Films on Balkan History and Culture

Undercover is a 1943 British war film produced by Ealing Studios, originally titled Chetnik. It was filmed in Wales and released on 27 July 1943. Its subject is a guerrilla movement in German-occupied Yugoslavia, loosely based on Draza Mihailovich's Chetnik resistance movement. The film focuses on the fictional Petrovitch family in Belgrade, Serbia. One brother, Milosh, a Yugoslav military captain forms an anti-Nazi guerilla movement in the mountains of Serbia. His brother, Dr. Stephan Petrovitch, poses as a Nazi collaborator to obtain information for the guerrillas while working directly under General von Staengel, commander of the German occupation force. Using information obtained by Stephan, Milosh and his guerrillas are able to ambush a German train and free Yugoslav PoWs, while wounding General Staengel in the process. Stephan operates on the wounded General, saving his life, and gaining the General's trust. Milosh's wife, Anna Petrovitch, a schoolteacher, is taken prisoner and interrogated, but she escapes, with the help of some of her students, and joins Milosh in the mountains. In retaliation, German troops under Colonel von Brock execute six schoolchildren. Later, Stephan uses his credentials as a Nazi sympathizer to plant explosives on a German train, timing them to go off in a mountain tunnel. The film's climax is a pitched battle between the Germans and guerrillas. Afterwards, the Serbians retreat into the mountains to continue their campaign of terror and resistance against Axis occupation.

In the opening scene, German troops and tanks are shown invading the Kingdom of Yugoslavia while bombers attack the capital Belgrade. When Nazi Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria invade Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, Serbian Yugoslav Army colonel Draža Mihailović forms a band of guerrillas known as the Chetniks, who launch a resistance movement against the Axis occupation. Mihailović's forces then engage in an attack on the German and Italian forces, forcing them to employ seven Axis divisions against them. The Chetniks capture an Italian supply convoy. Mihailović then radios the German headquarters in the nearby coastal town of Kotor in Montenegro and offers to exchange Italian POWs for gasoline. Infuriated, General von Bauer refuses, but when Mihailović threatens to notify the Italian High Command of his decision, Gestapo colonel Wilhelm Brockner orders Von Bauer to comply. Brockner, who has been unable to capture Mihailović, is convinced that the Yugoslav leader's wife Ljubica and their two children, Nada and Mirko, are hiding in Kotor. He plans to use them as hostages to blackmail Mihailović into surrendering. Brockner warns the townspeople that anyone caught aiding the Mihailović family will be executed, and prepares the deportation of 2,000 men from Kotor to Nazi Germany. Brockner's secretary Natalia, however, is a spy for the Chetniks and is in love with Aleksa, one of Mihailović's aides. Forewarned by Natalia's information, the Chetniks attack the train transporting the two thousand prisoners and free them. In retaliation, Brockner decrees that no food will be distributed to the citizens of Kotor until Ljubica and her children are turned over to the Germans. Lubitca tries to surrender to Brockner but is stopped by Natalia, after which Mihailović asks to meet with Von Bauer and Brockner. After Mihailović arrives at the German headquarters, however, von Bauer declares that, since the official Yugoslav government had capitulated, international law does not prevent him from killing Mihailović, even though they are meeting under a flag of truce. Mihailović then reveals to the general that the Chetniks are holding his wife and daughter as hostages, as well as Brockner's mistress, and that they will be executed unless the citizens of Kotor are given food. Bluffing, Mihailović also tells the general that he has captured Field Marshal von Klausevitz and 600 troops and those will also be executed unless his conditions are met. The general angrily releases Mihailović and provides rations for Kotor. Mihailović's son Mirko, demonstrating his patriotism, betrays his true identity to his German schoolteacher. After taking Mirko into custody, von Bauer and Brockner escort Ljubica to Mihailović's mountain stronghold and then inform him that every man, woman, and child in Kotor would be executed unless the Chetniks surrender within 18 hours. Mihailović informs Ljubica that he cannot surrender. She then returns to Kotor to comfort their children. Mihailović immediately organizes a plan of attack and sends some of his men to the mountain pass to Kotor, where they trick the Germans into thinking that they are surrendering, while the rest of the Chetniks attack the town from the mountains on the other side. Even though Aleksa, who was assigned to infiltrate the German artillery battery, is taken prisoner by the Germans, Mihailović's plan succeeds. After an intense battle, the Chetniks gain control of Kotor and free all of the hostages, including Mihailović's family. In the final scene, Mihailović broadcasts a radio message to his fellow Yugoslavs that the guerrillas will continue fighting until they have regained complete freedom for their people and driven out the invading Axis troops.

This film is set in Greece in 1941, before and after the Axis invasion, it follows an American journalist who possesses a list of Greek resistance leaders. Having memorized the list he destroys it and is then pursued by various groups of people keen to have it: Communist resistance fighters, the Gestapo and Greek collaborators.

1922 is a 1978 Greek drama about the Greek ethnic cleansing based on the autobiography of Greek novelist Elias Venezis, the Number 31328. The film is set in and around Smyrna (today Izmir) at the time the Turkish army entered the city in 1922, and follows the suffering of ethnic Greeks held as prisoners

During the volatile 1987 Aegean crisis, a collector sets out to the memory-laden coast of Asia Minor and unearths a haunting mystery dating back to the Great Fire of Smyrna. Can a blood sacrifice appease decades of pain and suffering?

Filmed in upstate New York, the film deals with the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II, when two lovers resist the Nazis but become separated at the war's end. Years later, he becomes a Greek government official and she is on the side of the communist revolutionaries. She then finds her lover's name on an execution list.

A young survivor of WWII Thessaloniki and former member of the reputed "Barefoot Battalion", a close-knit pack of disciplined orphaned boys, recounts the story of the one hundred sixty orphans who aided the Resistance, to a homeless street urchin.

This feature films tells the story of the famous Battle of Shipka Pass during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78.

The story of this heroic tale of bravery and sacrifice takes place in 1826, five years from the beginning of the War for the Independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire. Captain Mihos Floros returns to Samarina in Macedonia to gather more men and lead them to the besieged Missolonghi, in order to assist the fight of the resistance. With his personal friend Elias Manakas and 25 more men by his side, begins the long journey to get to Missolonghi and join Zisis Hatzimatis and the rest of their fellow countrymen. On March 1826, they start a journey full of adversities through the mountains. Back at the village of Samarina, the women try to find out from Heleni Floros, Captain Floros' wife, the real reason their husbands had to leave in a hurry. Meanwhile, Ibrahim Pasha and the Turkish commandant of Arta, N. Servan, get ready to launch the final assault on Missolonghi.

A Turkish woman in Trabzon in the 1970’s rediscovers her identity and past after over forty years.

A few years after the Revolution of 1821, the newly established Greek state, under the reign of the Bavarian Othon, brought to trial the great leaders of the struggle, Theodoros Kolokotronis and Georgios Plapoutas, on the charge of high treason. This infamous trial of 1833, which took place in Nafplio, shocked the nation, because everyone knew that the two heroes were completely innocent. The president of the court Athanasios Polyzoidis and the judge Georgios Tercetis refuse to sign the death sentence of the accused as dictated by the palace – through the three viceroys Armansberg, Mauer and Eidek. The Bavarians order the Minister of Justice to intervene, and he indicts them, whereupon they are dragged to the dungeons of the prisons and tried for high treason.