Best Belgian history movies

When dictator Joseph Stalin dies, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. As they bumble, brawl and back-stab their way to the top, the question remains — just who is running the government?

Barents Sea, August 12th, 2000. During a Russian naval exercise, and after suffering a serious accident, the K-141 Kursk submarine sinks with 118 crew members on board. While the few sailors who are still alive barely manage to survive, their families push for accurate information and a British officer struggles to obtain from the Russian government a permit to attempt a rescue before it is late. But general incompetence are against all their efforts.

After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as Willy, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels.

Romulus and Remus, two shepherds and loyal brothers, end up taking part to a journey that will lead one of them to be the founder of the greatest nation ever seen. However, the fate of the chosen one will pass from killing his own brother.

France, 1789 - just before the Revolution. When talented chef Manceron is dismissed from his prestigious position by the Duke of Chamfort, he loses the taste for cooking. But when he meets the mysterious Louise, together they decide to create the very first restaurant in France.

Two young police officers find themselves torn between collaboration and resistance as they navigate the Nazi-occupied Antwerp during World War II.

As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler, risking his faith and fate to save millions of Jews from genocide.

Paris, France, December 1897. The young playwright Edmond Rostand feels like a failure. Inspiration has abandoned him. Married and father of two children, desperate and penniless, he persuades the great actor Constant Coquelin to perform the main role in his new play. But there is a problem: Coquelin wants to premiere it at Christmas and Edmond has not written a single word.

From his childhood in Poland to his adolescence in Nice to his years as a student in Paris and his tough training as a pilot during World War II, this tragi-comedy tells the romantic story of Romain Gary, one of the most famous French novelists and sole writer to have won the Goncourt Prize for French literature two times.

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War. In 1960, the UN became the stage for a political earthquake as the struggle for independence in the Congo put the world on high alert. The newly independent nation faced its first coup d'état, orchestrated by Western forces and Belgium, which were reluctant to relinquish control over their resource-rich former colony. The US tried to divert attention by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the African continent. In 1961, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was brutally assassinated, silencing a key voice in the fight against colonialism; his death was facilitated by Belgian and CIA operatives. Musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach took action, denouncing imperialism and structural racism. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev intensified his criticism of the US, highlighting the racial barriers that characterized American society.

The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.

In 1671, with war brewing with Holland, a penniless prince invites Louis XIV to three days of festivities at a chateau in Chantilly. The prince wants a commission as a general, so the extravagances are to impress the king. In charge of all is the steward, Vatel, a man of honor, talent, and low birth. The prince is craven in his longing for stature: no task is too menial or dishonorable for him to give Vatel. While Vatel tries to sustain dignity, he finds himself attracted to Anne de Montausier, the king's newest mistress. In Vatel, she finds someone who's authentic, living out his principles within the casual cruelties of court politics. Can the two of them escape unscathed?

A chronicle of the unconditional love between a mother and her daughter, from 1958 to the present day, which is endangered by an unsteady and manipulative father.

In one fell swoop, nine-year old David Van de Steen lost his mother, his father and his sister in an attack by the Brabant Killers in Aalst. His grandfather, Albert, has the well-nigh impossible task of giving David a new perspective on life, a future.

The film follows the journey of Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank dedicated her diary. A fiery teenager, Kitty wakes up in the near future in Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam and embarks on a journey to find Anne, who she believes is still alive, in today's Europe. While the young girl is shocked by the modern world, she also comes across Anne's legacy.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Once upon a time, a poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty, and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard. One day, the woodcutter's wife rescues a baby. A baby girl thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest. This baby, this "most precious of cargoes", will transform the lives of the poor woodcutter's wife and her husband, as well as those whose paths the child will cross—including the man who threw her from the train. And some will try to protect her, whatever the cost. Their story will reveal the worst and the best in the hearts of men.

A young woman from the American Midwest, Loïe Fuller became the toast of the Folies Bergère at the turn of the 20th century and an icon of the Belle Epoque. Inventor of the breathtaking Serpentine Dance, she was a pioneer of modern dance and lighting techniques. It was her complicated relationship to her protégé - Isadora Duncan – that precipitated the downfall of this early 20th century icon.

Secretary of the most influential Communist Party in the Western world, Enrico Berlinguer challenged the international balance by seeking to bring the Communists to government in Italy and achieve socialism in a democratic country. From 1973, when he escaped an attack by the Bulgarian secret services, to the assassination of his main ally Aldo Moro in 1978, not forgetting his trips to Moscow and the covers of Time: the story of a man who wanted to change the world, but failed.

When French painter Pierre Bonnard met Marthe de Méligny, he didn’t know this self-proclaimed aristocrat would become the cornerstone of his life and work. From this moment, she became more than just a muse for the “painter of happiness”, appearing in more than a third of his work. Together, they reached their artistic fulfillment thanks to a colourful love, different from the standards of their time, nurturing the great mystery around their relationship. Based on a true story.

The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgian overlords. Lumumba emerges here as the heroic sacrificial lamb dubiously portrayed by the international media and led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the United States, the international community, and Lumumba's own administration; a true story of political intrigue and murder where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.

Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse…Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later”, the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon.

The film follows in the wake of young Rosa who flees bomb-stricken Berlin in the autumn of 1943 and heads to a small, isolated village near the eastern border. This is where her in-laws live and where her husband, who’s deployed on the front, has advised she take shelter until the war ends and he returns. Rosa soon discovers that this seemingly sleepy village conceals a secret: in the forest bordering the hamlet is Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair.

Italian airship engineer Umberto Nobile enjoys a quiet life with his beloved dog Titina. One day, Norwegian explorer superstar Roald Amundsen contacts him and orders an airship to conquer The North Pole.

The end of an eight-year upmarket renovation of the legendary Chelsea Hotel is partly longed for and partly dreaded by the artists who still live there. The film grants us access to their apartments and interweaves the past with the present.

A detailed account of one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. Between February and December 1916, the French and German armies relentlessly fought in the devastated camps around the village of Verdun.

1920. Georges Clémenceau just lost the french presidential elections to the unknown Paul Deschanel, an idealistic who wants to change the country. But, one day, Deschanel falls from a train and disappear. At daybreak, France is looking for its president, a great chance for the « Tiger » Georges Clémenceau.

In a Belgian village during the start of World War I, the Lambert family finds themselves thrust into the heart of the conflict in The Last Front. Leonard Lambert, a devoted husband and father, grapples with protecting his family as German forces advance to their village. Amidst the war, a tender love story blossoms between Adrien Lambert, Leonard's son, and Louise Janssen, a local villager.

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

"A Species Odyssey" portrays the origins of Mankind from the moment the first primate stood up on their hind legs and set off to conquer the African Savanna, to modern Man, setting off to conquer space. 7 million years of triumph fraught with difficulties and extraordinary events that make Man what he is today.

A "Reformed Colonel" is found dead in Paris, a couple of decades after Algeria's struggle for independence was won from France. Lieutenant Galois is assigned the investigation of this murder. She receives the diary of Lieutenent Guy Rossi who served under The Colonel in Algeria in 1956, and has been reported as missing in action since 1957. The revelations found in Rossi's diary go far beyond The Colonel's actions in Algeria, and give an insight on how dirty Algeria's War for Independence really was.

A humorous account of the origins of the nation of Belgium and of the pivotal role of its first king, Léopold.

In 1920s Belgium, poverty drives many to seek a fresh start across the Atlantic. Among them is Jan Leemans, an ambitious inventor from the Flemish countryside. When his early dishwasher design catches the eye of Walter, a powerful Belgian industrialist in New York, Jan is offered a life-changing opportunity. He leaves behind his beloved Marie in Kallo, promising to send for her once he’s established. But in America’s fast-paced industry, Jan becomes entangled in ambition, loyalty, and deception. Back home, Marie’s overbearing mother sabotages their connection by intercepting letters and sowing doubt. As Jan’s dreams take shape, so does the growing distance between him and his past. When Walter’s sophisticated daughter Louise sets her sights on him, Jan must choose between a dazzling future—and the love he may lose forever...

Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist from Martinique, has just been appointed head of department at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, Algeria. His methods contrast with those of the other doctors in a context of colonization. A biopic in the heart of the Algerian war where a fight is waged in the name of Humanity.

Brussels, Belgium, 1959. Michel and Charly Kichka, two Jewish brothers, enjoy a happy childhood with their parents and their two sisters. Henri, their discreet and usually silent father, does not speak at all about his past, so they imagine that as a young man he was an adventurer, a pirate or a treasure hunter.

Seventeenth century. Set in a small village, nestled between the sea and the mountain, the father of Alan, a young fifteen-year-old boy, has sold himself for two years to indentured service. Alan is forced to take the place of his father and struggles to support his family.

This documentary re-examines the story of the Red Orchestra: the most important resistance network in Nazi Germany, whose operations extended from Berlin and Brussels to Paris.

Fabiana, Carlo, Claudio and Vincenzo… I met them in 1982 in Mercatale, their village in Tuscany, near Florence. They were aged between 25 and 45 and were cheerful militants in the Italian Communist Party, that strange party which has made its mark on history and which was both a school and a family for them. I have filmed in Mercatale every two or three years for over 20 years (1982/2004). The fi lm takes the “long view” of their political and personal development against the backdrop of village life. Stories with both human and political interest spanning over a quarter of a century with relevance for present day issues: what has become of the plans to change the world in Berlusconi’s Italy? From a more global perspective: what else can politics do? When the time comes to take stock the paths of their rich and varied personal lives cross once more with all their doubts and allegiances.

On August 21, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City, after eleven years of exile. The killer, Ramon Mercader, a young Spanish communist, was a character straight out of a spy movie. He was recruited in 1937 by Stalin's secret service when the latter decided to eliminate Trotsky, that tireless opponent. Through the epic story of Trotsky's last years in exile in Mexico, enriched with flashbacks to his political past, this film, a true historical thriller, offers a cross-narrative between Trotsky's life in exile and the setting up, at the same time, of "Operation Duck", the code name for his assassination.

March 1945. The Japanese army launches a sudden and extremely brutal assault against the French garrisons in the Far East. Thousands of civilians and soldiers were executed. Hunted by the Japanese enemy, a column of legionnaires already weakened by alcohol and disease decides to enter the jungle to try to reach China and the allied bases.

United by an uncompromising struggle as members of the infamous 1970s far-left terrorist group Prima Linea, fugitive couple Sergio and Susanna have become increasingly alienated from the real world. Their luck runs out when Susanna is captured and thrown in jail. Putting his life on the line, Sergio embarks on a radical plan... Loosely based on the memoir by Prima Linea's 'commander' Sergio Segio.

The film is a Russia-Belgium co-production on World War II. The director said earlier that "from the standpoint of technology and content, the movie is made in a manner that is uncommon in the world."

Galicia, Spain, during the Second World War The life of Manuela, a mysterious miner who was branded a witch, changes with the arrival of an Allied commando, in charge of sabotaging the production of tungsten, a vital mineral for the continuity of the war effort of Nazi Germany.

In the mid-1980s, the GAL, a Spanish paramilitary group, pursues and assassinates members of the terrorist gang ETA who have taken refuge in the sanctuary they have created in the south of France. Grégoire Fortin, advisor to the French Minister of Justice, and Domingo 'Txomin' Iturbe, leader of ETA, are forced to negotiate in order to find a solution to the violence that plagues the region.

In the seventies, during the Richard Nixon administration, Documerica, a large-scale photographic project, led by the US Environmental Protection Agency, sought to document the country's environmental situation. The tens of thousands of photos, taken by hundreds of photographers, constitute a unique archive, showing a landscape ravaged by pollution and environmental degradation.

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

On January 2, 2019, Louis Tobback said goodbye to his mayorship of Leuven after 24 years. Time to look back on a long career that is anything but limited to Leuven. A career that sometimes feels like a thriller, sometimes as a drama, but is especially permeated by a big outrage for everything that goes wrong in our society. Journalists, political friends, opponents and other acquaintances look back on a political career that has been decisive for Belgiums post-war history.

In February 1945, Jules Ternes returns to Luxembourg. To escape conscription, he fled the country and joined the resistance movement in France. Back in his hometown, Jules hopes to find peace of mind and put the war behind him. But he returns to a country devastated by the Battle of the Bulge and deeply divided from four years of occupation. His sister Mathilde is now engaged to Armand, the leader of the local resistance and his girlfriend Leonie has another man in her life. Jules nevertheless resumes a relationship with her and accepts a post as an auxiliary policeman. When Leonie is assassinated along with the German farmers she works for, the life Jules was struggling to rebuild collapses. The ensuing investigation will reveal grey areas of the Occupation along with the efforts made in high places to cover them up.

In the darkest days of the Second World War, Yulia and Hugo, a Jewish mother and son, escape from a Ukrainian ghetto. Fearing for his safety, Yulia entrusts her boy to the care of her friend Mariana, a sex worker who lives in a brothel. Hugo is placed in a closet, nominally for his safety, but from which he rarely leaves. With little view of the outside world, he conjures up ghosts and scenarios. But over time, Mariana brings the boy out and in doing so transforms his life.

The epic story of the life of a volcano, capable of both causing the extinction of all things and helping the evolution of species, over 60 million years.

Thanks to recent archaeological discoveries, this docudrama movie association and documentary footage to rediscover the "true face" of the Gaulle. On comments from Clovis Cornillac. In 52 BC, the fortress of Alesia, Apator, a Gallic leader, is exhausted after forty days of siege. His armies prepare to load against the Roman legions who circled.

18th century. Anne, grown up, has to "change her clothes" because of her attraction to women. Now a man, he marries and has a great love affair with his new wife, until his past catches up with him. The shocking true story of Anne Grandjean, born intersex, and their resounding trial, which still questions all our certainties today.

May 5, 1821. Napoleon Bonaparte, deposed emperor exiled on the island of St. Helena, is about to take his last breath. The son of a Corsican family, he has been close to death on many occasions since, as a young captain in the revolutionary army, he seized Toulon from the royalists in 1793.

What Swiss director Stefan Schweitert did for accordion music and for yodeling (Accordion Tribe, Cinequest, 2005; Echoes of Home, Cinequest 2008) he now does for traditional Balkan music. This wonderful film is also a love story – and a door into a world of musical wonders.

During the Algerian War (1954-1962), many impoverished young Algerian men, known as "Harkis", volunteered to join the French Army. Salah and Kaddour find themselves under the orders of Lieutenant Pascal. But as the conflict draws to an end, the prospect of independence looms. The outlook for Harkis seems bleak. Lieutenant Pascal confronts his superiors, insisting that every single man in his platoon must be evacuated to France.

Paris, Rue Beautreillis, July 3, 1971. The corpse of rock star Jim Morrison is found in a bathtub, in the apartment of his girlfriend Pamela Courson. The chronicle of the last months of the life of the poet, singer and charismatic leader of the American band The Doors, one of the most influential in the history of rock.

Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society and the refugees' often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, Gate of the Sun spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.

Set in 18th century, a 10 year old deaf boy has been abandoned by his mother, Comtesse de Solar, and is taken care by Abbé de l'Épée, who teaches him how to comunicate and express.

In 1945 a group of victorious American officers discover a stash of German jewels and try to fence them in New York.

Portugal managed to get through all of World War II without firing a single shot. Caught in a vise between the Axis and the Allies, Antonio Salazar, the country’s strongman, used every trick in the book to get his country through unscathed. In this war of nerves in which anything went, the Portuguese dictator took brilliant advantage of the only weapon available to maintain his country’s independence: neutrality.

In Brussels, Belgium, the Royal Museum of Central Africa is undertaking a radical renovation, both physical and ethical, to show with sincerity, crudeness and open-mindedness the reality of the atrocities perpetrated against the inhabitants of the Belgian colonies in Africa, still haunted and traumatized by the ghost of King Leopold II of Belgium, a racist and genocidal tyrant.

Writer, journalist, explorer, filmmaker, communist militant, freedom fighter. Truths and lies. A plot twist. Politician. General De Gaulle's shadow. Overwhelmed by the weight of power. The numerous exploits of André Malraux (1901-1976).

On the eve of the French Revolution, two town officials confront the Buckriders - a criminal gang who appear to ride on flying goats with the Devil - but along the way they will face deceit, corruption, betrayal and finally each other.

France, 1625. Women! They’re women! With fake beards, chest binders and pants underneath their outfits, they are indeed women. Sara, a young girl on the run, unmasks the true nature of the three musketeers, protectors of the Queen of France. She decides to join these powerful women and their dangerous idea: dress as men to live free, even at the risk of their very own lives.