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War is a living nightmare, wreaking its destruction on innocent lives and civilizations. It casts deep wounds that shape our history, present circumstances, and potential prospects for the future.

War has been a central theme in all of human history since its inception. It inspires both captivation and terror, with stories of bravery, resilience, and courage, as well as violence and death. It is the peak of danger – where any semblance of safety or security ceases to exist for those who fight. All that remains are humanity’s yearning for survival against insurmountable odds.

Hollywood has no shortage of war films meant to both awe and educate. Some promote the best humanity can offer as people come together for a common cause. Others reveal the horrific truth behind conflict’s brutality and man’s capacity for harm on an unimaginable scale.

Here is the ultimate fan selection of the top...

The director of this unblinking account of the genocide in Belarus in 1942 and 1943 said that “people in America can’t watch my film. They have thrillers but this is something different.” He certainly got that right. A young farm boy is a witness to and victim of horrendous barbarism inflicted on a civilian population… now the most common kind of terror. The Politburo wanted a film to commemorate Victory Day, and director Elem Klimov gave them something nobody would forget. Although cinema gut-wrenchers have gone much further in the last 25 years, Kilmov’s unforgettable horrorshow rivets us through the haunted, paralyzed face of young actor Aleksei Kravchenko, who can scarcely process what he sees.

Come and See

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1035

1985 / Color / 1:37 / 143 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 30, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius, Vladas Bagdonas, Evgeniy Tilicheev, Viktors Lorencs, J¨ri Lumiste.

Cinematography: Alexei...

War is hell, for sure, but war can make for undeniably brilliant movie-making. Here, the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the ten best

• Top 10 action movies

• Top 10 comedy movies

• Top 10 horror movies

• Top 10 sci-fi movies

• Top 10 crime movies

• Top 10 arthouse movies

• Top 10 family movies

10. Where Eagles Dare

As the second world war thriller became bogged down during the mid-60s in plodding epics like Operation Crossbow and The Heroes of Telemark, someone was needed to reintroduce a little sang-froid, some post-Le Carré espionage, and for heaven's sake, some proper macho thrills into the genre. Alistair Maclean stepped up, writing the screenplay and the novel of Where Eagles Dare simultaneously, and Brian G Hutton summoned up a better than usual cast headed by Richard Burton (Major Jonathan Smith), a still fresh-faced Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Morris Schaffer), and the late Mary Ure (Mary Elison).

Parachuted into the German Alps, they have one...

Latvia’s Official entry for the Academy Awards Gulf Stream Under The Iceberg will have its North American premiere this month at the Scandinavian Film Festival of Los Angeles - www.Ssfla.net.

The Sffla is leading the industry by extending its program to include its Baltic neighbors from Latvia and Lithuania. Ahead of the curve, the 14 year old festival has carved out a loyal and dedicated audience during the last lobbying weeks of a busy award season over the two weekends in January 12&13 and 19&20 at the Writer’s Guild in Beverly Hills.

“Northern European countries have often taken to the seas with a cargo of culture, commerce and collaboration,” says festival founder/director James Koenig. “We have an exciting program that follows old routes to new worlds and now we are journeying around to our Baltic neighborhood where cultural cross-currents have been a reality since even before Hanseatic ‘happenings’!”

This year the program will begin with Yevgeny Pashkevich’s mythical fairy tale Gulf Stream Under the Iceberg, a kaleidoscopic and hypnotic affair inspired by the works of Anatole France and influenced by Talmud and the medieval books of Cabala. It is the self-absorbing story about Adam´s first wife, Lilith – how humanity tries to run away from Eden and strives to become sinless, yet ultimately ends up trapped in its own unconsciousness.A

Written & Directed by Yevgeny Pahskevich, Gulf Stream Under the Iceberg is produced by Yevgeny Pashkevich, Natalia Ivanova and stars Olga Shepitskaya, Ville Haapasalo, Danila Kozlovsky, Liubomiras Lauciavicius, and Yuriy Tsurilo. Executive producers are Kristians Luhaers, Antra Cilinska and Maria Ksinopulo. Wide Management is handling worldwide sales.

Sffla 2013 will continue its strong line-up of showcasing Scandinavian films - premiering features, documentaries, shorts from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and which will include this year’s Academy’s short-list of Foreign Language films from Iceland Baltasar Kormakur’s The Deep, and Norway’s Golden Globe nominee Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg’s Kon-tiki; with Sweden’s Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair closing the festival. Other Academy submissions include Finland’s entry Antti Joinen’s Purge, Latvia’s Yevgeny Pashkevich’s Gulf Stream Under the Iceberg and Lithuania’s Loss from Maris Martinsons.

The shorts program will also include two Academy short-listed films: Anders Walter’s 9 Meter (Denmark) and Goran Kapetanovic’s Kiruna-Kigali (Sweden)

Gulf Stream Under the Iceberg Premieres Saturday, January 12 at 11am

WGA

135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills - www.nidafilma.lv

Ticket sales: www.Sffla.net

Sales enquiries: www.widemanagement.com...

There is no need to bother Leni Riefenstahl and her Triumph des Willens to demonstrate how powerful propaganda can often be, but it's exactly in cases like hers that you often wonder what her legacy would have been, if ridden of all the political ramifications of (some of) her works. That is one of the reasons why today's Mainland Cinema is so vibrant and interesting, even in its most quintessential main melody form: we're often dealing with pretty obvious pieces of cinematic propaganda, works funded by the government and whose foremost purpose is to drive the masses into supporting a certain creed or philosophy. But for every insipid turd like 建国大业 (The Founding of a Republic), you get plenty of eclectic variations on this melody, works which do fulfill their "quota" of bleeding-heart national sentimentalism, but also manage to focus a large portion of their makers' efforts in building a cohesive,...