International Relations on Film

In Stalin’s  Soviet Union, the life of a celebrated Red Army colonel and hero of the Revolution, along with his family, is disrupted by the arrival of a member of the secret police during the political repression of the Great Purge.

This film dramatizes the 1942 Wannsee Conference, a real meeting in a villa outside Berlin where senior Nazi officials and SS officers gathered to coordinate the implementation of the “Final Solution,”  the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews.

A satirical black comedy set in Moscow in 1953. It depicts the power struggle that erupts among the Soviet leadership after Joseph Stalin suffers a fatal stroke. Often called one of the best political satires of its decade, showing how fear and self-preservation lie at the heart of a totalitarian system.

Charlie Chaplin satirizes fascism and dictatorship through the parallel stories of a persecuted Jewish barber and an authoritarian ruler modeled on Hitler. Charlie Chapman created The Great Dictator in 1940 to publicly mock Adolf Hitler. Charlie Chapman plays dictator Adenoid Hynkel, who tries to expand his empire, and also plays a poor Jewish barber who tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel’s regime.

A German tragicomedy about the reunification of Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a young East German tries to conceal the collapse of the communist state from his ill mother by recreating their old socialist life inside her bedroom.

Jojo Rabbit (2019) is a satirical comedy-drama set in Germany during the final years of World War II. Jojo Betzler, a lonely ten-year-old boy and member of the Hitler Youth, is indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda who must confront the realities of the regime after discovering that his mother is hiding a young Jewish girl.

Set in East Germany in 1984, the film follows a Stasi officer assigned to secretly monitor a playwright and his partner. As the surveillance continues, he becomes increasingly conflicted about his role, revealing the effects of state surveillance, censorship, political repression, and authoritarian rule on individual lives.

An Italian-Algerian war drama widely regarded as one of the most influential political films ever made. It recreates the urban guerrilla struggle between Algerian nationalist independence fighters of the National Liberation Front (FLN) and French colonial forces during the Algerian War of Independence between 1954 and 1957.

Originally titled Queimada, Burn is a political drama starring Marlon Brando, who plays Sir William Walker, a British agent sent to the fictional Caribbean island of Queimada to manipulate a Caribbean slave revolt in a story about colonialism, revolution, and foreign economic interests.

African American Vietnam War veterans return to Vietnam to recover the remains of their fallen squad leader and a hidden cache of gold. The film looks at the lasting effects of war, racism, colonialism, and the personal and political consequences of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the film follows a group of U.S. Marines from basic training to combat during the Vietnam War. It explores military indoctrination, dehumanization, and the psychological effects of warfare, highlighting the the human costs of war.