Best movies like The Chessplayer

Von Ryan's Express stars Frank Sinatra as a POW colonel who leads a daring escape from WWII Italy by taking over a freight train, but he has to win over the British soldiers he finds himself commanding.

North Carolina 1863, the Civil War is raging. In this inspired story of tragedy and love we follow the lives of Melody, a precocious seven-year old, and her young mother Sarah as they struggle on their farm to survive during the Civil War.

Nekhludoff, a Russian nobleman serving on a jury, discovers that the young girl on trial, Katusha, is someone he once seduced and abandoned and that he himself bears responsibility for reducing her to crime. He sets out to redeem her and himself in the process.

The film is based on the true story of Special Operations Executive French-born agent Odette Sansom, who was captured by the Germans in 1943, condemned to death and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp to be executed. However, against all odds she survived the war and testified against the prison guards at the Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials. She was awarded the George Cross in 1946; the first woman ever to receive the award, and the only woman who has been awarded it while still alive. (From Wikipedia, licensed under CC-BY-SA)

Thinly disguised account of the relationship between radical black activist Angela Davis and Black Panther and prison inmate George Jackson, who was one of those killed in a failed 1971 prison breakout.

Set during the American Civil War, Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-willed son. The son is forced, at gunpoint, by his father to enlist in the Confederate army. He is terrified by the war and deserts during a battle. The film focuses on the son's struggle to overcome his cowardice.

France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifled existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband: a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' own homes. Lucile initially tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them. But soon, a powerful love draws them together and leads them into the tragedy of war.

A freedom-loving French journalist sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyranny.

A British colonel escapes from the Gestapo to the Black Forest and poses as a Gypsy's mate.

When Col. William McNamara is stripped of his freedom in a German POW camp, he's determined to keep on fighting even from behind enemy lines. Enlisting the help of a young lieutenant in a brilliant plot against his captors, McNamara risks everything on a mission to free his men and change the outcome of the war.

In order to combat the damage caused by the depletion of the ozone layer, maverick biologist Hank Symes unleashes his most ambitious experiment to date: accelerated evolution. Unfortunately, this not only causes the authorities to take notice, but also creates a backlash from his new neighbors--leaving his son caught in the middle.

Moe discovers Curley's unknown boxing talent when he knocks out the Champ at a restaurant when Larry plays "Pop Goes the Weasal" on the violin. Moe becomes Curly's manager, and they win every fight, with the help of Larry. At the championship game, though, Larry's violin breaks. Curly is getting beat down bad when Larry makes his unexpected entrance and helps Curly prevail.

When 5 allied generals are captured in Italy in WWII, it is a propaganda nightmare for the allies. The generals are all 1 star and refuse to take orders from each other in order to plan an escape. Harry Frigg is a private who has escaped from the guard house dozens of times. He is promoted to Major General and ordered to get the generals out once he is captured. Harry is willing to escape, but then he meets the countess...

Professor Lola Sánchez investigates the truth behind the events experienced by Rafael Sánchez Mazas, one of the founders of the Falange Española party, during the Spanish Civil War.

Toxic waste has contaminated the world's fresh water supply. A select few with the ability to de-contaminate the supply now control the world. Minna rules the de-contaminators from a giant warship, forcing desperate land dwellers to trade anything and everything for meager water rations. The dwellers seek a leader to battle Minna's tyrannical rule. Jennifer, daughter of the rebel leader, implores outcast Mike Erikson to lead the battle against the warship. Help also comes from an unexpected source in the from of Jennifer's brother Rocky.

General Candy, who's overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn't have the respect of the men he's training and is considered out-of-touch with what's needed to win the war. But it wasn't always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women, and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.

The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor's Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.

During World War II, French Commandos join forces with a German officer in order to survive the African desert.

Patagonia, 1960. A German physician meets an Argentinian family and follows them on the long desert road to Bariloche where Eva, Enzo and their three children are going to open a lodging house by the Nahuel Huapi lake. Unaware of his true identity, they accept him as their first guest.

After Southern belle Elizabeth Lloyd runs off to marry Yankee Jack Sherman, her father, a former Confederate colonel during the Civil War, vows to never speak to her again. Several years pass and Elizabeth returns to her home town with her husband and young daughter. The little girl charms her crusty grandfather and tries to patch things up between him and her mother.

A 1964 British action adventure film from Hammer studios. The Scarlet Blade is set during the english civil war. A cruel Roundhead Colonel is on the trail of royalist sympathisers, but unaware of his daughters royalist sympathies. When she falls into a love triangle with Cavalier Edward Beverly and Roundhead officer Captain Sylvester the stage is set for double crossing and derring do.

A wagon load of convicts on their way to prison is being escorted through the mountains by a cavalry troop. They are attacked by a bandit gang, and only a sergeant, his beautiful young daughter and an assortment of seven sadistic, murderous prisoners survive, and they are left without horses or a wagon. The sergeant must find a way to get his prisoners to their destination while protecting his daughter, watching out for the still pursuing bandits and trying to determine which one of the prisoners was the man who raped and murdered his wife.

Antoine and Olga, a French couple, have been living in a small village in Galicia for a long time. They practice eco-responsible agriculture and restore abandoned houses to facilitate repopulation. Everything should be idyllic but for their opposition to a wind turbine project that creates a serious conflict with their neighbors. The tension will rise to the point of irreparability.

A group of Slave workers, drafted by the Nazis to help construct their coastal defences in 1944, are trapped in an underground bunker when the Allies land at Normandy on D-Day. They find huge stores of food, but not enough candles. The slow dying of the light parallels their increasing boredom, illness, and jealousy during their entrapment. Based on the Novel 'Le Blockhaus' by Jean Paul Clebert

In Algiers in 1993, while the civil war is starting, Mrs Osmane's tenants have to endure her bad temper. Her husband left her and the fear to lose her respectability haunt her. The former member of the Resistance during the Independence War persists in controlling the slightest moves of the households rather than struggle against her own frustrations. Learning her daughter is in love, the possibility of finding herself alone will push her to the limit: The symbolical Mrs Osmane "harem" is about to collapse.

The dashing but arrogant Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff has to flee Tsarist Russia after falling into disgrace and settles in Monte Carlo, where he resumes his life of debauchery while World War I ravages the fields of Europe… (Partially lost film; reels 3 and 9 of a total of 11 are missing.)

[For 9 minute surviving fragment] Lucian, a soldier in Paris, is to ship out for Algiers at 9 that evening. He stops by for a last meal with his love, Marianne. He may be worried that when he leaves she will find another soldier to love. They argue then embrace and, when the clock strikes midnight, he is still in her arms. Is desertion in the cards? Can the relationship survive the military demands and a soldier's obligations? A lost film.

A disgraced Confederate Colonel who has deserted his command flees to the Everglades where he encounters a disparate group of four other Southern deserters. Together they struggle to find their way out of the swamp and resolve their own personal demons under the eyes of hostile Seminoles as they battle to survive the elements and each other.

In a small and remote Latin American mountain village, all the men are recruited to fight in the country's civil war. Left to fend for themselves, the women of the town, led by Rosalba, slowly emerge from their supporting roles as wives and daughters to become unwitting founders of a remarkable new society: an all female utopia. When the men, led by an American reporter, return to try to reclaim their power, a clash of sexes ensues with unsuspected consequences.

Norman Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale are council workmen mending the road outside an Army base when they come into conflict with the military. Shortly afterwards, they get drafted and fall into the clutches of the Sergeant they have just bested. They are sent to France to repair roads in front of the Allied advance but get captured. Pitkin takes advantage of a useful similarity to impersonate General Schreiber and manages to return a hero

Former P.O.W. Jack Calgrove moves Heaven and Earth to be reunited with his children following the Civil War. After returning home, Jack discovers that his wife has tragically died and his children, presumed to be orphans, are heading deep into the West on a train crossing enemy lines, with the intent of being placed into new homes. Calgrove and another soldier team up with a troop of Native American sharpshooters and a freed slave as they try to stop the train.

Finished the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, in November 1940, while Spain is being crushed by the ruthless boot of dictator Franco, Pepita travels from rural Huelva to Madrid to be near her sister Hortensia, who is seven months pregnant and imprisoned, haunted by the shadow of a death sentence.

"The Anarchist's Wife" is the story of Manuela who is left behind when her husband Justo fights for his ideals against Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. He is deported to a concentration camp, and upon his release, continues the fight against nationalism in the French resistance. Years, pass without a word from him, but his wife never gives up hope of seeing him again.

A ham-handed cautionary fable against communism, the film concerns a group of Civil War veterans who are appalled by the burgeoning radical movement in America.

Galicia, Spain, during the Second World War The life of Manuela, a mysterious miner who was branded a witch, changes with the arrival of an Allied commando, in charge of sabotaging the production of tungsten, a vital mineral for the continuity of the war effort of Nazi Germany.