Directed by Aleksandar Petrović • 1965 • Yugoslavia

The first mature masterpiece from a figurehead of Yugoslav film, Three established Aleksandar Petrović at the forefront of the so-called Black Wave movement. Across a triptych of stories, we follow a soldier named Miloš (iconic actor Velimir “B...

Directed by Aleksei German • 1976 • USSR/Russia

One of the few “cinéma-vérité” gems centred around Second World War, Aleksei German’s sophomore film is a melancholic yet deft investigation into the true wages of war. Disillusioned correspondent Lopatin is granted twenty days of leave from the St...

Directed by Andrzej Munk • 1958 • Poland

One of only three feature films completed by Andrzej Munk before his tragic early death in a car accident, Eroica is a scathing assault on the false pieties of national pride and a key film in the history of the Polish School. The film is structured as tw...

Directed by Aleksandr Askoldov • 1967 • USSR/Russia

When a Red Army officer is forced to shelter with a Jewish family while seeing her unwanted pregnancy to term, she finds her fierce communist values at odds with their sprawling generosity. Over time, these two worlds are brought closer togethe...

Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
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The film that announced the Czech New Wave to the world, Jiří Menzel’s beloved debut is a humanist comedy of errors and a minor-key ode to rebellion. Adapted from Bohumil Hrabal’s nov...

Directed by Boris Barnet • 1933 • USSR/Russia

Set in a provincial backwater on the eve of the First World War, this reflective drama from one of Soviet cinema’s most underrated directors is a milestone in Russian-language film history. One of the first notable Russian films to be shot with sound...

Directed by István Szabó • 1980 • Hungary

Arguably the first mature masterpiece from one of Hungary’s greatest auteurs, Confidence is a perfectly controlled study in suspicion and longing. Set in a cowering Budapest in 1944, it follows two strangers forced to pose as a married couple in order t...

Directed by Revaz Chkheidze • 1969 • USSR/Georgia

It is the summer of 1941, and a group of idealistic Georgian students are graduating. Their hopes for the future, however, are scuppered by the impending war. Dreams are swapped for soldiers’ overcoats as they are dispatched to the front line, wh...

Directed by Borys Ivchenko • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine

A wartime melodrama shot through with the folkloric magic and vivid imagination that defined Ukraine’s so-called “poetic cinema” of the 1960s. In the dark days of Nazi occupation, a young girl native to the Carpathian mountains falls in love with ...

Directed by Zoltán Fábri • 1976 • Hungary

Considered by many to be Zolán Fábri’s masterpiece, The Fifth Seal is a war drama with a difference. During the brief, brutal rule of the fascist Arrow Cross Party in the closing days of the Second World War, five friends convene in a Budapest bar. Watch...

Directed by Algirdas Dausa and Almantas Grikevičius • 1968 • USSR/Lithuania

Banned by the Soviet authorities outside of Lithuania, this controversial classic blends the personal and the political against stunning coastal landscapes. 1944, on the Curonian Spit: one side of this Baltic lagoon is o...

Directed by the Vasilyev Brothers • 1934 • USSR/Russia

This biopic of Vasily Chapaev, peasant turned mythical military hero, is perhaps the most canonical film of state-sponsored Socialist Realism. Charting Chapaev’s campaign in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, frenetic action is juxta...

Directed by Gleb Panfilov • 1967 • USSR/Russia

The debut feature from Gleb Panfilov, marking his first collaboration with his future wife and muse Inna Churikova, No Path Through Fire is a classic of sixties cinema. Set during the Russian Civil War and following the fate of military nurse Tanya,...

Directed by Yuri Ilyenko • 1971 • USSR/Ukraine

Yuri Ilyenko’s landmark film follows the Zvonars, a family of poor musicians, as personal and geopolitical crises collide across the course of the tumultuous 1940s. Set in the region of Bukovina, on the border between Ukraine and Romania, Ilyenko’s ...

Directed by Wojciech Has • 1958 • Poland

Also known in English as Lidia Ate the Apple, Wojciech Has’s melancholic adaptation of Stanisław Dygat’s novel evokes the despair pervading Poland in the years before and after the Second World War. In 1939, bourgeois student Pawel (Tadeusz Janczar) rebel...