Films that depict World War II exist across many decades of the history of cinema, starting even as the war was continuing to rage on. These films have the ability to transport the audience to a world that was torn apart by one of the most costly conflicts in modern history, putting viewers in the shoes of the fighters and bystanders in one of the defining moments of the 21st Century.

Some of the best World War II films are ones that closely follow real historical events, using true stories about real people to tell even more captivating tales. Period pieces that are able to accurately depict real events, especially events that had such a profound impact on the world, can create some of the most impactful and interesting movies of all time.

10

This Biopic Won a Great Actor an Oscar

Darkest Hour (2017)

Biopics are often some of the most awarded and lauded films of any given year, anchoring a powerful story around a central figure who had a defining effect on a seminal moment in human history. Winston Churchill is clearly one of those people, a defining figure in British history for his unconventional leadership style and uncompromising approach to leading his country, and the Allied forces, through the tumultuous Second World War.

Darkest Hour, based on the beginning of Winston Churchill’s first run as Prime Minister during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power and the advent of the war, stars Gary Oldman in an Academy Award-winning performance as Churchill in one of the best war films of the last 10 years. In the film, Churchill attempts to wrangle Parliament into a more aggressive approach to dealing with the invading Nazi parties, even as many in his government call for a peaceful solution.

Darkest Hour

Release Date

November 22, 2017

Runtime

125minutes

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9

One Half of This Experimental War Series Is Based on Real People

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Clint Eastwood’s most experimental move as a director came in 2006 when he released two separate war films that showed different sides of the same conflict. Flags of Our Fathers, the first of these two films, details the exploits of the five Marines and one Naval corpsman who fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima and raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi in one of the most famous photographs in human history.

Flags of Our Fathers is based on a book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, one of whom is the son of Navy corpsman John Bradley who is portrayed in the film by Ryan Phillippe. The film not only depicts the events of the flag raising but the resulting notoriety it gained the six men who are photographed, and how the effects of the war continued to impact them after they returned home.

Flags of Our Fathers

Release Date

October 20, 2006

Runtime

135 Minutes

Writers

William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis, James Bradley, Ron Powers

8

This Movie Showed the Casualties of a War That Had Only Just Begun

Dunkirk (2017)

The first of Christopher Nolan’s two World War II set films so far, Dunkirk is a heart-pounding and devastating look at the casualties and intensity of a war that had only just begun to heat up in Europe. Dunkirk follows several different soldiers during the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940, where hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were evacuated from the north of France as they were pushed back by Nazi forces.

Using the perspectives of land, air and sea, and messing with the timing of each of these perspectives, Nolan is able to capture multiple different angles of how the war affected enlisted people. The ending of the film, which juxtaposes Winston Churchill’s iconic “We shall fight on the beaches” address with the horrors of the soldiers returning home, is among the most powerful scenes in film of the 2010s.

Dunkirk

Release Date

July 21, 2017

Runtime

106 minutes

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Related

10 Best War Movies of the 21st Century, Ranked

War films have been the backbone of cinema for decades, but the 21st century offers some true standouts in the genre.

7

This Film Shows the War From a Different Perspective

Das Boot (1981)

One of many adaptations of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s novel of the same name, one of which is one of the best World War II television series of all time, Das Boot is a fascinating and captivating film that does what very few other films about the conflict do. The film, made by a German director and based on a German novel about Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s real experiences as a soldier on a submarine, shows a more nuanced perspective of Nazi soldiers.

The film follows the crew of the German U-96 as they combat the excitement and boredom of life in a submarine, where at any moment they can go from hours upon hours of monotony to an intense attack. The film was nominated for numerous Oscars and other awards upon its release, though Lothar-Günther Buchheim dismissed the film as watering down his novel’s clearly anti-war sentiment in favor of something more commercially exciting.

Das Boot

Release Date

September 17, 1981

Runtime

149 Minutes

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6

This Movie Won the Coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival

The Pianist (2002)

One of the best World War II films of all time, and an adaptation of one of the most important autobiographies of the 20th Century, The Pianist is an excellent film that follows the life of Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist. The film follows Szpilman as he and his family are forced into the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazi Party for the duration of the war.

The film won praise from critics and audiences and a number of awards, including the highest honor at the internationally renowned Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d’Or. The film has continued to be considered one of the best movies of the 21st Century, though its legacy is marred by the controversy behind the film’s director Roman Polanski and his sexual abuse allegations.

The Pianist

Release Date

March 28, 2003

Runtime

150 Minutes

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5

This Recent Best Picture Winner Is a Brilliant Biopic

Oppenheimer (2023)

One-half of the financial juggernaut that bolstered post-COVID cinemas in 2023, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer shocked and wowed audiences and critics by not only dominating many fans’ top ten lists for the year but by earning a staggering $976.8 million at the international box office. This makes the film the highest-grossing Best Picture winner in two decades, since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King dominated the Oscars in 2003.

Oppenheimer, based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography American Prometheus, follows the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the cross-country effort to develop a weapon of mass destruction in order to end the Second World War. Following both the building of the bomb and the political fallout after the war is over, the movie is considered by many to be one of the best films of the 2020s thus far.

Oppenheimer

Release Date

July 21, 2023

Runtime

150 Minutes

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4

This Classic Biopic Was Written by One of the Best Filmmakers of All Time

Patton (1970)

Based on multiple different biographies and historical books about the era, including Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and General Omar Bradley’s memoir A Soldier’s Story, Patton won Best Picture at the 43rd Academy Awards for its portrayal of one of the most lauded generals in U.S. military history. Patton stars George C. Scott as General George S. Patton, who commanded the Third Army in France and Germany after the invasion of Normandy in 1944.

The film was co-written by Francis Ford Coppola, just two years before his magnum opus The Godfather would turn him into one of the most influential and successful directors in the history of Hollywood. Scott also won the Best Actor award at the Oscars that year, though he declined the award over a dislike of the notion of acting competitions and award ceremonies in general.

Patton

Release Date

April 2, 1970

Runtime

172 Minutes

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3

One of the Best Directors of All Time Made Two Excellent World War II Films

Schindler’s List (1993)

Schindler’s List is based on the historical novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally, which detailed the life of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who eventually moved to save the lives of Jewish people who worked for his company. Filmed basically simultaneously with Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is considered one of the best and most emotionally devastating movies of the master director’s career.

The movie was seen as a triumph at the time of its release, winning seven Oscars at the 66th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Spielberg, and was lauded by legendary directors like Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick. The movie had hundreds of vocal supporters who praised the film for its importance at its release, including Oprah Winfrey and President Bill Clinton.

Schindler’s List

Release Date

December 15, 1993

Runtime

195 Minutes

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2

This Classic Action Movie Is One of the Best Ever

The Great Escape (1963)

A heavily fictionalized account of real events that were depicted in the non-fiction book of the same name, John Sturges’ The Great Escape​ is widely considered to be one of the best action movies ever made and one of the last great classic American films before the New Hollywood era. The film follows a highly inflated telling of the story of a group of British POWs as they plan a massive escape from a Nazi camp.

​​​​​​Starring American movie star and icon Steve McQueen as Captain Virgil Hilts, one of the few Americans in the camp who pushes the rest of the group to escape, The Great Escape also features a number of legendary character actors, including Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson and David McCallum. The movie was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture.​

The Great Escape

Release Date

July 4, 1963

Runtime

172 Minutes

Director

John Sturges

Writers

Paul Brickhill, James Clavell, W.R. Burnett

1

This Visceral Film Is the Best WWII Story Ever Told

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Inspired both by books written by Stephen E. Ambrose and the accounts of real veterans who experienced the loss of multiple siblings during the Second World War, Saving Private Ryan is the second of Steven Spielberg’s World War II films. The movie follows Tom Hanks​​​​​​​ as John H. Miller, a captain in the U.S. Army who is tasked with finding James Francis Ryan, a soldier who is the last surviving member of his deployed family.

The film is infamous for its hyper-violence and unrelenting tone, which differs from many of the more uplifting and optimistic vibes of Spielberg’s filmography. The D-Day sequence has been particularly cited for its brutal realism, putting audiences directly on the beaches with Miller as he fights his way through one of the scariest battles in modern war history.