Best Canadian war movies

A first-time captain leads a convoy of allied ships carrying thousands of soldiers across the treacherous waters of the "Black Pit" to the front lines of WWII. With no air cover protection for 5 days, the captain and his convoy must battle the surrounding enemy Nazi U-boats in order to give the allies a chance to win the war.

The story of the Battle of Midway, and the leaders and soldiers who used their instincts, fortitude and bravery to overcome massive odds.

A mother's last wishes send twins Jeanne and Simon on a journey to Middle East in search of their tangled roots. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's acclaimed play, Incendies tells the powerful and moving tale of two young adults' voyage to the core of deep-rooted hatred, never-ending wars and enduring love.

When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, the crew must race to save the ship and prevent a nuclear disaster.

A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.

Three different men, three different worlds, three different wars – all stand at the intersection of modern warfare – a murky world of fluid morality where all is not as it seems. A unique and dramatic look at the Canadian Army in Afghanistan.

France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifled existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband: a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' own homes. Lucile initially tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them. But soon, a powerful love draws them together and leads them into the tragedy of war.

SIRIUS 6B, Year 2078. On a distant mining planet ravaged by a decade of war, scientists have created the perfect weapon: a blade-wielding, self-replicating race of killing devices known as Screamers designed for one purpose only -- to hunt down and destroy all enemy life forms.

In November 1918, a few days before the Armistice, when Lieutenant Pradelle orders a senseless attack, he causes a useless disaster; but his outrageous act also binds the lives of two soldiers who have nothing more in common than the battlefield: Édouard saves Albert, although at a high cost. They become companions in misfortune who will attempt to survive in a changing world. Pradelle, in his own way, does the same.

At the beginning of the 1940s, in a France occupied by Nazi forces, lived the Jewish Joffo family. Happy and tight-knit, she sees her future darken when all members of the family are forced to wear the yellow star. Fearing the worst, the parents organized their family to flee to the free zone in the south of the country. Maurice, twelve years old, and Joseph, ten years old, will therefore leave alone in order to maximize their chances of finding their older brothers already settled in Nice. The brothers left to their own devices demonstrate an incredible amount of cleverness, courage, and ingenuity to escape the enemy invasion and to try to reunite their family once again.

The true story of the most decorated dog in American military history -- Sgt. Stubby -- and the enduring bonds he forged with his brothers-in-arms in the trenches of World War I.

Set between the two World Wars and based on true historical events, Bitter Harvest conveys the untold story of the Holodomor, the genocidal famine engineered by the tyrant Joseph Stalin. The film displays a powerful tale of love, honour, rebellion and survival at a time when Ukraine was forced to adjust to the horrifying territorial ambitions of the burgeoning Soviet Union.

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).

19 year old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer in Poland when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help twelve Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of – the basement of the German Major's house. Over the next eight months, Irena uses her wit, humour and immense courage to hide her friends as long as possible.

Set during the Vietnam war, Firebase follows American soldier Hines through an ever-deepening web of science fiction madness.

Sergeant Michael Dunne fights in the 10th Battalion, AKA The "Fighting Tenth" with the 1st Canadian Division and participated in all major Canadian battles of the war, and set the record for highest number of individual bravery awards for a single battle

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

Regent Horthy is the leader of Hungary and a German ally, but his favorable standing with Hitler changes as the war comes to an end. Forced to cede Hungary’s power or else witness the execution of his son, Regent Horthy gives up control of his country to the Nazis, who quickly move Hungarians to ghettos and death camps, with no hope in sight. But the despair changes when a young man named Elek emerges. Separated from his family during the relocations and aided by the woman he loves , Elek defies the enemy by becoming one of them. In a race against time, disguised as a Nazi Officer he embarks on a mission to save his family and thousands of his countrymen.

In the final days of WWI a shell-shocked soldier must lead a mission deep beneath the trenches to stop a German plot that could turn the tide of the war.

The remarkable true-life survival story of a Jewish boy hiding and being hunted in the forests of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, based on Maxwell Smart's memoir.

Chappy Sinclair is called to gather together a mixed Soviet/U.S. strike force that will perform a surgical strike on a massively defended nuclear missile site in the Middle East. Chappy finds that getting the Soviet and U.S. Pilots to cooperate is only the most minor of his problems as he discovers someone in the Pentagon is actively sabotaging his mission.

In 1918, a young, disillusioned Adolf Hitler strikes up a friendship with a Jewish art dealer while weighing a life of passion for art vs. talent at politics

Ilsa works for an Arab sheik who enjoys importing females to use as sex slaves.

During the Vietnam War [1959-1975] a special US combat unit is sent out to hunt and kill the Viet Cong soldiers in a man-to-man combat in the endless tunnels underneath the jungle of Vietnam. Suicide squads of a special kind.

In a dystopian and climate-ravaged future America torn apart by civil war, a group hiding in a remote cabin become the target of a ruthless rebel militia leader and his platoon, viciously hunted in a fight for survival.

Interrogated by a customs officer, a young man recounts how his life was changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.

Fact-based World War II story set on Christmas Eve, 1944, finds a German Mother and her son seeking refuge in a cabin on the war front. When she is invaded by three American soldiers and then three German soldiers, she successfully convinces the soldiers to put aside their differences for one evening and share a Christmas dinner.

A landmark WWII docudrama, told through the eyes of three young Canadians, chronicling the events of the Allied invasion of Juno Beach on June 6, 1944 - otherwise known as D-Day.

The truth is way stranger than fiction,” muses one interviewee in this unbelievable true account of an incredible war time saga. As the Second World War was coming to a close, the US Office of Strategic Services trained and parachuted two Jewish refugees and a German deserter deep into Nazi occupied Austria. Through vivid first-person accounts, re-enactments, archival footage and learned commentary, the film reveals how their efforts disrupted a vital supply route between Germany and the Italian front to bring about the surrender of Innsbruck to Allied Forces. Their unbelievable adventure has a finale that beats any Hollywood movie hands down — but a story so powerful that it became the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s mega hit.

Siberia 1953: Ilsa is now working in a Gulag prison camp. Her mission is to "retrain the minds" of those who don't agree with the communists.

At the height of the October Revolution during the 1919 allied intervention in Arkhangelsk, the exploits of one-legged Canadian soldier Lt. John Boles are told, after he is taken in from the cold by a dysfunctional Russian family and mistakes a local woman for his presumed dead lover.

First in a series of medieval giants. Inspired by the artwork of Jakub Różalski.

In an urban war zone where everything that moves is a target, Paul tries to live, love and inform.

American journalists in Sudan are confronted with the dilemma of whether to return home to report on the atrocities they have seen, or to stay behind and help some of the victims they have encountered.

During a shaky 24-hour holiday truce amid the Battle of the Bulge, American Captain John Myers and a Belgian farm girl, Alina, fall in love. Forced to separate when fighting resumes, the couple vows to reunite, under a bell tower, the first Christmas Eve after the war ends, if each is alive and eager.

Documentary-drama recounting the Martian War of 1913–1917. Europe was on tenterhooks in the 2nd decade of the 20th century, everyone was expecting a Great War between the major European powers. But then, in 1913, something crashed into the forests of SW Germany. Troops were sent to investigate but were wiped out. Martian fighting machines began making their way across Western Europe and the countries of Europe combined forces to resist them. With aspects taken from ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells and from WWI itself, this dramatisation presents a documentary style look at events as they unfolded and the effect they had of our world today. Lots of references to real events including the mass attacks and defeats as men were thrown against machines on the Western front, the Christmas truce and the Angel of Mons, America's isolationism and late entry into the conflict, the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic that killed more people than the war, and many other things.

Set in the WWII it tells the story of a bunch of american soldiers fighting against a horde of zombies created by the Nazis using the prisoners of the camps... They have only one night to save their own lives but the enemy is stronger and stronger...

The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.

In 2014 Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine turns hot. An engineer, actor, soccer coach and florist volunteer to fight on the front line. Unaware of the pivotal role they will play in the war, they discover the meaning of true leadership.

At the dawn of World War 2, a Rabbi's daughter and a disenchanted German soldier fall in love and are separated by the war. They struggle on a perilous journey to find one another.

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, two of England's most important World War I poets are sent, along with other traumatized combatants, to a rest home in order to treat their emotional troubles, caused by the psychological fatigue that suffer the soldiers fighting in the no man's land.

Iraq, 2004: during a routine sortie a US patrol is ambushed and the young soldiers are forced to put their training and skills into action fast. A determined foe with superior local knowledge, the Fedayeen insurgents soon draw them into close quarter combat and a desperate fight for survival.

Polish Martin Gray recalls the Holocaust, New York prosperity, and losing his wife and family.

An elderly man tells his granddaughter his personal story of the Second World War. His life as a child and all the strange characters he populates it with takes the little girl to a bizarre world she doesn't understand.

In the wake of World War II, 11 Allied judges are tasked with weighing the fates of Japanese war criminals in a tense international trial.

Kicked out of his home for being gay, a young man (Ephraim Sykes) finds a new family with Los Angeles drag queens.

A new look at the public and private life of one of the most important statesmen in the history of Europe: Winston Churchill (1874-1965), soldier, politician, writer, painter, leader of his country in the darkest hours, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a myth, a giant of the 20th century.

This animated short by Claude Cloutier is a pictorial account of an attack on Canadian soldiers during WWI. On the edge of the battlefield, recruits are dreading the order to attack. At the signal, a young soldier leaps into a hell of fire and blood where the earth engulfs both the living and the dead. Blending archival images and Cloutier’s hypnotizing brushstroke, the film is a dazzling illustration of the futility of war.

Returning home after fighting in Africa during World War II, a soldier with PTSD finds reintegrating with family life increasingly difficult as he relives the battle of Kasserine Pass.

In the mid-18th Century, as England and France battle over control of Canada, an epic romance between a peasant woman and a trapper unfurls

Intercepted is a journey through Ukraine that reveals the banality of evil behind the Russian invasion with the shocking juxtaposition of two realities: the Ukrainians who have been suffering and resisting the war violence, and the Russian military, and civilians, who have been perpetrating it.

Gabriel, a young soldier, is sent to the Western Front in 1914. He experiences the hell of the trenches and the devastating effects that fear has on all the troops. He comes out alive after this horrendous experience, full of rage and fire, and discovers his own humanity.

On April 27, 1813, American forces defeated the British at York (present-day Toronto) and captured the capital of Upper Canada - but not before suffering their own losses. History Television's Explosion 1812 looks at the Battle of York and unearths new evidence around this lesser-known event from the War of 1812.

They belong to the armed wing of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is also an active guerrilla movement. The mission of these female fighters? Defend Kurdish territory in Iraq and Syria, and defeat ISIS (the armed militants of the so-called Islamic State group), all while embodying a revolutionary ideal advocating female empowerment. As filmmaker Zaynê Akyol follows their highly regimented lives, seasoned fighters like Rojen and Sozdar openly share with us their most intimate thoughts and dreams. Even as fighting against ISIS intensifies in the Middle East, these women bravely continue their battle against barbarism. Offering a window into this largely unknown world, Gulîstan, Land of Roses exposes the hidden face of this highly mediatized war: the female, feminist face of a revolutionary group united by a common vision of freedom.

Unflinching and deeply personal, D-Day In 14 Stories interviews many of the last surviving veterans who were on the beaches of Normandy that fateful day 75 years ago (a rare spectrum of Allies and Axis); seldom-heard voices, including a female Resistance fighter, an African American, a Native American, Jewish Americans and a 5-year old French boy.

Pajama-clad and elderly, WWI Flying Ace Billy Bishop wanders around his relic-filled attic reminiscing about his battle years.

By 1314, through effort and intrigue, Scottish King Robert Bruce had captured every major English-held castle except Stirling. Now English King Edward II would try to stop him - and subdue the Scottish rebellion forever. This is the story of the pivotal campaign culminating at the decisive Battle of Bannockburn, in the shadow of Stirling Castle. Today as Scotland contemplates a countdown to a referendum for renewed Scottish independence, we search the hearts and minds of the characters whose efforts at the Battle of Bannockburn would build a nation. Filmed in the style of 300 and Sin City and with intense and bloody battle scenes, we bring to life one of the most iconic times in Scottish history.

During the heat of battle in the midst of the Civil War, a beguilingly innocent colt is born to Union Jim Rabb's beloved mare. Refusing the orders to shoot it, lest it prove a hindrance, Rabb keeps the colt as a consolation in these desperate times-a symbol of hope that leads the men of the First Cavalry on a journey of self-discovery and newfound brotherhood.

The horrors of war are examined from the view points of lifelong friends (Linus Roache, Vincent Perez), who end up on opposing sides in the civil war in Sarajevo. One is an expert marksman, who trains the snipers used to terrify the city and the other becomes a freedom fighter, who rejects his friend's offer to gain an escape from the city. As might be expected, the two eventually have to face-off against one another.

Theodore Ushev’s acclaimed 20th century trilogy concludes with this brilliant fusion of 3D and Russian constructivist-styled animation. Recycling elements of surrealism and cubism, this animated short by Theodore Ushev focuses on the relationship between art and war. Propelled by the exalting “invasion” theme from Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony (No. 7), the film presents imagery of combat fronts and massacres, leading us from Dresden to Guernica, from the Spanish Civil War to Star Wars. It is at once a symphony that serves the war machine, that stirs the masses, and art that mourns the dead, voices its outrage and calls for peace.

This animated short from Norman McLaren features a human skull cautioning Canadians to “keep their mouths shut” in an effort to end gossiping during World War II.

A historical recreation of the experience of Canadian soldiers in World War One, with a cast of descendants of the people who participated in it.

Four high school football stars enlist in the Marines and head off to fight in the war in Iraq. When one of them is killed and another wounded, they return home only to find is extremely difficult to pick up the threads of their old lives. The memories of events in Iraq combined with the lack of public support pushes many of these men to the breaking point.

How the citizens of Malta fought for independence from Britain in 1919. When the Army was sent to quell the riots and the British government covered up the bloody encounter, more than 100 Maltese were accused of instigating the violence and jailed.

At 15 he and his family became victims of state terror. At 16 he became a freedom fighter to participate in the 1956 Revolution against Soviet oppression. At 17 he is betrayed and arrested by the dreaded Secret Police (AVH). Now he has to spend the remainder of his life in a political prison, called Hell's Hallway, to reach the legal age of 18 before his death penalty can be carried out. Peter Mansfeld was 18 when he was unjustly executed by the totalitarian regime of Hungary. Today he is remembered as one of the national heroes of Hungary.

On July 1st, 1916, the Newfoundland Regiment took part in a massive First World War offensive on the Somme, led by the British. At Beaumont Hamel the regiment was nearly wiped out, as only 110 of 780 soldiers survived the day. To commemorate its 100th anniversary, Brian McKenna’s documentary film tells the story of this epic tragedy. Using a technique that brings new meaning to reenactment, McKenna recruits descendants of soldiers who fought this battle, offering them a unique opportunity to relive the experience of their ancestors in trenches built specifically for the film.