Best Spanish war movies
Get ready to binge. We've found a collection of must-watch war films from Spain, now streaming on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime Video, and other top services!
A Perfect Day 2015
Somewhere in the Balkans, 1995. A team of aid workers must solve an apparently simple problem in an almost completely pacified territory that has been devastated by a cruel war, but some of the local inhabitants, the retreating combatants, the UN forces, many cows and an absurd bureaucracy will not cease to put obstacles in their way.
68While at War 2019
Salamanca, Spain, 1936. In the early days of the military rebellion that began the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), writer Miguel de Unamuno supports the uprising in the hope that the prevailing political chaos will end. But when the confrontation becomes bloody, Unamuno must question his initial position.
72Valley of the Dead 2020
During the Spanish Civil War, sworn enemies must work together when they encounter flesh-eating zombies created in a Nazi experiment.
601898: Our Last Men in the Philippines 2016
The Philippines, 1898. Fifty Spanish soldiers arrive in the small village of Baler to rebuild an outpost. Although the war against the Filipinos and their American allies is almost lost, as is the Spanish Empire, the garrison will endure a cruel siege for eleven months. They will be the last to surrender.
65Unicorn Wars 2022
An army of bear cubs train and indoctrinate young recruits for the war against the unicorns, which threatens the safety of the cubs. Brothers Bluey and Tubby, along with a group of inexperienced cadets, are sent on a dangerous mission to save the Magic Forest, where the unicorns live, and start a terrible battle.
68Land and Freedom 1995
David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.
76Chimes at Midnight 1965
Henry IV usurps the English throne, sets in motion the factious War of the Roses and now faces a rebellion led by Northumberland scion Hotspur. Henry's heir, Prince Hal, is a ne'er-do-well carouser who drinks and causes mischief with his low-class friends, especially his rotund father figure, John Falstaff. To redeem his title, Hal may have to choose between allegiance to his real father and loyalty to his friend.
73Rescue Under Fire 2017
The crew of a medical helicopter suffers an accident when helping a joint force of USA and United Nations troops under Spanish command division in Afghanistan. The Spanish army has only one night to organize the rescue of the crew and injured, but what seems routine turns into hell once they receive the order to rescue the helicopter as well. Things only get worse when during the night a huge a concentration of Talibans begin surround them.
68Guernica 2016
The fates of Henry - an American correspondent - and Teresa, one of the Republic's censors during the Spanish Civil War.
64The Heifer 1985
During the Spanish Civil War a platoon of mismatched Republican soldiers cross the front-line to steal the bull that the enemy is going to fight on the local holiday of the nearby village. In addition to ruining the Nationalist faction's celebration they want the animal in order to butcher it and feed their famished troops. They get caught in the process and have to go through a series of funny and pathetic incidents before they can get back to their side.
74The Girl of Your Dreams 1998
A company of Spanish movie makers leaves Franco's Spain and moves to Hitler's Germany to make a film in co-production. Soon some problems start to arise...
67Ay, Carmela! 1990
Paulino and Carmela are husband and wife, troubadours touring the countryside during the Spanish Civil War. They are Republicans, and with their mute assistant, Gustavete, they journey into rebel territory by mistake. They are arrested, fear a firing squad, and receive a reprieve from an Italian Fascist commander who loves the theatre. He arranges a performance for his troops, bargaining with Paulino to stage a burlesque of the republic in exchange for the actors' freedom. Will the fiery and patriotic Carmela consent?
65All the Moons 2020
During the final throes of the last Carlist war, a little girl is rescued from an orphanage by a mysterious woman who lives deep inside the forest.
59Cows 1992
A film set in the Basque region, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.
69Freedomfighters 1996
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the nun Maria is forced to flee her convent. She takes refuge in a brothel, until it is liberated by a woman's anarchist group. Maria joins the group and eventually goes to the front. The women's group faces the problems of fighting not only the nationalists, but also factions on the left seeking to impose a more traditional military structure.
66The (Silent) War 2019
Northern Spain, October 1944. Several groups of guerrilla fighters, former Republican soldiers exiled in France after the end of the Spanish Civil War, infiltrate the country in order to provoke a popular uprising against General Franco's dictatorship.
54Ignatius of Loyola 2016
Historical biographical religious drama film based on the memoirs of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order who was also canonized as a saint in Roman Catholicism.
64Frozen Silence 2012
Russian front, winter 1943. Soldier Arturo Andrade and Sergeant Fernando Espinosa are commissioned to investigate a mysterious murder while the Spanish Blue Division of the German Army endures the fierce counterattack of the Red Army.
62Soldiers of Salamina 2003
Professor Lola Sánchez investigates the truth behind the events experienced by Rafael Sánchez Mazas, one of the founders of the Falange Española party, during the Spanish Civil War.
67The Angel of Budapest 2011
El ángel de Budapest (Angel of Budapest) is a Spanish 2011 television World War II-Holocaust miniseries based on the book "Un español frente al Holocausto" (A Spanish against the Holocaust) written by journalist and radio executive director Diego Carcedo. The plot focuses on Ángel Sanz Briz, a Spanish ambassador in Hungary during World War II who helped to save the lives of thousands of jews from the Holocaust by lodging them in Spanish safe houses in Budapest.
64Year of Enlightment 1986
April, 1940. Manolo, 16 years old, and Jesus, who is just 8, are taken by their older brother Pepe, a lieutenant in the Army, to a sanatorium for children suffering from tuberculosis, situated on the border with Portugal. Once in the sanatorium, Manolo, surrounded by boys all much younger than he is, feels a bit like the cock of the walk since the only other man around is the handyman Emilio who looks after the gardens and does whatever needs to be done about the place. His wife, Rafaela, is the cook. Manolo meets Irene, a falangist who runs the sanatorium, and the school teacher, Miss Transito, a crabby spinster. He has his first sexual experience, albeit as a voyeur, with his nurse Vicenta. When she has to leave, her place is taken by a girl from the village, Maria Jesus, with whom Manolo falls hopelessly in love. A relationship grows up between them which will mark them both for ever.
62Warriors 2002
Kosovo, winter 1999. KFOR forces perform their humanitarian task while trying to maintain a difficult neutrality between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs. A platoon of Spanish Army engineers becomes unwittingly caught up in the spiral of violence between the two sides.
64In Praise of Older Women 1997
In the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, a young man comes of age sexually, through a string of relationships with a wide range of mature, older women.
64The Sea 2000
Childhood friends reunite later in life in Spanish tuberculosis sanitorium. Pressures of death all around combine with dark secrets of their past.
62Heroes del 95 1947
100Red and Black 1942
Since childhood, Luisa and Miguel have always been good friends; but several years later, as adults, when Spain faces the abyss of the Civil War (1936-1939), they support ideologically opposed camps.
82Dragon Rapide 1986
The two weeks leading up to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 are dramatized from many different locations in Spain, Morocco and London.
56The Bombing of Germany 2013
On September 1, 1939 the first day of World War II in Europe President Franklin D. Roosevelt appealed to the warring nations to under no circumstances undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations. Just six years later, British and American Allied forces had carried out a bombing campaign of unprecedented might over Germany s cities, claiming the lives of nearly half a million civilians. The Bombing of Germany examines the defining moments of the offensive that led the U.S. across a moral divide. Weaving together interviews with WWII pilots and historians, and stunning archival footage of the bombing and its aftermath, this AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film is a haunting reminder of the dilemma imposed by war's civilian casualties.
80Life in Shadows 1949
The creative and ambitious Carlos, a young Spanish film buff, manages to become a professional camera operator with time and effort, and is also blessed with the love of Ana, which he has longed for; but the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 changes everything for both of them.
68Amarillo 2013
In this veterans' hospice, every patient spends their last days fighting between life and death. Veterans die alone in rooms full of memories and anecdotes about wars that they fought for a country that they barely knew.
80When the Mountains Tremble 1983
A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
70That Wasn't Me 2012
Aquél no Era Yo [That Wasn't Me] is a 2012 Spanish short film directed by Esteban Crespo. It tells the story of Paul and Kaney. Two characters, an African child and a Spanish woman, who could have nothing in common, but will get to join their lives forever through a life-giving shot. Kaney is an African child soldier. He lives with many child soldiers and obeys the orders given by the man who has become like their father, the General of the Rebel Army. Paula is a Spanish aid worker who moved to Africa following her boyfriend, Juanjo, in order to bring help and to rescue the child soldiers who live there. In a border crossing point, Paula and Kaney meet each other and this will be the starting point of this dramatic story, full of fear, violence and redemption. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.
58The Burning Cold 2023
Winter of 1943. Andorra, a small country in the Pyrenees. In the tense calm of a borderland, where echoes of a nearby war reach the ears of the local inhabitants, Antonio and Sara, a young, married couple, are expecting their first child. No one knows exactly what is going on, nor what is being fought over, the priority is just to survive another day. When a family of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution arrives in the valley, the locals will find their lives disrupted and filled with a sense of fear and unease. Sara will have to face her own contradictions and decide whether to follow her head... or her conscience. The past, along with all the secrets that have remained buried under the snow for so many years, are about to surface. The burning cold has reached the mountains.
62Los últimos de Filipinas 1945
The Philippines, 1898, during the Spanish-American War. Fifty Spanish soldiers guarding the outpost established in the small village of Baler endure the cruel siege of the Filipino rebels for eleven months, although the war is almost lost…
62El santuario no se rinde 1949
Maria Fuenterreal remembers the days of resistance in the sanctuary of the Virgen de la Cabeza. There she met Aracil, a man of extremist ideas who saved her from the enemy troops, and then Captain Cortes, who died in the final battle with most of the defenders. After the battle, Maria suffers a bout of amnesia and Aracil escapes.
65Baraka 2016
In the months before the war in Iraq , Abdel and Umayr , two brothers who are very close, will be forced to separate from each other. Months later , with the war in full swing, they will meet again , but neither of them is the same.
62The Long Vacations of '36 1976
Spain, 1936. The Civil War breaks out. In a village near Barcelona, several families decide to continue living in their summer houses until the violence ends.
65Comanche Territory 1997
Spanish TV reporters covering the War in Bosnia. Based on true experience.
56Apocalypse Toto 2019
Toto, a worker in Catalonia, analyzes the violence spiral experienced in Barcelona in October 2019.
70Madrid 1987
Hans, a German director, is in Madrid to film a television production about the capital and the Civil War, 50 years after it occurred. Accompanied by Lucía, his editor, and Goyo, his cinematographer, he films shots of the modern city, searching for spaces and people related to its past. At the same time, he views materials related to the past. In this search, Hans questions the point of his project, and disagrees with his producers until he discovers a project that he is passionate about.
60Long Live the Free People 1939
Spanish war propaganda documentary.
50A Forbidden God 2013
August 1936, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. 51 members of the Claretian community of Barbastro (Huesca) are martyred, die for their faith. The film recounts the last weeks of his life, since they are held until they are finally shot. During that time, they perform various writings they talk about their situation, of his fellow captives, people who saw them. These writings have been the basic testimony used to narrate this real fact in film version.
60El cazador 1991
58The Heroes of the Siege of Saragossa 1905
A short drama featuring three fictitious scenes of the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814).
55The Dark Night of the Soul 1989
Pantheon filmmaker Carlos Saura bounced back from a handful of failures with 1989's La Noche Oscura (The Dark Night). Juan Diego stars as San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross), the legendary 16th-century poet-prophet. Galvanized into action by the spirit of Santa Teresa de Jesus, San Juan fought to install reforms in the Carmelite Order. Like many another visionary, he was regarded as a heretic, and promptly subjected to the most appalling of tortures. Writer-director Saura manages to draw several parallels between the religious persecution of the 1700s and the political despotism of Fascist Spain.
56Réquiem por un campesino español 1985
Hypocrisy and betrayal are the two dramatic pivots in this effective, emotionally gripping tragedy about the life and death of Paco (Antonio Banderas), a Spanish peasant who had been fighting against the feudal landowning system that kept farmers impoverished. Paco's life is told in flashbacks by a priest (Antonio Ferrandis) who is seen officiating at an anniversary mass attended by three wealthy landowners and no one else. The priest recalls Paco's baptism, his communion, his marriage ceremony and then his work for the peasants as he advocated and led them in a land-reform movement. The rest of the story will rest heavy on the priest's conscience, as he looks out at his empty church.
54Alhucemas 1948
In 1922, Infantry Captain Fernando Salas, arriving from Madrid, joins, without much enthusiasm, a battalion ruled by Commander Almendro, a tough veteran of the African war who soon notices a clear lack of military vocation in the new recruit.
60Crebinsky 2011
Torrential rains cause the swollen river, whose waters inundate a village. The current drags the cow Crebinsky and his brothers, who miraculously reappear alive in a place on the coast. Installed there at the foot of a lighthouse, which brings survive by sea. Isolated military conflicts, the brothers created their own world: a particular universe made of realism and fantasy.
55Follow the Legion! 1942
In North Africa, in a detachment of the Spanish Legion, el Grajo, a brave veteran, and Mauro, who has just enlisted, become close friends. When an unfortunate circumstance results in the death of a man, suspicions fall on one of them.
56Legionario 2017
46España 1936-39 La Guerra Civil 2004
53Fort Yuma Gold 1966
Near the end of the Civil War, an imprisoned Confederate raider is sent under guard to warn both his men and the Army at Fort Yuma that an impending rebel raid is really nothing but a ruse by scoundrels from both sides, in cahoots to take the fort's gold for themselves during the chaos. Soon he slips his treacherous escort and attempts to complete the mission himself.
47La espera 1956
50Caleta Palace 2023
Eight foreign characters recall their exploits and fears in Malaga, a paradise city that starts a revolution on July 18th 1936, as the military coup is stopped by popular rebellion, until February 9th 1937, when Mussolini troops take Malaga and put it under the rule of Franco. Seven months that shape the stark tale of a besieged city, the first capital to be conquered in Spanish Civil War and a prelude of WW2.
43Raza 1942
The troubled story of the Churruca family, a noble lineage of brave seamen, descendants of Cosme Damián Churruca, the Spanish hero of the Battle of Trafalgar; from the Spanish-American War (1898) to the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). (In 1950, a new cut of the film was released with less ideological depth and ten minutes shorter.)
43Posición avanzada 1966
During the Spanish Civil War, a command takes the night to reach an advanced position, surrounded by the enemy, to protect the ford of a river. The next day, soldiers from both sides arrange a truce for fishing trouts and exchange cans and cigarettes. But foreign forces relieve the besiegers during the night and kill an unsuspecting soldier who was waving to return to fishing. While the position is strengthened, a soldier escapes to the nearby village to see his family.
50Santiago Apostol 2017
50El héroe de Cascorro 1929
50Soldados 1978
Dramatic portrait of men and women discouraged in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, after the odyssey of a group of Republican soldiers trying to reach the east coast to go into exile. Agustín must bear that his libertine father lives with the ironer Remedios, although she does not love him. She escapes and he goes to war; when they finally meet again, anxious amid bursts, it will be impossible to consummate their desires repressed for so long.
50La Leona de Castilla 1951
Crown of Castile, 1520. The Comuneros rise up against Charles I, king of Castile and Aragon and emperor of the Hispanic Monarchy. While Juan de Padilla, leader of the uprising, and his captains, Juan Bravo and Francisco Maldonado, fight against the imperial armies, his wife, María de Pacheco, rules the city of Toledo, capital of the rebels.
30La montaña rebelde 1971
Abel Garrido, a doctor, returns to his hometown to stay. There he meets Mingo and his girlfriend Rita, and they become good friends. But when war comes in 1936, he must go and fight. The events that happen afterwards will take him to confront with Mingo.
30When Heroes Die 1970
The story of a group of American commandos assigned to kidnap General Rommel. But the soldiers are caught by the Germans who decide to use their plan against them. Replacing the American soldiers with German soldiers, and with the help of a fake "kidnapped" Rommel, they plan to kill General Eisenhower
30La leyenda del tambor 1981
In June 1808, Napoleon's troops invade Spain. A boy named Isidro will beat his drum in the mountains of El Bruc, making the French army believe that thousands of armed men are waiting to confront them.
30El frente infinito 1959
Father Barrera, a newly ordained priest, returns from Rome to join the national forces as a military chaplain. The horrors of war produce in him a commotion so great that panic dominates him and he is not able to overcome it. After spending some time on the front line, they send him to the rear. There, his superior, Captain Estrada, meets Cristina, a young nurse.
30Hell Commandos 1969
Members of a German tank crew become trapped behind enemy lines.
15La fiel infanteria 1960
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