Best French war movies
A curated collection of popular war movies from France.
Timbuktu (2014)
Sarah's Key (2010)
Sarah's Key (2010)
On the night of 16 July 1942, ten year old Sarah and her parents are being arrested and transported to the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris where thousands of other jews are being sent to get deported. Sarah however managed to lock her little brother in a closet just before the police entered their apartment. Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in Paris, gets the assignment to write an article about this raid, a black page in the history of France. She starts digging archives and through Sarah's file discovers a well kept secret about her own in-laws.
Forbidden Games (1952)
Forbidden Games (1952)
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
Now Where Did the Seventh Company Get to? (1973)
Now Where Did the Seventh Company Get to? (1973)
1940: During the chaotic running fights of the French army the 7th company disappears - nobody knows they've been taken captive. Only their scouting patrol, three witty but lazy guys, can escape and now wanders around behind the German lines. They'd like to just stay out the fights, but a Lieutenant urges them to use a captured truck to break through to their troops.
The Seventh Company Has Been Found (1975)
The Seventh Company Has Been Found (1975)
The second part of the Seventh Company adventures.
Train of Life (1998)
Before the Rain (1994)
Before the Rain (1994)
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
Donbass (2018)
Donbass (2018)
In the historic Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, despite the cruel war that has been raging since 2014 between the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Ukrainian government, people try to survive in the rotten heart of chaos, where violence disguises itself as peace, propaganda becomes univocal truth and hatred reigns in the name of love.
The Silence of the Sea (1949)
The Silence of the Sea (1949)
In a small town in occupied France in 1941, the German officer, Werner Von Ebrennac is billeted in the house of the uncle and his niece. The uncle and niece refuse to speak to him, but each evening the officer warms himself by the fire and talks of his country, his music, and his idealistic views of the relationship between France and Germany. That is, until he visits Paris and discovers what is really going on...
La traversée (2022)
La traversée (2022)
Community workers, Alex and Stéphanie take five teen dropouts on an educational journey across the Mediterranean. But their skipper happens to be an ex cop with a powerful hatred for youths from the hood.
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
The Guardians (2017)
The Guardians (2017)
In this ensemble drama set in rural France, the women of the Paridier farm are left to run it by themselves while their men are off fighting in World War I. But things become complicated with the arrival of American troops.
Girls of the Sun (2018)
Girls of the Sun (2018)
Bahar, the commanding officer of the Daughters of the Sun, a battalion made up entirely of Kurdish female soldiers, is on the cusp of liberating their town, which has been overrun by ISIS extremists.
Fan-Fan the Tulip (1952)
Fan-Fan the Tulip (1952)
Fanfan is a young handsome peasant. He joins the army to escape marriage because a gypsy girl predicted he will get glory and the king's daughter as a wife. But the gypsy girl was in fact Adeline, the daughter of the recruiting officer. Once he has discovered the stratagem, Fanfan refuses to forget this dream and decides to fulfill the destiny of the fake prediction.
Harrison's Flowers (2000)
Harrison's Flowers (2000)
1991. Harrison Lloyd, a renowned photojournalist covering the war in Yugoslavia, is reported missing. Sarah, his wife, convinced that he is not dead, decides to go to Bosnia to find him.
Aces High (1976)
Aces High (1976)
The first World War is in its third year and aerial combat above the Western Front is consuming the nation's favored children at an appalling rate. By early 1917, the average life-span of a British pilot is less than a fortnight. Such losses place a fearsome strain on Gresham, commanding officer of the squadron. Aces High recreates the early days of the Royal Flying Corps with some magnificently staged aerial battles, and sensitive direction presents a moving portrayal of the futilities of war.
The Vultures (1984)
The Vultures (1984)
April 5, 1943: a battalion of the Foreign Legion arrives in El Ksour, Tunisia, to escort a fortune in gold bars to the home front. A German ambush awaits, and all but four die. Thanks to the street smarts of Sergeant Augagneur, the Legionnaires successfully counter attack. The bank manager and his seductive wife arrive, and so does a German lieutenant, whom the French arrest. Augagneur wants to steal the gold; warrant officer Mahuzard wants to do his duty. A series of alliances form and break apart, the group dwindles in number, and the gold heads south toward Betahoua. But in whose possession?
Atlantic Wall (1970)
Atlantic Wall (1970)
1944. Léon Duchemin owns a restaurant with his sister. His clients are Germans, Résistance et black marketeers. Léon unwillingly joins the Résistance when a British pilot is shot down and hides in his attic and, through a series of mishaps, he accidentally steals the plans for Hitler's V1 missiles.
A Self-Made Hero (1996)
A Self-Made Hero (1996)
Set in France at the end of World War II Albert Dehousse finds out his father wasn't a war hero and his mother is a collaborator.
Come What May (2015)
Come What May (2015)
In may 1940, the German troops enter France. Frightened by the progress of the enemy, the people of a small village of Pas-de-Calais decide on the recommendations of the prefecture, to give up everything to go on the road, fleeing to the coast.
King of Hearts (1966)
King of Hearts (1966)
An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the resistance about a bomb which the departing Germans have set to blow up a weapons cache.
Hail, Sarajevo (1993)
Hail, Sarajevo (1993)
A short two-minute rumination on the once volatile situation during the period of the Bosnian War presented in the form of a photo-montage with accompanying text.
J'accuse (1919)
J'accuse (1919)
The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.
The Cow and I (1959)
The Cow and I (1959)
In 1942, a French prisonner of war in Germany decide to escape to France using a cow hold by a lunge as a decoy. He cross all Germany in this way.
Weekend at Dunkirk (1964)
Weekend at Dunkirk (1964)
In June 1940, during the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied troops to England, French sergeant Julien Maillat and his men debate whether to evacuate to Britain or stay and fight the German troops that are closing-in from all directions.
The 25th Hour (1967)
The 25th Hour (1967)
A Romanian peasant fights to get back to his family after he's imprisoned by the Nazis.The picture is based on real events. It includes Hungary's government in collaboration with the Nazis, the encroachment of Romania by Stalin's troopers, and other happenings.
Strayed (2003)
Strayed (2003)
Fleeing the June 1940 arrival of Hitler's army in Paris, a young war widow and her two children are rescued from dive-bombing German fighters by a cocky, reckless teenager. He finds them refuge in an abandoned house, but despite the fact that the family quickly comes to be depending much on his cunning and survival abilities, their cohabitation proves uneasy.
Entre Nous (1983)
Entre Nous (1983)
In 1942 in occupied France, a Jewish refugee marries a soldier to escape deportation to Germany. Meanwhile a wealthy art student loses her first husband to a stray Resistance bullet; at the Liberation she meets an actor, gets pregnant, and marries him. Lena and Madeleine meet at their children's school in Lyon in 1952 and the intensity of their relationship strains both their marriages to the breaking point.
Wooden Crosses (1932)
Wooden Crosses (1932)
The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder.