With the Nazis having reduced Warsaw to little more than rubble, the young “Alex” (Jordan Kiziuk) is separated from his family, who have been sent to a concentration camp, and is now forced to scavenge as best he can amongst the ruins. Fortunately, this is a resourceful young lad who quickly learns his way around the ghetto using the sewers and the attics to keep himself safe. That’s easier said than done as the water supply has been turned off and food is extremely scarce. There are still people in the city but with plenty prepared to turn him in for an apple or a loaf of bread, he has to be very wary of whom he can trust. His encounter with fellow refugees “Freddy” (Lee Ross) and “Henyrk” (Simon Gregor) alerts him to a way out of their squalid environment into safer parts but he still hopes for a reunion with his dad “Stefan” (Patrick Bergin) and for that to happen, however unlikely, he must risk remaining in a Jewish quarter that is being slowly demolished by the invaders. It’s a lot of responsibility for this young lad who really only has himself and his pet mouse “Snow” against perils around every corner, and Kiziuk holds that role together engagingly well. This film is also quite interesting in that it tells us the story from that child’s perspective which offers quite an affecting way to demonstrate both the brutishness of the soldiers and their indiscriminate thuggery as neither age nor sex made the slightest difference to the treatment they received. The production takes us deep into the infrastructure of “Ptasia Street” and into the psychology of both this boy and those he encounters as he must live his life by his guile and with some occasional goodwill, and though the brutality isn’t as graphic as in many similar stories, it is just as impactful. It’s quite compelling to watch and his choice of book - “Robinson Crusoe” rather sums the whole thing up.
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
Seven British children bury their mother and hide her death, until their long-lost father returns.
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
In 1942, in an occupied Paris, the apolitical grocer Edmond Batignole lives with his wife and daughter in a small apartment in the building of his grocery. When his future son-in-law and collaborator of the German Pierre-Jean Lamour calls the Nazis to arrest the Jewish Bernstein family, they move to the confiscated apartment. Some days later, the young Simon Bernstein escapes from the Germans and comes to his former home. When Batignole finds him, he feels sorry for the boy and lodges him, hiding Simon from Pierre-Jean and also from his wife. Later, two cousins of Simon meet him in the cellar of the grocery. When Pierre-Jean finds the children, Batignole decides to travel with the children to Switzerland.
Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.
WWII has ended and Hanna is still grieving over her husband's disappearance. When the Christmas Comet appears for the first time in 70 years, Hanna is caught in a terrible storm and knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, she's in 2016.
At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.