Best Irish war movies

In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.

Michael Collins plays a crucial role in the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, but becomes vilified by those hoping to create a completely independent Irish republic.

Sussex, England, 1938. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Thomasina and Martha Hanbury, two ingenious sisters, create LOLA, a miraculous machine.

A Jewish strongman performs in Berlin as the blond Aryan hero Siegfried.

A harsh dose of cinematic realism about a harsh time – the Bosnian War of the 1990s – Juanita Wilson's drama is taken from true stories revealed during the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Samira is a modern schoolteacher in Sarajevo who takes a job in a small country village just as the war is beginning to ramp up. When Serbian soldiers overrun the village, shoot the men and keep the women as laborers (the older ones) and sex objects (the younger ones), Samira is subjected to the basest form of treatment imaginable.

A German U-Boat commander plans a daring escape from a PoW camp in Scotland.

Set against a backdrop of a turbulent, war-torn Ireland in the early 1920s, this is a story of three people and the unfolding events from a crucial time in their extraordinary and tragic lives.

The remarkable story of a pioneering aviator from Ulster during World War I.

How the Anglo-Irish Treaty between the unrecognised Irish Republic, represented by Michael Collins, and the British government was concluded after high-stakes negotiations in 1921.

An Irish doctor survived the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki and was given a Samurai sword for the lives he saved. 70 years later his family searches for the origin of their father's sword.

A Terrible Beauty is the story of the men and women of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, Irish and British, caught up in a conflict many did not understand and of the innocent men and boys, executed because of what transpired in The Battle of Mount Street Bridge. The British soldiers were the last of the Great War volunteers, who joined up together to fight the Germans. They knew that there was a strong chance they would die in France, but to die in Dublin would never have crossed their minds. The Irish Volunteers were weekend warriors many of whom had no idea they were about to take part in large scale battles on the streets of Dublin.

Two friends turn on each other after discovering a rare artefact beneath a sacred shrine, and must hone their respective skills if they are to fight one another to the death in hopes of claiming it.

The quirky story of a young boy's adventures growing up with his stunningly beautiful mother and the two very different men who love her.

As rebels planned Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, they were watched by two spies code-named Granite and Chalk. This documentary delves into British intelligence to tell their story, one century on. Funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board, After ’16 is a creative response by Irish filmmakers to the events of Easter 1916. This collection of nine short films is a mixture of live-action, animation and documentary, telling stories from the eve of the Rising all the way to the Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland and beyond.

Soldier Jack deserts his unit and finds his wife Eva in isolated village in the mountains. She moved there to work in a factory unaware of the cruel owner Bar. Secret police arrives and it seems both Jack and Eva's time is up.

Ascendancy is a 1983 British film. It tells the story of a woman who is a member of the British landowning 'Ascendancy' in Ireland during World War I. Gradually, she learns about the Irish independence movement, and becomes involved with it.

During WWII, a German soldier kills a stranger and subsequently falls victim to a cycle of supernatural encounters.

In 1935 two German geologists, Henno Martin and Hermann Korn, leave Nazi Germany for South-West Africa (Namibia) to conduct field research. At the outbreak of the Second World War, many male Germans living in South-West Africa are interned in local camps. As pacifists the two German scientists refuse to be arrested and flee into the Namib Desert. They live for over two years in the vastness of the desert like ancient bushmen under indescribable circumstances, facing the challenge to survive and, at the same time, the threat to be detected. On the radio they follow the war events in Europe. Their adventure comes to an end when Hermann Korn starts suffering seriously from malnutrition.

Story of a naive and simple country boy, exposed to the conflicts of war within his local community, and his search for peace.

Documents the period 1919-1922 in Ireland's history, covering the war of independence against the British and the civil war that followed using archive footage from the time, including original newsreel footage.