The 40 most popular italian war movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Africa Blood and Guts
1966 · 2h 18m
country: Italy
A chronicle of the violence that occurred in much of the African continent throughout the 1960s. As many African countries were transitioning from colonial rule to other forms of government, violent political upheavals were frequent. Revolutions in Zanzibar and Kenya in which thousands were killed are shown, the violence not only political; there is also extensive footage of hunters and poachers slaughtering different types of wild animals.


The Battle of Algiers
1966 · 2h 2m
country: Italy
Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.


The Night Porter
1974 · 1h 58m
country: Italy
A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.


Two Women
1960 · 1h 40m
country: France
A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.


Rome, Open City
1945 · 1h 44m
country: Italy
During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape.


Sunflower
1970 · 1h 49m
country: Italy
After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?


Salon Kitty
1976 · 2h 10m
country: Germany
In Nazi Germany, Kitty runs a brothel where the soldiers come to 'relax'. Recording devices have been installed by a power-hungry official who plans to use the information to blackmail and usurp Hitler. One of the girls discovers the ploy and, with the madam's help, takes on the dangerous task of exposing the conspiracy.


El Cid
1961 · 3h 7m
country: Italy
Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz ("El Cid" to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain.


Waterloo
1970 · 2h 14m
country: Italy
After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.


Black Angel
2002 · 2h 8m
country: Italy
Livia, the attractive wife of a high-ranking Ministry of the People's Republic official, is accompanied by Ugo, a lawyer, her admirer and her husband's spy, to Venice. There, she is to meet her lover Helmut Schultz, a lieutenant in the infamous SS with whom she is having a passionate love affair. During the journey, Livia retraces the steps of her sexual aberration. But a surprise awaits her in the lagoon city.


Austerlitz
1960 · 2h 46m
country: France
Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor and fights the English, Austrians and Russians in 1802.


A Life in Suitcases: A History of Tulse Luper
2005 · 2h
country: Italy
A comic study of 20th-century history, reconstructing the life of writer, creator and professional prisoner Tulse Luper. Born in 1911 Newport and last heard of in 1989, Luper’s life is pieced together from the evidence found in 92 suitcases scattered across the globe. A Life in Suitcases condenses the six-hour trilogy into a single two-hour feature, and in doing so, accentuates the project as a filmic essay in multiple narratives, listings, sidebars, footnotes, commentaries and anecdotes; a project for an Information Age ready to understand that there never is a phenomenon called History, there can only be Historians, gatekeepers to vested interests.


The Inglorious Bastards
1978 · 1h 39m
country: Italy
Set in Europe during WWII, a group of American soldiers on their way to military prison are beset upon by a German artillery attack, escaping with Switzerland in their sights. Before making it any farther, they volunteer to steal a V2 warhead for the French Underground - taking them deep into the heart of German territory.


No Man's Land
2001 · 1h 38m
country: France
Two soldiers from opposite sides get stuck between the front lines in the same trench. The UN is asked to free them and both sides agree on a ceasefire, but will they stick to it?


The Great War
1959 · 2h 17m
country: France
Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.


Twice Born
2012 · 2h 7m
country: Italy
Full-throttle melodrama about an ill-starred romance set against the backdrop of the siege of Sarajevo. A mother brings her teenage son to Sarajevo, where his father died in the Bosnian conflict years ago.


The Camp Followers
1965 · 1h 54m
country: France
In WWII, Lieut. Martino and his men are assigned to lead a group of prostitutes through the mountainous ways to serve in brothels for Italian soldiers in Albania.


The Beast in Heat
1977 · 1h 26m
country: Italy
In a remote village in occupied Europe, the SS pursue their inhuman treatment of captured partisans in efforts to force them to betray their comrades.... while Fraulein Krast, a sadistic biologist, concentrates her efforts on the womenfolk with refined tortures and humiliation, leaving them to the mercy of a sex-crazed half-man, half-beast she has created with experimental injections.... And as advancing Allied forces approach the village, Krast herself becomes a victim of her own fiendish rituals....


Eagles Over London
1969 · 1h 50m
country: France
The British High Command finds itself in the thick of a huge dilemma when it is realized that they have long been infiltrated by spies from a German intelligence group. This all happens during the preliminary stages of the Battle of Britain.


A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die
1972 · 1h 32m
country: France
A dishonored Union Army officer leads a group of convicts to retake Fort Holman from the Confederate Army.


Anzio
1968 · 1h 57m
country: Italy
American troops land unopposed on Italian beaches during World War II, but instead of pushing on to Rome, they dig in and the Germans fight back ferociously.


SS Experiment Love Camp
1976 · 1h 34m
country: Italy
Near the end of WW2, prisoners of war are used in experiments to perfect the Arian race.


The Best of Enemies
1961 · 1h 44m
country: Italy
During World War II, a plane full of RAF fighter crashes in the Ethiopian desert and they are met upon by an enemy Italian patrol that allows them to go free. But, when the Brits are given orders to attack the Italians, lots of problems ensue.


The Fifth Day of Peace
1970 · 1h 43m
country: Italy
Based on a true story. Near the end of World War II, two German deserters are put in an Allied POW camp. When a rigid and militaristic German colonel learns about their desertion, he wants them court-martialed, even if the war is over. The uninterested Allied officers oblige him, and the two men face the firing squad on "the fifth day of peace".


The Night of the Shooting Stars
1982 · 1h 45m
country: Italy
The Night of San Lorenzo, the night of the shooting stars, is the night when dreams come true in Italian folklore. In 1944, a group of Italians flee their town after hearing rumours that the Nazis plan to blow it up and that the Americans are about to arrive to liberate them.


Commandos
1968 · 1h 52m
country: Germany
Sgt. Sullivan puts together a group of Italian-Americans into disguise as Italian soldiers in order to infiltrate a North African camp held by the Italians. After the soldiers have knifed the Italians in their beds, they find a hooker living at the camp. Sullivan's commandos are to hold this camp and its weaponry until an American battalion arrives, all the while these Italian-Americans pretend to be Italian soldiers, often hosting the enemy. Lt. Valli is a young, "green," by-the-book officer who constantly argues with Sgt. Sullivan, who tells his superior that he has no idea what he is doing. One man on the base, probably a touch from Argento, is an entomologist who is needlessly killed. Things go terribly wrong after that.


General Della Rovere
1959 · 2h 12m
country: France
In WWII-Italy, the Gestapo blackmails a con man to impersonate a dead partisan commander in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.


Mediterraneo
1991 · 1h 36m
country: Italy
Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.


The 25th Hour
1967 · 2h 1m
country: France
A Romanian peasant fights to get back to his family after he's imprisoned by the Nazis.The picture is based on real events. It includes Hungary's government in collaboration with the Nazis, the encroachment of Romania by Stalin's troopers, and other happenings.


The Commander
2023 · 2h
country: Italy
One dark night during the early phases of WWII, the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini sinks an armed merchant ship sailing with lights out. At that moment, its commander Salvatore Todaro makes a decision that was destined to go down in history: to save the 26 shipwrecked Belgians who otherwise would have drowned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and disembark them at the nearest safe harbor. To make room for them on board his submarine, he is forced to navigate on the surface of the water for three days, visible to the enemy forces and endangering his life and that of his men.


Attila
1954 · 1h 19m
country: France
Attila, the leader of the barbarian Huns and called by the Romans "The Scourge of God", sweeps onto the Italian peninsula, defeating all of the armies of Rome, until he and his men reach the gates of the city itself.


The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683
2012 · 1h 54m
country: Poland
In the summer of 1683, 300 000 Ottoman Empire's warriors begin the siege of Vienna. City's fall, will open way to conquer the Europe. The Sept 11 is the day of main battle between Polish cavalry under the King Jan III Sobieski and Turks.


Commando
1962 · 1h 27m
country: Italy
A French Foreign Legion commander is told to assemble a unit and capture an Algerian rebel leader. He gathers in his old unit, most of whom are no longer in top form. One is having nightmares of past indiscretions, another is now drinking, another has lost his nerve. He takes them in captures the leader, but then is unable to make it to the pick up. He encounters a rebel patrol and is trapped unless they can escape before their water runs out.


The Damned
2024 · 1h 28m
country: Belgium
Winter 1862. In the midst of the Civil War, the US Army sends a company of volunteer soldiers to the western territories, with the task of patrolling the unchartered borderlands. As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them.


Gestapo's Last Orgy
1977 · 1h 21m
country: Italy
Lise Cohen is taken to a special prisoner-of-war camp for female Jews, a camp run as a bordello to entertain the German officers and troops going in to battle. The camp is run with an iron fist by Commandant Starker and his minion Alma. Starker becomes frustrated when Lise demonstrates no fear, and devises cruel experiments to scare her, to no avail. Once she realizes her guilt is unfounded, Lise begins to play Starker's game, but even though she begins living a better life, she doesn't forget the atrocities she has seen and experienced.


The Four Days of Naples
1962 · 2h
country: Italy
September 1943. After Italy surrenders to the Allies, people in Naples believe the war is finally over, but soon they realize Germans are still in control — and as ruthless as ever. Armed with makeshift weapons, civilians rise up en masse against the invaders — and overwhelming odds.


Invaders of the Lost Gold
1982 · 1h 28m
country: Hong Kong
In the last days of WWII, a Japanese platoon is attacked by headhunters while attempting to hide millions in gold. Thirty-six years later, a grizzled guide is hired to lead an expedition into a jungle inferno of greed, violence, nudity, and murder.


The Giant of Marathon
1959 · 1h 30m
country: France
A Greek soldier leads the fight against an invading Persian army.


The Poet and the Spy
2026 · 1h 39m
country: Italy
In 1919 Fiume, Russian spy Beatrice navigates political turmoil while protecting poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, entangling with an intelligence chief and a WWI deserter amid Italy’s revolutionary unrest.


The Betrayal
1969 · 1h 44m
country: Italy
A seductive and ruthless spy in the service of Germany steals state secrets- including the formula for poison gas-from England and France during World War I. British intelligence, in turn, tries to hunt her down.
Italian cinema runs from the neorealists working in bombed-out postwar streets to Fellini's spectacle, the Spaghetti Western, and the lurid giallo thrillers that shaped modern horror. Few national cinemas have exported this many distinct genres.
War films range from combat spectacle to anti-war argument, and often try to be both at once. The genre is a reliable index of how a country understands its own history.