Part 1 of Wajda's trilogy of wartime films, the hopeful one, is set in Wola, a working-class area of Warsaw in 1942, and deals with the graduation of a bunch of semi-delinquent street kids, through individual acts of defiance and courage, into a youth resistance group. The heroism is not simple, neither loyalties nor self-sacrifice are assured, but united they will be. find out more...

The last of Wajda's famous trilogy, the one that signifies despair, has Cybulski, the 'Polish James Dean', as a young fighter no longer killing Germans but instructed to assassinate a recently appointed communist official. His deepening love affair with a hotel barmaid has him starting to question the value of his struggle. Superb. find out more...

Adapted from the classic, absurdist, anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. "Catch-22" is the story of Yossarian, a pilot who trys to opt out of flying bombing missions by being declared insane, the catch being that anyone trying to avoid bombing missions by being insane must be sane. This dark classic catches much of the flavour of the book, the insanity, the corruption and the absurdity of war. Think MASH, but non-linear - flawed but awesome. find out more...

During the German Occupation a young trainee railway guard at a remote country station desperately tries to lose his virginity. He finally succeeds with the station master's wife. Satiric, anti-heroic, humorous and balanced tragi-comedy. Generally considered the finest Czech new wave film. find out more...

At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take find out more...

Told partially in flashback we learn of a married Japanese man, Kengo, who is sent to manage forests in Indochina, during WW2. Here he meets a young typist, Yukiko, who falls hopelessly in love with him. Despite his promises when he returns to Tokyo it is to his wife that does so and he continues having heartless affairs, while Yukiko is forced to become the mistress of a GI and then a rich businessman, anything to survive. find out more...

Edmund is a young Berliner, attempting to survive and make some sense of a world set in the remnants of a post-WWII Germany. Their are few voices that exude assured confidence in Edmund's life but his Nazi teacher is one such man and the consequences of his impassioned doctrine on the impressionable lad have horrific and tragic consequences. Germany Year Zero is a powerful and haunting drama, understated and all the more mesmerising for it observation of ordinary men's capacity for simplistic find out more...

The story of a French actress and a Japanese man's brief affair in Hiroshima, stirring up painful memories for them both, for her wartime 'collaboration' and, for him, the bomb which quite literally destroyed everything he had known. Resnais's film is now seen as revolutionary for its time an a must for film study courses. Sadly haunting. find out more...

In Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's brilliant and chilling re-write of history, Germany has won World War II and Nazi troops occupy England. Pauline, an apolitical nurse, hopes only that normal life will return to England. It is only after she accepts a nursing job with Nazis that she slowly begins to realize the horrifying reality behind the occupation. It Happened Here is a masterful, terrifying vision of what might have happened if the Allied effort had been in vain. find out more...

Part 2, and surely the greatest, of Wajda's trilogy describes the last days of the failed 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis. The imagery of the sewers, to which the Polish fighters retreat, is superbly used to represent both their desperation and their new Soviet prison. Made in 1956 despite Stalinist censorship. find out more...