80 Years Later: Essential WWII Films on the Kino Film Collection
In the 80 years since the end of World War II, cinema has served as both a witness and a reckoning. The WWII films now streaming on the Kino Film Collection offer a range of perspectives—personal, political, and profoundly human—on one of the darkest chapters in modern history. Some confront the machinery of fascism head-on; others illuminate quiet acts of resistance or the moral ambiguities of survival. Together, they remind us that history is never just a matter of dates and battles, but of choices made under impossible conditions.
Whether through the courage of a young resistor in Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, the chilling clarity of The Sorrow & The Pity, or the courtroom reckoning in Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, these films compel us to look back with unflinching eyes—and to consider what their stories still ask of us today. Stream these crucial films on the Kino Film Collection now.
The Forger
Directed by Maggie Peren • Drama • 2022 • Germany, Luxembourg
Berlin, 1942. Cioma Schönhaus won't let anyone take away his zest for life, especially not the Nazis. Hiding in plain sight, he audaciously poses as a marine officer and joins a network of underground rescuers, where his masterfully forged IDs save hundreds of fellow Jews. He also throws himself into the city's nightlife, until his one last forged document – his own. Based on a true story.
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Directed by Marc Rothemund • Drama • 2005 • Germany
The true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in this Academy Award Nominated Best Foreign Language Film. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl’s life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence.
The Conformist
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci • Arthouse • 1970 • Italy
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Bernardo Bertolucci's masterpiece is a political drama set in Mussolini's Italy starring Jean-Louis Trintignant as a man who joins the Fascists in an attempt to fit in. Newly restored from the original camera negative by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Minerva Pictures under the supervision of Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci.
Beanpole
Directed by Kantemir Balagov • Arthouse • 2020 • Russia
In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha, intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world. Kantemir Balagov won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war.
The Sorrow & The Pity
Directed by Marcel Ophuls • Documentary • 1972 • France, Switzerland, Germany
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, The Sorrow and The Pity has been acclaimed as one of the most moving and influential films of all time. A triumph of humanist filmmaking, it is considered one of the most valuable achievements in the history of cinema and an epic account of France under the occupation of the Nazi regime during World War II.
The Day and the Hour
Directed by René Clément • Drama • 1963 • France
International screen icon Simone Signoret stars in this powerful World War II drama directed by René Clément. Signoret is superb as Thérèse, an isolated woman who unwittingly gets involved in the Resistance when British and American planes are shot down over Nazi-occupied France. She reluctantly agrees to smuggle the pilots into neutral Spain, and along the way finds herself falling in love.
Filmmakers for the Prosecution
Directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz • Documentary • 2022 • US, France
Filmmakers for the Prosecution retraces the hunt by brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg for film evidence that would be used to convict the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trial. Seventy-five years later, Jean-Christophe Klotz uncovers never-before-seen footage and interviews key figures to unravel why the resulting film about the trial was intentionally buried by the U.S. government.
Wife of a Spy
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Thriller • 2021 • Japan
Master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for this riveting, gorgeously crafted, old-school Hitchockian thriller set in 1940 on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. When the population of Japan is divided over its entry into the war, a well-to-do actress is torn between loyalty to her husband, the life they have built, and the country they call home.
Confidence
Directed by István Szabó • Drama • 1980 • Hungary
István Szabó's Confidence was nominated for an Academy Award and won Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Director in 1980. Set in World War II-era Hungary, it follows two unrelated members of the resistance who must act as husband and wife in an effort to stay hidden in plain sight. Will they be able to maintain the illusion without giving in to their growing feelings for each other?
Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today
Directed by Stuart Schulberg • Documentary • 1948 • US
One of the greatest courtroom dramas in history, Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today shows how international prosecutors built their case against top Nazi war criminals using the Nazis’ own films and records. The trial established the “Nuremberg principles” for all subsequent cases of war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Restored in 2009, with newly recorded narration by Liev Schreiber.
Anatahan
Directed by Josef von Sternberg • Arthouse • 1954 • Japan
Directed by Josef von Sternberg, this film follows a dozen Japanese sailors who are stranded on the remote island of Anatahan during the waning days of the war. The war ends, unbeknownst to the men, and they engage in their own private war for dominance of their island domain and possession of the sole woman in their midst, Keiko (Akemi Negishi), the so-called "Queen Bee" of Anatahan.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
Directed by Alexandra Dean • Documentary • 2017 • US
What do the most ravishingly beautiful actress of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and bluetooth technology have in common? They are both Hedy Lamarr, the glamor icon whose ravishing visage was the inspiration for Snow White and Cat Woman and a technological trailblazer who perfected a secure radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes during WWII.