Based on the true story of journalist Michael Nicholson, who adopted a Bosnian child when covering the conflict there, this was the first Western movie to examine the war in the former Yugoslavia. Stephen Dillane is the dispassionate reporter who questions news values when his stories about a besieged orphanage are overtaken by the Duke of York's divorce, and decides to smuggle out and adopt a young girl with no future. This unashamedly political film is commendably free of sentiment and full of the shrill terror of life in the war torn town.

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With a cast chock full of war movie veterans, and based on the real-life memoirs of Pat Reid, The Colditz Story is a an entertaining, and moving, account of life in the most notorious prison camp in the Third Reich. More a rousing adventure story than a portrayal of harsh realities of war, the film follows numerous foiled escape attempts until one of the heroes hits on a brilliant plan...

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The improbable, but true, story of Solomon Perel (Rene Hofschneider) a young German Jew who joined the Hitler Youth to make it through World War II. He manages to fall in love with a propaganda-swallowing Nazi mouthpiece played by Julie Delpy. Half 'horror of war' movie, half coming of age comedy, Agnieszka Holland's film is as powerful as it is unusual.

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Unarguably one of the most important films in the history of cinema, DW Griffith's sprawling historical epic is also one of the most controversial. The story, adapted from Thomas Dixon's overtly racist novel The Clansman, follows the fluctuating fortunes of two families - the Stonemasons in the North and the Camerons in the South - through the Civil War and Reconstruction until finally "the former enemies of North and South are united in common defence of their Aryan birthright." Technically brilliant, but appallingly misguided.

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Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune are the US and Japanese pilots who are forced to forget their differences and work together to survive when an accident leaves them both stranded on a deserted Pacific island during World War II. John Boorman directs this two-hander, which is held together by powerful performances from Marvin and Mifune as the enemies who don't even have a common language to bond them together (cue lots of scenes of them yelling at each other in their own languages), yet somehow find common ground in their predicament. Unsettling stuff, bolstered by a boldly bleak finale.

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