Europa Europa (1990)

For a Lost Soldier

In the occupied Netherlands near the end of WWII, a young teenager, Jeroen Boman (Maarten Smit) is sent to the Dutch countryside to avoid the war in Amsterdam. While living with his adopted family, Jeroen meets and becomes friends with a Canadian soldier named Walt Cook, who is stationed at the same town he is staying at. Joroen and Walt spend a lot of time playing around and eventually a romantic relationship develops between them. The boy’s sexual curiosity leads him to have a sexual experience with Walt, an encounter that is shown with some vague detail but without actually showing any nudity, even though sexual intimacy between the two of them is implied. Overall, the movie handles this difficult subject with an elegant style and feeling, without having the adult-child relationship overwhelm the viewer and thus allowing the movie to be seen as just a wartime relationship between two people that marks an important time in a young boy’s life.

Das Boot

A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.

T-34

In 1944, a courageous group of Russian soldiers managed to escape from German captivity in a half-destroyed legendary T-34 tank. Those were the times of unforgettable bravery, fierce fighting, unbreakable love, and legendary miracles.

Everything Is Illuminated

A young Jewish American man endeavors—with the help of eccentric, distant relatives—to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II—in a Ukrainian village which was ultimately razed by the Nazis.

Malena

During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.