EHL Resources
Resource Guide: Films

Resources
Resource Guide: Films

Please note that, due to the nature of the subject matter, some of this content may be inappropriate for younger age groups.

  • A Long Night's Journey into Day – Film about South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.
  • Arlington West Film – A documentary produced for Veterans for Peace under the direction of Peter Dudar and Sally Marr.
  • Blood Diamond – Movie that shows issues on child soldiers and displacement, protection, internally displaced people, refugees, criminal courts and family links.
  • Cry Freedom – Film by Sir Richard Attenborough about the relationship between activist Steve Biko (Denzel Washington) and newspaper editor Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) during apartheid in South Africa.
  • Downfall – German movie about the last 12 days of Hitler’s Bunker that looks at his charisma as well as issues of guilt.
  • Forgiving Dr. Mengele – Winner of the Special Jury Prize in Slamdance Film Festival 2006, Forgiving Dr. Mengele is a thought-provoking documentary about a shocking act of forgiveness by Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor and the firestorm of criticism it has provoked.
  • God Grew Tired of Us – Explores the indomitable spirit of three "Lost Boys" from the Sudan who are forced to leave their homeland due to a tumultuous civil war.
  • In the Tall Grass – Focuses on the Hutu and Tutsi as they struggle through Rwanda's unique reconciliation process Gacaca, a network of grassroots community courts.
  • Innocent Voices (Voces Inocentes, in Spanish) – A raw, powerful portrait of childhood spent in a war zone in El Salvador.
  • Kandahar – A haunting, open-ended drama. During the Taliban era, Kandahar follows an Afghani-Canadian woman as she attempts to enter Afghanistan in search of a despondent sister.
  • Lord of War – Starring Nicholas Cage, this film is based upon a true story of a major Russian arms trader.
  • Lord's Children – PBS documentary on Uganda's civil war.
  • Nuremburg (Not to be confused with Judgment at Nuremburg) – The trial of Nazi war criminals following the Allied victory in Europe in World War II is dramatized in this TV movie starring Alec Baldwin as Robert Jackson, a U.S. Supreme Court justice who served as the chief prosecutor for the Allies.
  • Pray the Devil Back to Hell – The compelling tale of a group of brave women who demanded peace for Liberia, a country devastated by a decades-long civil war.
  • Rape in Armed Conflict in Africa – This HBO documentary can be ordered online.
  • Regret to Inform – On January 1, 1968, Barbara Sonneborn's husband, Jeff Gurvitz, left to fight in Vietnam. Eight weeks later, on February 29, 1968, he crawled out of a foxhole during a mortar attack to rescue his radio operator and was killed.
  • Return to My Lai – A 60-minute documentary about the story of My Lai. On the morning of March 16, 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers killed as many as 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, a village in South Vietnam.
  • S21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine – In 1975-79, almost two million Cambodians lost their lives to murder and famine when the Khmer Rouge forced the urban population into the countryside to fulfill their ideal of an agrarian utopia.
  • Saving Private Ryan – Featuring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon; directed by Steven Spielberg.
  • Sometimes in April – Movie about the Rwandan genocide. It looks at the role of the courts, opens discussion for considering the inequalities between the living standards of victims and perpetrators being held for war crimes.
  • Taxi to the Dark Side – Investigates the torture and killing of an innocent Afghani taxi driver in this gripping probe into reckless abuses of government power.
  • The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – The innocence of childhood savagely collides with the Holocaust.
  • The Children's March – Teaching Tolerance and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
  • The Fog of War – Eleven lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara: Featuring interviews from the man himself, this movie explores the experiences of the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.
  • The Killing Fields – This harrowing but rewarding 1984 drama concerns the real-life relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor). Pran is left at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge after Schanberg, who chose to stay after American evacuation but was booted out, failed to get him safe passage.
  • The Power of One – A film that shows youth empowered to make change in apartheid in South Africa.
  • Uganda Rising – Charts the lengthy war between Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni's army and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group led by Joseph Kony, a man who claims to converse with higher powers.
  • Waltz With Bashir – Movie about 1982's Lebanon War.
  • War Dance – Movie with the following topics: children in war, refugee camp, recovery, healing powers.
  • What's Going On? – UN/Showtime DVDs on international humanitarian law subjects: mines, child soldiers, etc.