0481 – In This Corner of the World (2016)

spacetime coordinates:  1930s-1940s Hiroshima and Kure  Japan

In This Corner of the World (この世界の片隅に Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni) is a 2016 Japanese animated wartime drama film produced by MAPPA, co-written and directed by Sunao Katabuchi, featuring character designs by Hidenori Matsubara and music by Kotringo. The film is based on the manga of the same name written and illustrated by Fumiyo Kōno.

Though it is a fictional account, the episodes and background of the story are based on facts and real incidents researched by the production staff.  In the film, the lost townscape of pre-war Hiroshima, damaged by the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, is accurately revived in the scenes, following old photos, documents, and the memories of living people.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4769824/

0462 – Darkest Hour (2017)

spacetime coordinates:  1940 Great Britain

Darkest Hour is a 2017 British war drama film directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten. It stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and is a fictionalised account of his early days as Prime Minister, as Nazi Germany swept across Western Europe, threatening to defeat the United Kingdom during World War II, leading to friction at the highest levels of government. The film also stars Ben Mendelsohn, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, and Ronald Pickup.

historical accuracy

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4555426/

387 – I Served the King of England (2006)

spacetime coordinates: Czechoslovakia, 1963 >> 1930’s – 1940’s  Prague

I Served the King of England (Czech: Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále) is a 2006 comedy film written and directed by Czech New Wave master Jiří Menzel, based on the novel I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal. It is Menzel’s sixth adaptation of the works of Hrabal for film.

“A look at the glamorous life at an old-world Prague hotel.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284363/

0377 – Their Finest (2016)

spacetime coordinates:  1940  London

Their Finest is a 2016 British war comedy-drama film directed by Lone Scherfig and written by Gaby Chiappe, based on the 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans. The film stars Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and  Bill Nighy and tells the story of a British Ministry of Information film team making a morale-boosting film about the Dunkirk evacuation during the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1661275/

0376 – Railroad Tigers (2016)

spacetime coordinates: East China,  December 1941

Railroad Tigers is a 2016 Chinese action comedy film directed by Ding Sheng and starring Jackie Chan.  It is about a railroad worker who leads a team of freedom fighters to oppose the Japanese during Second Sino-Japanese War.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4687848/

357 – German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (2014)

spacetime coordinates:  1945 Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany // Buchenwald, Weimar, Thuringia, Germany // Dachau, Bavaria, Germany // Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Oswiecim, Malopolskie, Poland // Majdanek, Lublin, Lubelskie, Poland

(DISTURBING CONTENT)

German Concentration Camps Factual Survey is the official British documentary film on the Nazi concentration camps, based on footage shot by the Allied forces in 1945.

The film was produced by Sidney Bernstein, then with the British Ministry of Information,  with Alfred Hitchcock acting as a “treatment advisor”. The script was written by Richard Crossman and Colin Wills. Soviet filmmaker Sergei Nolbandov was production supervisor.

The project was abandoned in September 1945, and the film was left unfinished for nearly seventy years. The film’s restoration was completed by film scholars at the Imperial War Museum. The finished film had its world premiere early in 2014 at the Berlin Film Festival, and was shown in a limited number of venues in 2015. It was released in North America in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Concentration_Camps_Factual_Survey

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3455796/

A 70-minute documentary on the making of the 1945 film, entitled Night Will Fall, was assembled from the partially finished material and new original footage by director Andre Singer and producers Sally Angel and Brett Ratner. The New York Times, in its review of the documentary, said that “what the new film accomplishes, more than anything else, is to make you wish you could see the original.”

346 – Dunkirk (2017)

spacetime coordinates: 1940 France

Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, directed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II.  The film is a British, American, French, and Dutch co-production, and was distributed by Warner Bros..

Dunkirk portrays the evacuation from three perspectives: land, sea, and air. It has little dialogue: Nolan sought to create suspense instead from cinematography and music.

Dunkirk has extensive practical effects, and employed thousands of extras as well as boats that participated in the evacuation, and period aeroplanes.

The film received praise for its generally realistic representation of the historical evacuation. It accurately depicts a few Royal Air Force planes dogfighting the Luftwaffe over the sea, limited to one hour of operation by their fuel capacity. In 1940, destroyers and fighter planes were indeed held back from battle, as the Royal Navy and Air Force would have been the sole defenders against invasion. Also praised were accurate depictions of how a small boat attempted to evade aerial attack, and how soldiers returning to England saw a civilian population largely unaware of or unaffected by the war. British officers did initially refuse to evacuate French soldiers, although Churchill later insisted that the French be evacuated alongside the British. The overall realism of the film was acknowledged by surviving Dunkirk veterans, although Branagh said that some thought it “was louder than the battle” (read more: Historical accuracy)

*by_jwolforange13

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/