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Movies are able to make powerful peace statements. Here’s a list of the best in order of their importance.
Grand Illusion, by Jean Renoir (1937) Classic French drama unmasks the myth of war as a gentleman’s calling.
Shoah, by Claude Lanzmann (1985) The Holocaust is in the details. This nine-and-a-half-hour documentary that visits sites and interviews witnesses is just a glimpse…
Night and Fog, by Alain Resnais (1955) … yet 32 minutes here seems a lifetime. Resnais conveys the horrors of Auschwitz in measured prose and indelible images.
If You Love This Planet, by Terre Nash (1982) Disarmament activist Helen Caldicott lays out the stark threat of nuclear war but somehow offers hope.
The War Game, by Peter Watkins (1965) Devastating what-if nuke scenario from the UK. The end of the world as they knew it circa Rubber Soul.
Neighbours, by Norman McLaren (1952) Classic National Film Board fable has pixellated dads battling it out in their backyards. Starts petty, goes nuclear.
The Day The Earth Stood Still, by Robert Wise (1951) Aliens land in Washington with a warning. Klaatu counsels peace, or else.
Black Rain, by Shohei Imamura (1989) Drama shows the physical and social effects of the bombing of Hiroshima on a young woman survivor. Fallout didn’t just rain from the sky she must also deal with her postwar neighbours’ suspicions.
ScaredSacred, by Velcrow Ripper (2004) A personal tour of the world’s Ground Zero sites, from Cambodia to Manhattan.
Far From Vietnam, by Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, Claude Lelouch, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, William Klein, Chris Marker (1967) At the height of the Vietnam War, seven highbrow filmmakers find rage, purpose and irony in the struggle for peace.
