Browse popular History movies
In Renaissance Florence, a Florentine trader meets a shipwrecked stranger, who introduces himself as Tito Melema, a young Italianate-Greek scholar. Tito becomes acquainted with several other Florentines, including Nello the barber and a young girl named Tessa. He is also introduced to a blind scholar named Bardo de' Bardi, and his daughter Romola. As Tito becomes settled in Florence, assisting Bardo with classical studies, he falls in love with Romola.
The story of the legendary architect Petr Parléř, who is charged by the king Charles IV with the task of building a Gothic cathedral in Prague.
Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind the death of this young man, who, at the age of twenty-seven, had already become Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero.
Matera, 1943. Partisan Nichi has been wounded and is returning to her brigade's hideout, but her true concerns are focused on the fate of her husband, a prisoner of the German army. When she arrives at the hideout, however, she finds no one there except a young courier accompanied by a civilian woman who urgently needs to be escorted out of the city by nightfall.
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb.
Because of the power of love, the last year of Franz Kafka's life becomes his happiest. The well-known writer has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis and is dependent on his overbearing family. In the summer of 1923, he met Dora Diamant in the seaside resort Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. He is a man of world, the 14 years younger woman is from the deep East, he can write, she can dance. She has both feet firmly on the ground, he is always hovering a little above it. She embraces the indicative, he gets tangled up in the conjunctive. But the worldly wise Dora accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. Together they go to Berlin and when Franz's health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. They are granted a single year together until Franz Kafka's health deteriorates incurable. However their year together allows them to feel the glory of life.
Detailing the creation of the first Chinese film ever made, this film was made to celebrate 100 years of Chinese cinema.
Sean Bean is back as the swashbuckling hero in Sharpe's Challenge, an action packed mini-series to be shot on location in Rajasthan, India. Two years after the Duke of Wellington crushes Napoleon at Waterloo, dispatches from India tell of a local Maharaja, Khande Rao, who is threatening British interests there. Wellington sends Sharpe to investigate on what turns out to be his most dangerous mission to date. When a beautiful general's daughter is kidnapped by the Indian warlord, the tension mounts, leaving Sharpe no option but to pursue the enemy right into its deadly lair. Deep in the heart of enemy territory he also has to keep at bay the beautiful but scheming Regent, Madhuvanthi, who is out to seduce him. The fate of an Empire and the life of a General's daughter lie in one man's hands...
King Richard the Lionhearted launches a crusade to preserve Christianity in Jerusalem.
The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns—in part—a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of between 500 to 1,500 Anglo-American troops, who had honorably surrendered at Fort William Henry, plus some women and servants; the kidnapping of two sisters, daughters of the British commander; and their rescue by the last Mohicans.
The true story of negotiations between implacable enemies — the secret back-channel talks, unlikely friendships and quiet heroics of a small but committed group of Israelis, Palestinians and one Norwegian couple that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.
In the Jewish tradition of arguing with God, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz decide to put God on Trial.
Gerrit de Veer, a novice writer on a 16th-century Dutch merchant vessel, chronicles the daring mission to discover a trade route across the North Pole to Asia. But the heroic journey turns into tragedy when the ship gets stuck in the relentless, penetrating ice. The men are forced to spend the winter on the frozen, arctic wasteland of Nova Zembla, fighting polar bears, hunger and lethal temperatures. Their chances of making it until the following spring are virtually zero.
France, 1974. The erotic film Emmanuelle, directed by Just Jaeckin, breaks all records for cinema attendance: the story of the creation of a sensual epic that marked a turning point in the struggle for sexual emancipation.
The story takes place in 1948, in post WWII Europe. Amelia, a young girl, who struggles to communicate with her mother after the death of her father, is sent to the Portuguese provincial town of Elvas for a holiday with her uncles. There she meets Thomas, an Austrian refugee boy, who is being fostered by her Aunt and Uncle while they find his parents from whom he was separated during the war. After a rocky start, these children teach each other the true meaning of friendship and communication. This tale is based on a true story of the director’s grandmother who met a young refugee.
While Old England is being ransacked by roving Danes in the 9th century, Alfred is planning to join the priesthood. But observing the rape of his land, he puts away his religious vows to take up arms against the invaders, leading the English Christians to fight for their country. Alfred soundly defeats the Danes and becomes a hero. But now, although Alfred still longs for the priesthood, he is torn between his passion for God and his lust for blood.
When Vietnam veteran, Wayne Elliot, discovers his own child is heading down a destructive path similar to his own past, he must gain inspiration from a timeless story in order to win her back from a life of devastation.
