435 Films & TV Shows Set In Asia During The 1940s
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My Heart Is Mine Alone
🇮🇱 Israel The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890s The 1880s The 1870s The 1860sHelma Sanders-Brahms directs this inventive film that uses the verse of Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Nazi poet Gottfried Benn to dramatize the passionate, real-life affair between the two unlikely lovers. Forced out of Germany, Lasker-Schüler makes her way to Jerusalem even as Benn discovers the true nature of the Nazi ideology he had once championed. Lena Stolze and Cornelius Obonya star.
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The English Patient
🇮🇹 Italy 🇪🇬 Egypt 🇱🇾 Libya The 1940s The 1930sIn love, there are no boundaries. — In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.
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Mother Night
New York 🇩🇪 Germany 🇮🇱 Israel The 1960s The 1940s The 1930sThe truth is more shocking than the uniform he wears... HE WAS AN AMERICAN SPY. — An American spy behind the lines during WWII serves as a Nazi propagandist, a role he cannot escape in his future life as he can never reveal his real role in the war.
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Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sBlack Sun: The Nanking Massacre, also called Men Behind the Sun 4, is a 1994 Hong Kong film directed by Mou Tun Fei and is in many ways considered to be a follow up to the 1987 shockumentary film, Men Behind the Sun. The movie depicts the events behind the Nanking Massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese army against Chinese citizens and refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Like Men Behind the Sun, the film was both criticized and praised for its brutal portrayal of the Japanese atrocities, such as the notorious contest to kill 100 people using a sword, during the early and late stages of World War II, but at the same time was questioned over historical accuracy and violence which gave the film a more exploitation feel to it.
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Red Cherry
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sBased on a true story, this horrifying tale follows two orphaned friends as they struggle to survive during World War II.
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Hiroshima
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sThe grisly events leading to the first attack with a nuclear weapon. — Hiroshima is a 1995 Japanese / Canadian film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara and Roger Spottiswoode about the decision-making processes that led to the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II. Except as actors, no Americans took part in the production. The three-hour film was made for television and evidently had no theatrical release, but is available on DVD for home viewing. A combination of dramatisation, historical footage, and eyewitness interviews, the film alternates between documentary footage and the dramatic recreations. Both the dramatisations and most of the original footage are presented as sepia-toned images, serving to blur the distinction between them. The languages are English and Japanese, with subtitles, and the actors are largely Canadian and Japanese.
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Don't Cry, Nanking
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sIn December 1937, during the Second Japanese-Sino War, a Chinese doctor, his Japanese pregnant wife, their teenage daughter and their young son travel from Shanghai to Nanjing seeking shelter in the Capital during the Japanese invasion. The family faces the Rape of Nanking by the Imperial Japanese Army, with rapes, mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians including women, children and elders, and disrespect of international conventions.
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The Absolution
🇮🇳 India The 1940sThe film set in the 1940s, in a fictitious village in the Shekhavati region in Rajasthan, where no girl child survives beyond the age of seven. It deals with larger issues of communalism and caste system through four inter-related stories.
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Fist of Legend
Shanghai Kyoto Prefecture The 1930s The 1940sTo avenge his masters death, He'll fight like never before! — Chen Zhen, a Chinese engineering student in Kyoto, who braves the insults and abuse of his Japanse fellow students for his local love Mitsuko Yamada, daughter of the director, returns in 1937 to his native Shangai, under Japanse protectorate -in fact military occupation- after reading about the death of his kung-fu master Hou Ting-An in a fight against the Japanese champion Ryuichi Akutagawa.
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To Live
🇨🇳 China The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sFugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.
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Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey
🇷🇺 Russia New York The 1920s The 1930s The 1940sAfter escaping Russia's communist revolution, Leon Theremin travels to New York, where he pioneers the field of electronic music with his synthesizer. But at the height of his popularity, Soviet agents kidnap and force him to develop spy technology. Steven M. Martin writes and directs this intriguing documentary about a man's "strange" music and his very interesting life as an inventor and influential musician.
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Circus Kids
Shanghai The 1940sWith nothing left to lose, this family will fight for justice. — The circus group performs at the Shanfa Circus when a huge load of bombs crash on the stage and the performers try to find a home to live and get money for food.
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Farewell My Concubine
Beijing The 1930s The 1940sAbandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.
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Stalingrad
🇷🇺 Russia The 1940s"Stalingrad" follows the progress of a German Platoon through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After having half their number wiped out and after being placed under the command of a sadistic Captain, the Lieutenant of the platoon leads his men to desert. The men of the platoon attempt to escape from the city which is now surrounded by the Soviet Army.
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Madadayo
Tokyo Prefecture The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sThis film tells the story of professor Uehida Hyakken-sama (1889-1971), in Gotemba, around the forties. He was a university professor until an air raid, when he left to become a writer and has to live in a hut. His mood has hardly changed, not by the change nor by time.
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The Scent of Green Papaya
🇻🇳 Vietnam The 1950s The 1960s The 1940sA Vietnamese servant girl, Mui, observes lives within two different Saigon families: the first, a woman textile seller with three boys and a frequently absent husband; the second, a handsome young pianist with his fiancée.
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The Puppetmaster
🇹🇼 Taiwan The 1930s The 1940sIn the first half of this century, young Li Tienlu joins a travelling puppet theatre and subsequently makes a career as one of Taiwan's leading puppeteers.
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Malcolm X
Illinois Massachusetts Michigan New York 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia The 1920s The 1930s The 1940s The 1950s The 1960sA tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
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Stalin
🇷🇺 Russia The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910sThe life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin.
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Rhapsody in August
Nagasaki Prefecture Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sTears. Laughter. Innocence. It was a summer of remembering. — The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, who lost her husband in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.
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Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
Tokyo Prefecture Mie Prefecture Hokkaido Prefecture Hiroshima Prefecture Fukuoka Prefecture 🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Pacific Ocean The 1990s The 1940sAt the end of the century, the greatest battle has begun! — The Futurians, time-travelers from the 23rd century, arrive in Japan to warn them of the nation's destruction under Godzilla. They offer to help erase Godzilla from history by preventing his creation. With Godzilla seemingly gone, a new monster emerges as the Futurians' true intentions are revealed.
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The Inner Circle
🇷🇺 Russia The 1950s The 1940sThe true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin's private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator's death. Told from Sanchin's view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his "Master" despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife's affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand. Written by Martin H. Booda
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The Raid
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sIn the 1930s, China was in a state of turmoil and flurry. The dethroned Emperor Pu-Yi had established the Puppet State of Manchukuo in Manchuria and was cooperating with the Japanese in the testing of poisonous gas. The revolutionary army headed by Lieutenant Mong is assigned to crush this vicious plot. During his mission, Mong comes across witty and valiant veteran Uncle Choy and his friends, who volunteer to help. Mong believes that Uncle Choy is too old to join them. How can Uncle Choy prove himself? And can they succeed in their mission?
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Lee Rock
🇭🇰 Hong Kong The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sThe film chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police force that Lee Rock becomes a part of.
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Europa Europa
🇧🇾 Belarus 🇩🇪 Germany 🇵🇱 Poland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sA Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
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