Best movies like The Ascent

The true story of one of Russia's most beloved national heroines. During the Nazi siege of Moscow, a fearless 18-year-old girl named Zoya risked her life as a partisan fighter. Captured by the Germans, Zoya endured unspeakable tortures at the hands of the Gestapo but still refused to betray her comrades. Even on the gallows, Zoya defiantly spoke out against the Nazis and everything they stood for. In a series of flashbacks, this film re-creates not merely Zoya's death, but also her life.

A 1943 Soviet documentary war film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko and Yuliya Solntseva. It is Dovzhenko's second World War II documentary, and dealt with the Battle of Kharkov. The film incorporates German footage of the invasion of Ukraine, which was later captured by the Soviets.

The war ended a long time ago, but for the heroine of the film, the former pilot, only those years were filled with genuine meaning. She deeply feels discord with reality, lack of contact with her daughter. She doesn't manage to adapt to this peaceful, everyday life, she doesn't lose her piercing desire to fly...

This riveting Russian documentary takes you inside the trials of the notorious German war criminals, brought to trial to account for their actions. The footage includes excerpts from the trials of many of the senior Nazis including Goebels and Goring.

Two friends are army officers, and the turbulent times throw them from the Civil War in the early 20s to the Soviet conflict in Finland, from China to the Urals.

The German conquerors are above nothing, not even the slaughter of small children, to break the spirit of their Soviet captives. Suffering more than most is Olga (Nataliya Uzhviy), a Soviet partisan who returns to the village to bear her child, only to endure the cruelest of arbitrary tortures at the hands of the Nazis. Eventually, the villagers rise up against their oppressors-but unexpectedly do not wipe them out, electing instead to force the surviving Nazis to stand trial for their atrocities in a postwar "people's court." (It is also implied that those who collaborated with the Germans will be dealt with in the same evenhanded fashion).

During WWII, a three-man commando team places its trust in the hands of a band of Filipino resistors, as they try to knock out a Japenese communication center.

When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp's walls.

The invasion of a village in Byelorussia by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.

Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army cavalry commissar, is waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth and is softened somewhat by the experience of family life.

In a remote village in Karelia, Sergeant Vaskov commands an anti-aircraft unit that protects a rail depot. While his men are transferred to the front line, he is reprimanded for their unruly behavior. He retorts that he wants replacements that aren't drunks or womanizers. In response, he is assigned a unit made up entirely of young women, fresh from training.

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

In 1944 a Soviet marine air force unit stationed near Murmansk is fighting off the German bombers attacking the British navy convoys supplying the Soviet Union with war materials under the lend-lease agreement.

Nazi POWs suspected of heinous acts are locked up in a Soviet women's prison run by vengeful female guards. To weed out the guilty, the innocent must pay. Can supposed enemies turn into great loves? Based on a true post-World War II story, this drama stars Thomas Kretschmann, John Malkovich and Vera Farmiga in a bitter game of cat and mouse and a battle between hate and humanity, mercy and revenge.

World War II, 1940. When the Nazi hordes invade and occupy Great Britain, the English citizens are soon divided between those who choose to submissively collaborate and those who are willing to fight.

A Russian war correspondent is drafted into the war and finds himself in the middle of battle. When he loses his party card, however, he is treated as a deserter until he finds help from a kind man. This Soviet war feature was considerably outspoken for the time as it addressed issues such as anti-Stalinism, Siberia and the inhumanity of war. Adapting his screenplay from a book by Constantin Simonov, Alexandre Stolper was responsible for writing as well as directing.

The continuation of a story started by Alexander Stolper epic movie "Zhivye i Myortvye".

During World War II, оld Georgian peasant wine-grower Georgy leaves his Georgian village and goes off to the front line, hoping to find his son. George should see and transfer a lot of things, he becomes a soldier and only in the last days of war finds the son...

War correspondent Lopatin takes a 20-day-leave from his hard work at the front in 1942. He travels to faraway Tashkent to meet the family of the killed soldier and visit the film set of the screen adaptation of his war-time stories. Lopatin also manages to walk the streets of Tashkent, take part in a factory workers' meeting and have a short-lived love affair. Although with no bombings and fighting, the city dwellers breathe the atmosphere of the ongoing war.

This distinctly Russian war story takes place in 1942 behind enemy lines. A regiment of partisans captures former Red Army lieutenant Lazarev who is dressed in a German uniform. He’s a Nazi defector and collaborator but now desires to switch back and fight with Russian partisans.

In the Warsau ghetto of 1943, one man's struggle to keep his family together leads him to the ultimate crisis of faith and one final chance at redemption.

When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad.

In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.

The epic tale of an American reconnaissance pilot downed in occupied Belgium at the height of World War II. Hidden by resistance fighters, the pilot falls in love with the wife of the man who will save him. When their affair is exposed, an act of betrayal threatens their lives and the entire resistance movement, forcing the pilot to make a powerful choice that could change the course of the war.

In November, 1942, near the Volga, Stanlingrad is under siege of Commander Friederich Paulus and his 330,000 men. The Russian high command unleashes an operation to protect the Mishkova River to avoid that about four hundred tanks join Paulus' army. The Soviet artillery soldiers protect their position with their lives in a bloodshed with few survivors.

Chronicle of the unheralded and unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union by the Italian army during World War II.

The film tells about the fighting everyday life of the crew of self-propelled guns during the liberation of Right-Bank Ukraine. Junior Lieutenant Maleshkin, an unshooted graduate of the school, commands the crew of the self-propelled gun SU-100. All the subordinates of Maleshkin are older than him and much more experienced. The authority of the young commander is tested at every step, he quarrels, then reconciles with his crew. In addition, Maleshkin is very dissatisfied with the battery commander, he now and then threatens to remove the sluggish young officer from the command. In the crew of Maleshkin, various troubles constantly occur: either the driver will catch the commandant’s eyes in an untidy, grimy look, then a combat grenade with a dropped check will be discovered in the car, or a breakdown will occur just at the moment the regiment enters the march.

Lithuania, 1941. German tanks and motorized columns broke into the border military town. Seven Soviet soldiers were cut off from the garrison. Without food and weapons, they went through the occupied territory to the location of the Red Army units.

During the war years, russian soldiers pick up an orphaned boy. He refuses to go to the rear and becomes a scout, and then remains with the artillery battery. When the calculation of the battery dies in battle with the German tanks that have broken through, Vanya is sent to the Suvorov School, whose students participate in a military parade on Red Square.

On December 6, 1941, the troops of the Western Front launched an offensive near Moscow. And before that, in the autumn of 1941, when the fascists were at Moscow, ten soldiers under the command of a lieutenant went into the enemy terrain to blow up the ammunition base.

A second episode in the trilogy about the partisans fighting against the Nazis during the WWII on the territory of Russia. Film is set in the winter of 1943-1944. Major Mlynsky is the commander of the partisan group, that is fighting behind the Nazi's front-lines. Major Mlynsky is invited to the Chief of Staff, where he is promoted to Lt.-Colonel for his courage. Now Mlynsky is in charge of the new partisan's operation.

A final episode in the trilogy about the Russian partisan's resistance during WWII. The film is set in 1944, when Russian partisans are making progress in their fighting against the Nazi occupation of Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Lt. Colonel Mlynsky is now in charge of an international clandestine operation. He is the commander of the special group of partisan-fighters. Mlynsky is organizing the Russian, Polish and Czechoslovakian partisans to join forces for an attack behind the enemy lines.

The fifth film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, revealing the nature and process of the fight between the Soviet Union and Germany in the Second World War.