Best movies like Violins at the Ball

A Jewish boy living in Amsterdam at the onset of WWII is taken to a concentration camp with his parents. Based on the memoir of Holocaust survivor Jona Oberski.

Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.

The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.

In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.

In 1942 in occupied France, a Jewish refugee marries a soldier to escape deportation to Germany. Meanwhile a wealthy art student loses her first husband to a stray Resistance bullet; at the Liberation she meets an actor, gets pregnant, and marries him. Lena and Madeleine meet at their children's school in Lyon in 1952 and the intensity of their relationship strains both their marriages to the breaking point.

The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.

The Nazi occupation of Tunisia strains the bonds of friendship between a Muslim woman and a Sephardic Jewess who are both preparing for their marriages.

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.

Stumbling across an uncompleted 1939 film called "Princess Marushka", filmmaker Sam becomes intrigued with the young actor Sylvain Marceau, who last appeared in the film. Hoping to discover the mystery behind Sylvain's disappearance, Sam decides to make a documentary and sets off to interview those who knew Sylvain, including elderly Lisa Morain. Through her interview, Sam learns the story of Lisa and Sylvain's doomed love affair on the eve of World War II.

Two people, a Frenchman Julien Maroyeur and a Jewish German woman (Anna Kupfer) met on a train while escaping the German army entering France.

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

A story of the caring friendship formed between a crusty, old anti-Semite and an eight-year-old Jewish boy who goes to live with him during World War II.

The film is about the French film industry from 1942 to 1944 during the Nazi occupation. The film focuses on assistant director and resistance fighter Jean Devaivre and screenwriter Jean Aurenche. Aurenche is on the move so that he doesn't have to write anything collaborationist. Devaivre is in dangerous political activity. Devaivre also works for the German production company Continental where he is respected. On the other hand, Aurenche's scriptwriting doesn't help how he lives and he is a womanizer which causes him to procrastinate.

The story follows the life of a regular German women Leni Gruyten during the 1930s and 1940s. Through her interactions with friends, family and other people she knows, the regular folks' perception of the Nazi era is shown.

Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.

In occupied France, Maurice and Joseph, two young Jewish brothers left to their own devices demonstrate an incredible amount of cleverness, courage, and ingenuity to escape the enemy invasion and to try to reunite their family once again.

Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all his relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.

Max Baumstein is a reputable businessman who founded an international organization fighting against violations of human rights. Why would he commit an act that apparently negates the principles he has striven for so long to uphold? As he is tried for first-degree murder for killing a Paraguayan ambassador in cold blood, he reveals a secret about himself that he kept hidden from his wife Lina. His act is the conclusion of a struggle that started many decades earlier in his childhood...

June 1940. The Wechrmacht appropriates the houses in which are living Pierre, his wife Magdeleine, their son Charles, their two servants Louise and Lea, and Mademoiselle, the beautiful jewish governess.

This film sheds light on the role of the Catholic Church and the people of Assisi in rescuing Italian Jews from the Nazis in 1943.

A young Jewish girl, Sara, is looking to escape the clutches of the Third Reich after seeing her parents and sister brutally slain by a smuggler who betrayed them while attempting to escape to England. Terrified, she is sheltered by her childhood friend Jean, a homosexual in a clandestine relationship with his lover Philippe.

It is the real story of Giorgio Perlasca (Luca Zingaretti). During the 1920s he was an Italian Fascist supporter, fighting in Africa an in the Spanish civil war where he deserved a safe conduct for Spanish embassies. After some years, disillusioned by fascism, he is a fresh supplier for the Italian army. In the war years he is in Budapest for his business. He lives an easy life there, well introduced into the Hungarian high society, without any problem coming from the war situation. When the Nazi occupied Hungary, in 1944, instead to leave (Italy had already surrendered to the Allies) he escaped to the Spanish embassy in Budapest using his old safe conduct and becoming a Spanish citizen, changing name into Jorge Perlasca. He starts working as a diplomat here. When Sanz Briz (Geza Tordy), the Spanish consul, is removed, Perlasca immediately substitutes him, like if he was officially appointed from Spanish authorities... Written by 1felco

Inge Dournenvald and Lise Mueller are best friends in pre-WW2 Austria, despite the fact that Inge is Jewish and Lise is the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer. When they are forbidden to see each other, they meet secretly. After the Germans invade Austria in 1938, Inge and her family escape to America with the help of Lise

Eight-year-old Zoran is the hero of this story set in Skopje during the German occupation of the city in World War II. Through his eyes, we experience all the cruelty, poverty and suffering of wartime. A love affair between his Macedonian mother and a German officer will help his family get through the hard times…

In the winter of 1943 two young Jews, Alek and Fryda, escape, via sewer tunnels, from the atrocities underway in Warsaw ghetto. Alek, entrusted with undeveloped photos of the horrors within, makes his way to a supposedly safe apartment only to find it occupied by Germans. Another tenant, a pole Stephania, abruptly offers to shelter him in her spacious apartment. She comforts him and they make love that very night. Stefania is uncommonly generous and willing to jeopardize her own safety by hiding a Jew. She even goes to a nearby church and rescues Fryda. But Fryda is ungrateful and proceeds to sabotage the trio's safety in insidious ways.

In this drama, an American art student is trapped amidst the political turmoil of war-torn Europe while visiting Paris and staying at the fabulous Ritz hotel. Rather than cope constructively with it all, the fellow opts to ignore it and continue living the high-life for as long as possible.

The true life-story of Sara Góralnik, a 13 year-old Polish Jew whose entire family was killed by Nazis in September of 1942. After a grueling escape to the Ukrainian countryside, Sara steals her Christian best friend’s identity and finds refuge in a small village, where she is taken in by a farmer and his young wife. She soon discovers the dark secrets of her employers’ marriage, compounding the greatest secret she must strive to protect, her true identity.

Set in Paris 1941, two Jewish boys cling to their lives by doing all sorts of odd jobs, stealing and black-marketeering.

The life and times of the famous French writer Guy de Maupassant.

Nightclub musician Sebastian, discovers one evening with surprise that he is supposedly the grandfather of a boy with the same name as him.

A captivating and personal detective story that uncovers the truth behind the childhood of Michaël Prazan's father, who escaped from Nazi-occupied France in 1942 thanks to the efforts of a female smuggler with mysterious motivations.

93, rue Lauriston, in the 16th arrondissement de Paris, is an address of bleak memory. It was indeed the headquarter of the French Gestapo, which was active between 1941 and 1944 and was headed by Henri Lafont and Pierre Loutrel, two wanted criminals. On the day of 1940 he was demobilized, little did well-meaning Léon Jabinet know that he would be associated with such disreputable characters. And yet, some time later, Odile Panzer, the Jewish girl he has been hiding at his parents'place, is arrested by the Gestapo. On this occasion Léon is offered a deal for her release: collaborating with the Carlingue (another name for the French auxiliaries of the Nazi police) and Odile will be free. Or else... What should he do?

In 1942, Edouard and Lucas are two childhood friends, both policemen in Nancy in different police stations. Soon the beautiful friendship between the two policemen will shatter with all the suffering and disappointment that implies.

In November of 1942, the French submarine, the "Casabianca,", escapes from German-held Toulon, and, upon joining the Free French forces at Algiers, is sent on a secret mission to Corsica to take two secret-service agents to make contact with the underground there. The agents contact the Marquis resistance forces, and learn they are ready to revolt but lack the needed arms and ammunition. The submarine is sent back to Corscia with the necessary weapons for the resistance-fighters, and also returns with trained troops to assist the resistance forces in attacking the Germans.

David, a Jewish filmmaker in his thirties, is working on a screenplay with autobiographical overtones. His girlfriend, Anna, with whom he lives, finds his story very narcissistic.