Best movies like Dan Cruickshank: Resurrecting History: Warsaw

The account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the Nazi invasion.

This documentary tells the personal story of filmmaker Jari Osborne's father, a Chinese-Canadian veteran. She describes her father's involvement in World War II and uncovers a legacy of discrimination and racism against British Columbia's Chinese-Canadian community. Sworn to secrecy for decades, Osborne's father and his war buddies now vividly recall their top-secret missions behind enemy lines in Southeast Asia. Theirs is a tale of young men proudly fighting for a country that had mistreated them. This film does more than reveal an important period in Canadian history. It pays moving tribute to a father's quiet heroism.

A heart-stirring meditation on time, memory and mortality, “Of Time and the City” is Terence Davies’ poetic, conflicted ode to his birthplace of Liverpool, England. The visual content of the film consists largely of archival clips of the city from the 1940s to the 1960s, their nostalgic charm darkened by accompanying music and the counterpoint of Davies’ dry, at times dyspeptic, voice-over narration. His voice thickens with emotion as he recalls the delights of juvenile movie-going or the ritual of a holiday trip to New Brighton, across the River Mersey, and hardens with contempt when he turns his gaze on the hoopla surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953. The film is a powerful evocation of the director's youth in post-war Britain and a reflection on how his home city has changed over the years.

Attorney Henry Strauss grew up in Germany, but left the country with his Jewish family during the rise of the Third Reich. Still wondering about what happened to his boyhood friend Konradin Von Lohenburg, Strauss travels back to Germany for the first time since he was a young man, bringing up some painful memories.

The rise and fall of Nazi Germany in part through the use of classical allegory.

When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man's murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.

When Timmy Cleary, comes home from soldiering, he's greeted by the open but strained arms of his two parents, John and Nettie. Once considered sickly and weak, he has now distinguished himself in the service and is ready to begin a new life. His parents, however, are still trapped in the bygone days of early and unresolved marital strife and begin emotionally deteriorating through several drama packed encounters. Now mature, the young Tim Cleary finally understands the family dynamics that has played all throughout his boyhood. By the simple act of bringing his mother roses on behalf of his father, Tim realizes he may have destroyed his family, but is helpless to obtain resolution which must come from both his parents.

An American lawyer on vacation in Europe is asked by a book publisher to stop by the Austrian town of Salzburg to see a photographer who's taking pictures for a book on picturesque Austrian lakes. Upon his arrival he senses that something is wrong when the photographer seems to have vanished, leaving a near panic-stricken wife and a sinister, secretive brother. Before he knows it, the lawyer finds himself mixed up with spies, assassins, and the hunt for a list made up by the Nazis during World War II of people who collaborated with them.

A man searching for his childhood best friend — a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust — who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

In the nine months prior to World War II, 10.000 innocent children left behind their families, their homes, their childhood, and took the journey... to Britain to escape the Nazi Holocaust.

The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.

Desperate for a job to help him support his family, Jim Norman takes a position teaching high school in the town where his brother was murdered in front of him by teenage bullies twenty-seven years before. The teens who committed the crime are long dead, but now the kids in Jim's new class keep dying and being replaced by new students who look like the deceased hoodlums.

The horrors of World War I have robbed returning veteran Chris Baldry of his memory. The traumatized soldier doesn't even recognize his own wife, Kitty, or remember their years together. While Baldry attempts to cope with the unfamiliar surroundings of his own home, he seeks out the company of an old flame from his childhood, Margaret Grey. His amnesia also makes him a ready target for the affections of his older cousin, Jenny.

Comprised of video shot during the Nazi regime, including propaganda, newsreels, broadcasts and even some of Eva Braun's colorized personal home movies, we explore the way in which the Third Reich infiltrated the lives of the German population, from 1933 to 1945.

The fascinating story of knighthood, told through the extraordinary life and times of William Marshal, whom many consider the world's greatest knight. From Europe's medieval castles to the holy city of Jerusalem, presenter Thomas Asbridge explores William's incredible life, revealing a rip-roaring adventure story in the spirit of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. In a career that spanned half a century, this English soldier and statesman served some of Christendom's greatest leaders, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Richard the Lionheart. Marshal fought in battles across Europe, survived court intrigue and exile, put his seal to the Magna Carta and proved to be the best friend a king could have, remaining loyal to those he served through disaster and victory. Then at the age of 70, despite all the odds, he saved England from a French invasion.

On June 6th, 1944 the largest military invasion and defence the world has ever seen occurred. D-Day tells the epic story of the preparation and execution of the Allied invasion of Normandy. It tells the story of the defence of the Western Front by the forces of the German Empire, and of the complex and deadly secret war fought by the men and women of France and mainland Europe. D-Day brings to life the dramatic and astounding tales of courage and sacrifice, joy and despair, love and betrayal. The planning for the Allied invasion on June 6th 1944 took two years and cost thousands of lives. It involved a deception of breathtaking audacity. Both the preparation leading up to and the actions and events on the day itself relied on the absolute discretion of many and the genius and nerve of a few. D-Day examines the intricate jigsaw from both sides - presenting events through the eyes of the men and women who were there, telling their extraordinary stories.

Based on true events, Paul is forced to recall his harrowing childhood growing up in a children’s home, when a police investigation into his boyhood friend’s suicide opens old wounds. As Paul struggles to shake off his past and build a relationship with Anthea, his fragile mental state and bitter memories lead to a confrontation with those responsible for his shattered childhood and the death of his friend.

This is the true story about a group of Romani's (gypsy) in occupied Poland during World War II as they confront the atrocities and tragedies of a forgotten holocaust.

Polish Martin Gray recalls the Holocaust, New York prosperity, and losing his wife and family.

Bringing Up Bobby is the story of a European con-artist and her son Bobby, who find themselves in Oklahoma in an effort to escape her past and build a better future. Olive and Bobby blithely charm their way from one adventure to another until Olive's criminal past catches up with her. Consequently, she must make a choice: continue with a life of crime or leave the person she loves most in an effort to give Bobby a proper chance in life.

What lies beneath the ocean? World War Two left a great number of ships and submarines hidden beneath the waves. Now, as the oceans drain, each vessel reveals its secrets through new data-based 3D reconstructions. From the Arizona in Pearl Harbour’s shallows, whose destruction brought America into the war, to Nazi super ship the Bismarck and its mysterious end three miles down. From the flaming merchant ships secretly torpedoed by U-boats off tourist beaches of the USA, to the covert inventions of the Allies' costly D-Day beachhead, and lastly to the troopship Leopoldville sunk with the needless deaths of 400 soldiers. Drain The Ocean exposes the truth.

The story of Hitler’s final hours told by people who were there. This special features exclusive forgotten interviews, believed lost for 65 years, with members of Hitler’s inner circle who were trapped with him in his bunker as the Russians fought to take Berlin. These unique interviews from figures such as the leader of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann and Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, have never before been seen outside Germany. Using rarely seen archive footage and dramatic reconstruction, this special tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker.

Brothers Colin and Ewan McGregor follow up their documentary The Battle of Britain with a film exploring Bomber Command, a rarely told story from the Second World War. The film focuses primarily on the men who fought and died in the skies above occupied Europe, with numerous examples of individual heroism and extraordinary collective spirit, and Colin learns to fly the key aircraft of the campaign: the Lancaster bomber. But this is also the story of a controversy that has lasted almost 70 years. The program covers six years of wartime operations, and traces the obstacles and challenges that were overcome as the RAF developed and deployed the awesome fighting force that was Bomber Command.

Take a cross-country flight over Ireland's natural wonders and ancient ruins. In this spectacular overview of the historically significant Emerald Isle, we soar over Neolithic tombs of the Celtic era, medieval castles of the Vikings, and modern cities humming with life. From the tower that inspired a novelist to the ancestral home of a famous stout, we explore the sites, the people, and the milestones of this unique gem of Western Europe.

Documentary using only original colour footage charts the 12 years from Adolf Hitler's rise to power to the fall of Berlin in 1945. Complemented by eyewitness material, tracks the dramatic transformation of Germany into a Nazi state, looks into Hitler's relationship with his lover Eva Braun and replicates pivotal events, including Nazi rallies, the invasion of Poland, Hitler's meeting with Lloyd George, the horrors of Buchenwald concentration camp, Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto, the Battle of Britain and the fall of Berlin.

The glories of Ancient Rome are explored in ROMAN CITY, based on David Macaulay's acclaimed book. This animated and live-action video recounts life in Verbonia, a fictional city in Gaul. A well-planned town with all modern conveniences, it is threatened by conflict between conquerors and conquered. Macaulay also visits Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia, Nimes, Orange, and Rome, to view actual Roman architecture and engineering greatness.

Survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp eloquently and movingly tell of their experiences of deportation, family destruction, and their own survival, together with the history of its place in the Nazi death camp system and its liberation by the British army in April 1945.

Actor James Mason returns to his Huddersfield roots. Harking back to his childhood memories, he remarks how the town has changed and developed but the people have remained the same.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation, Dan Snow tells the story of the 'little ships' which made the perilous cross-channel voyage, as 50 of them return to France.

Historian Dan Cruickshank and photographer Don McCullin venture into the heart of war-torn Syria on a dangerous mission to document the cultural destruction wrought by ISIS.

Dan Cruickshank explores the mysteries and secrets of the bridges that have made London what it is. He uncovers stories of Bronze-Age relics emerging from the Vauxhall shore, of why London Bridge was falling down, of midnight corpses splashing beneath Waterloo Bridge, and above all, of the sublime ambition of London's bridge builders themselves.

Jonathan Meades explores the architecture of Nazi Germany, from its holiday camps to its concentration camps.

Aki Omoshaybi’s earnest debut explores the love between two people who work hard to keep their romance on track while struggling to manage personal hardship.

A geneticist wakes up from an accident with only fragments of his memory intact and is forced to relearn who he is via his twin brother. But as he digs deeper, he discovers he might not be who he thought at all.

"The slow and subtle repeated rhythms of daily life provide the material for this 12 part film. The pace is slow with the intention of inviting viewers into a more visceral and less verbally analytical state of mind. The 'action,' small events like the mail arriving, the storm coming, and the grass getting mowed, are secondary to the way of perceiving those events. In many ways this film reaches back into a kind of personal memory one might recall from early childhood." –Leighton Pierce