Best movies like The Ditch
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Ditch Starring Cheng Zhengwu, Niansong Jing, Xiangnian Li, Renjun Lian, and more. If you liked The Ditch then you may also like: Under the Bombs, The Way Back, Ossos, The Killing Fields, Attica and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.
Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list
The Way Back
At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.
The Killing Fields
New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.
The Chamber
Idealistic young attorney Adam Hall takes on the death row clemency case of his racist grandfather, Sam Cayhall, a former Ku Klux Klan member he has never met.
City of Ghosts
With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
The Devil, Probably
A group of disillusioned young Parisians look for satisfaction in political activism, religion, romance, music, and drugs.
Escape from Sobibor
The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.
First They Killed My Father
A 5-year-old girl embarks on a harrowing quest for survival amid the sudden rise and terrifying reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
In Tranzit
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.
Men Behind the Sun
The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.
Sacco & Vanzetti
Boston, 1920. Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are charged and unfairly tried for murder on the basis of their anarchic political convictions.
A Lesson Before Dying
In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
Mandela and de Klerk
Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-for-TV movie. The plot follows Nelson Mandela's 27-year struggle to end apartheid.
Sometimes in April
Two brothers are divided by marriage and fate during the 100 horrifying days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Strip Search
Strip Search follows several parallel stories examining personal freedoms vs. national security in the aftermath of 9/11; two main subplots involve an American woman detained in China and an Arab man detained in New York City.
Born American
A trio of American students vacationing in Finland cross the border into the USSR and are soon imprisoned following a skirmish with Soviet soldiers.
Destination Gobi
A group of US Navy weathermen taking measurements in the Gobi desert in World War II are forced to seek the help of Mongol nomads to regain their ship while under attack from the Japanese.
China Cry: A True Story
Drama set in the 1950s, based on a true story, about a young girl, Sung Neng Yee, who is brought as part of a wealthy Chinese family. She is eager to become part of Mao Tze Tung's "new society", but soon becomes disenchanted by the economic misery the changes bring to her family. Before long, the authorities become aware of Neng Yee's feelings and she is taken to a labour camp, overseen by the sadistic Colonel Cheng.
Eleni
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
The Blockhouse
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
The Wall
Produced, written and directed by Yılmaz Güney within his own personal experiences of capital offense, he dedicates Duvar to male teenagers aged 13 to 19 living behind the bars under diabolical treatments. These teenagers get barbaric corporal punishments, injurious harrows, tortures and sexual abuses just for taking the responsibility of their destiny on a wrong turn.
Senseless
Elliott Gast is quickly climbing the corporate ladder of international commerce, negotiating deals to generate large fortunes for giant corporations. His success makes him the target for political extremists who kidnap him and broadcast his imprisonment and mutilation over the internet as macabre reality show and fundraiser.
China: The Uighur Tragedy
A relentless chronicle of the tragedy of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority of some eleven million people who live in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, speak a Turkic language and practice the Muslim religion. The Uighurs suffer brutal cultural and political oppression by Xin Jinping's tyrannical government: torture, disappearances, forced labor, re-education of children and adults, mass sterilizations, extensive surveillance and destruction of historical heritage.
Out of the Ashes
The real-life story of Gisella Perl, a Jewish Hungarian doctor imprisoned in the notorious Auschwitz death camp of World War II.
Texas '46
Based on a true story its the untold story of Italian World War II POW"S in Jan 1946. Luca Zingaretti stars as one of over 50,000 Italian Prisoners of War detained at POW camps in the U.S. Roy Schneider stars as Colonel Gartner, the Commander of the camp. Things take a turn for the worse when Manin is brought back from his most recent escape by a patrol force, only to realize that the camp has been evacuated while he was gone. Gartner is forced to keep Manin at the camp until another patrol force can come pick him up. However, no one ever comes. The phone lines get cut, and the two men realize they are completely isolated from the outside world. It is up to each man now to escape the camp.An untold and rarely known fact of US held Italian POW"S
Under the Bombs
In the wake of Israel's 2006 bombardment of Lebanon, a determined woman finds her way into the country convincing a taxi driver to take a risky journey around the scarred region in search of her sister and her son.