1943; Hungary is one of the last nations to have its Jewish population rounded up and sent to the Nazi death and labour camps. This is the semi-autobiographical story of one 14-year-old boy and his tale of survival from deportation to Buchenwald and on through liberation and the culture shock of his return to Budapest. Told without resort to emotion we follow our hero and others cling on to what scraps of humanity that they can against the total horror surrounding them. Lajos Koltai's film ranks find out more...

We follow the everyday travails of a group of WW2 French resistance fighters in Marseille, including their engineer leader and a middle-aged woman who sets up anti-German attacks without telling her husband or daughter, as they do battle against the occupying Nazis, collaborators and traitors in their own camp. This tense and atmospheric classic, based partly on Joseph Kessel's novel and partly on Melville's own experiences as a resistance fighter who later escaped France to join the Free French find out more...

The tale of two men banged up for years in the notorious French penal colony Devil's Island. Two escape bids by one of them results in years of solitary confinement but make him simply more determined to flee, even as old age approachs. The ultimate prison escape movie loosely based on a true story. find out more...

The tale of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's last official executioner, a man who personally dispatched 608 men and women, including various Nazi war criminals, Timothy Evans and Ruth Ellis. Timothy Spall superbly pulls off how this rather ordinary, but distinctly odd, bloke coped emotionally and professionally with his job. An awesome period piece and a superb look into a very strange occupation. A must for anyone who liked Vera Drake. find out more...

Kevin Lea Davies says: Few movies have affected me on such a deep and emotional level like Son of Saul. I walked into the theater having no idea what the subject matter was, or reading any reviews, so I wasn't sure what to expect. What I witnessed was one of the most difficult and trying pieces about the Holocaust, and a bond between father and son during the most horrific circumstances. By now, many of you have read about the unique style and focus of the film. Shot find out more...

Sophie, a beautiful woman fought over by two obsessive men, is haunted by her horrific past as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Through vivid flashbacks we hear her story of survival, and the brutal choice she was forced to make. Brilliant. find out more...

World War Two and a group of American soldiers reside in the infamous Stalag 17, a German prison camp designed to hold the most rebellious of inmates. It soon becomes apparent that there is a traitor amongst them and the most obvious choice is a cynical, opportunistic fellow prisoner, always on the scam and the only man on nodding terms with their German captors. Stalag 17 is classic war time drama, tense and claustrophobic, with William Holden justifiably winning an Oscar for his performance in find out more...

An epic family drama spanning three generations of a Jewish family, who moved from a rural village to the city, became wealthy, respected, bourgeois and/or radicalised and Hungarianised, set against a backdrop of the final days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, World War 1, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust and the Communist era. A tour-de-force performance by Ralph Fiennes in various reincarnations, especially as the character who won a fencing gold medal for Hungary in the 1936 Olympics, in th find out more...

Fascinating, factually based story of an anti-social double murderer, Robert Stroud, who used his years in the world's toughest prison to transform himself into a world-renowned ornithologist. Superb performances all round but Karl Malden is particularly riveting as the sadistic prison governer. find out more...