War and cinema have gone hand in hand since before the Second World War—each using the other to further its own ends. One only needs to look at the repertoire of the likes of Leni Reifenstahl to imagine the impact cinema had on popular imagination. Howeverubet63, as non-Western filmmakers took over the reins, a shift in perception was seen in the genre over time. In the recent years, filmmakers from countries like Palestine and Syria have picked up the camera to offer an insider’s perspective on their ravaged homelands. The documentary form has been instrumental in presenting a counterpoint to the Hollywood war films, which were fraught with US’s saviour complex.  

The following films from 18 countries introspect on wars—both past and present—to uncover the uncomfortable truths that often become the biggest casualties during these times. The human capacity—for violence as well as resilience—runs as the binding vein through the aesthetics and themes of these films. While some of them talk of decades-old conflicts, their haunting afterlives in such cinema is a sombre reminder that if we aren’t careful, history is never too far from the present. 

BY Divya Tiwari

Rwanda: Valentina’s Nightmare (1997): Shot by Fergal Keane for BBC, the film recounts the horrors that unfolded in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide through the eyes of one of the few survivors, Valentina Iribagiza. Valentina, who was 13 years old during the massacre, lay in a church, hiding among the dead for weeks, to save herself from the Hutu people.  The Hutus went on a rampage against the Tutsi people after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana.   

Venezuela/Colombia- People Like Us (2024): Pedro Samper’s film is about ‘People like Us’, a cemetery run by Sonia Bermúdez, who has taken up the task of burying unknown Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. A New Yorker documentary, the film follows the mortician’s journey of paying respects to the people who have fled their native land post the Venezuelan constitutional crisis in 2017. 

Chechnya/France- The Search (2014): Directed by Michel Hazanavicius, the film is set against the backdrop of the Second Chechen War (1999-2009), during the Russian invasion of Chechnya. The narrative is built through the unfolding stories of four characters, whose lives cross paths because of the war. It’s a poignant commentary on the impact of war on those who suffer its consequences as well as those who carry it out. 

Ukraine - 20 Days in Mariupol (2023): Msytslav Chernov’s film is pieced together using footage of the crew on the frontlines of the Russian siege of the Ukrainian town. Having premiered at the 2023 Sundance film festival, the immersive footage for Chernov’s film was extracted through Associated Press (AP)’s humanitarian corridor. By the time the crew left town, they were the last journalists embedded there. 

Ukraine - Russians At War (2024): Anastasia Trofimov’s documentary captures the ‘other side’ of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, by tailing Russian soldiers invading Ukraine. Even though Trofimova’s film raised many eyebrows [skeptics labelled it Russian propaganda], many festivals have lauded the film’s balanced, humanistic portrait of fatigued soldiers, carrying out mindless, violent assaults. Organisers of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) defended it by calling it an anti-war film. 

Ukraine-Intercepted (Oksana Karpovych) (2024): The visuals of a ravaged Ukraine gain blistering impact as the documentary transposes them against intercepted calls of on-ground Russian soldiers to their wives and families. Many of the soldiers are disillusioned in their duty. All they want is to go home. If it calls for violence, so be it. The film depicts their assumed right to kill, rampage and loot Ukraine as stemming from State propaganda, much of it which they themselves gradually start doubting though the profiteering angle stays intact.  

BY Daniel Buuma

Ukraine- Songs of Slow Burning Earth (Olha Zhurba) (2024): Bringing a generational perspective to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zhurba traverses everything from the first panicked response to motley sights of hordes of evacuees, schools and factories seemingly far from the frontlines. Death and devastation linger in the air, but there’s hope too in the vow of the Ukrainian school kids to do everything they can to reimagine the future of their home. 

Afghanistan - Taxi to the Dark Side (2007): Alex Gibney’s hard-hitting documentary dives into USA’s policy on torture and interrogation techniques – which clearly violated the Geneva conventions. It focuses on Dilawar, an Afghan taxi driver, who was interrogated and beaten to death at a blacksite in the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Gibney’s film picks apart America’s hypocrisy of defending their barbarism with the so-called ‘war on terror’. 

Palestine- No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra) (2024): Chronicling the ongoing demolition of Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages in the Western Bank, the documentary doubles as a stirring snapshot of friendship and allyship among Israeli and Palestinian journalists and filmmakers. As rigorous it is about the assault on basic rights, humanity itself, it is powerfully affirmative in its equally staunch belief in the act of rebuilding. 

BY Outlook Web Desk

Palestine- Three Promises (Yousef Srouji) (2023): Shuffling through a bunch of home videos dating from the early 2000s during the Second Intifada against the Israeli occupation, the film revisits the chaos and horror of everyday living. The parent who recorded may have thought it wise to hide the tapes from the kids but as they revisit the times, the realisation of their scars being present all this while hits with urgency. It has been years since the family moved away from their ravaged town nevertheless trauma persists. 

Yemen- The Burdened (Amr Gamal) (2023): The fallout of the 2015 civil war and constraints of living under religious and political imperatives lace the portrait of a couple faced with an unwanted pregnancy. They can’t afford another child but the road to an illegal abortion is riddled with danger. The fiction feature is a harrowing plunge into their travails.  

Ethiopia- Adwa (1999): This documentary is set in 1896, when Ethiopian people came together to fight against the sophisticated Italian army from taking over their homeland. Directed by Haile Gerima, the film is based on the events, which became a significant part of the larger African history of resilience against the colonisation by the West.  

Lebanon - Waltz with Bashir (2008): Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman goes down the rabbit hole of his own role in the 1982 Lebanon War, while serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Primarily an animation film, Folman digs through the memories of fellow veterans and his own, only to arrive at the shocking, bloody scheme he was a part of. 

Syria- For Sama (2019): Syrian journalist Waad Al-Kateab and British filmmaker Edward Watts document the civil war leading up to what became known as the Battle of Aleppo. Al-Kateab gives birth to her daughter Sama, living alongside husband Hamza, one of the last doctors who stayed behind in Aleppo. The film takes place over a five-year period as Waad documents killings of innocent civilians, Hamza tries to revive almost-corpses with limited medical supplies and the best of intentions. A toddler grows up seeing humanity at its most unkind. 

Syria- My Memory is Full of Ghosts (2024): Anas Zawahri’s camera wistfully crosses the breadth of the Syrian city of Homs, besieged between 2011 and 2014, as its residents talk of their emotionally ambivalent, deeply fraught relationship to home, a place they can’t stand staying in yet can’t shake it off. 

Syria - The White Helmets (2016): British filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel won the Oscar for the Best Documentary short, for archiving the volunteer rescue work of the Syrian Civil Defence in the city of Aleppo; also known as the White Helmets. It’s a heartbreaking document of selflessness in the face of extreme horror. 

BY Outlook Web Desk

Myanmar-Myanmar Diaries (anonymous collective) (2022): In the aftermath of the Feb 2021 military coup, ten journalists and self-taught filmmakers banded together to present an assemblage of first-person testimonies and dramatic re-enactments of the horrors they witnessed. This anthology of short films is powered by a defiant, hybrid spirit interweaving immediate, gutting phone footage and carefully mounted scenes of looking back. Winner of the Berlinale Documentary Award 2021, Myanmar Diaries is terrifyingly, indelibly important. 

Vietnam- The Vietnam War (2017): Ken Burns and Lynn Novick created this 10-part, 18 hours long series on the entire history of the Vietnam War for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). It’s arguably one of the most exhaustive pieces of war filmmaking – given how it goes out of its way to ask pointed questions to both sides, thereby managing to distill the finer nuances of human nature in the process, and how they mirror each other. 

Somalia/ Italy- Somalia94- The Ilaria Alpi Affair (2017): An animation by Marco Giolo, this film tracks the lives of Italian journalist Ilaria Alpi and Slovakian photographer Miran Hrovatin, in their final weeks, before they were killed in Mogadishu on March 20,1994. The two were uncovering a case of weapon and illegal toxic waste trafficking between Western and developing countries, in which Italian government institutions were also allegedly involved, before being killed. 

BY Debanjan Dhar

Korea- Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005): A comic war drama, this Park Kwang-hyun directed film is set in a secluded village called Dongmakgol, whose residents are unaware of the ongoing Korean war. When soldiers from North and South Korea and the US land serendipitously in the village, they eventually make it their united mission to save the village and its residents from the impact of war. 

Ammad Butt is leading the Pakistan hockey team with goalkeeper Ishtiag Abdullah Khan. Jungjun Lee is leading the Korean side and Taeseok Min is the coach. Jaehan Kim is their goalkeeper.

Six teams, namely India, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Pakistan, Japan and China are participating in the Asian Champions Trophy 2024 and the hosts are the lowest-ranked (23) team in the tournament. India's next opponent, Japan are ranked 15 in the world.

Algeria/ Italy- Battle of Algiers (1966): Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic on the Algerian war of independence from France is a neo-realist film that follows FLN revolutionary Ali La Pointe between 1954 and 1957, as the FLN took over Algiers. The film was shot on location with non-actors who had been a part of the Algerian battle in real life. 

Japan- Grave of the Fireflies (1988): One of Studio Ghibli’s most profound works, this film is premised on the predicament of two young siblings from Kobe, Seita and Setsuko, as they struggle to survive during World War II. The film, a timeless classic, is celebrated world over as an animation with a strong anti-war message.  

BY Vineetha Mokkil

Iran- Turtles Can Fly (2004): Bahman Ghobadi’s film is set at the Iraq-Turkey border and follows the lives of three children living in a Kurdish refugee camp. It is a poignant commentary on the precarious lives of the Kurdish people and the uncertain fates they are resigned to during Saddam Hussein’s regime.  

Chile- Chile, La Memoria Obstinada (1997): A heart-rending documentary by Patricio Guzmán, the film follows the director back to his homeland after 23 years of being in exile during Pinochet’s regime. He screens his historic Battle of Chile, which documented the military coup of Salvador Allende in 1973ubet63, and was shown across the globe except in his own country. The film interrogates the collective suppression of memory and trauma in Chile during the Pinochet regime and its aftermath on the younger generations of the country.