The Crossing (1999)

In December 1776, six months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the war looked like it would drag on for years. The continental soldiers were ill-clothed and ill-fed, seemingly defenseless against both the British and the freezing winter.

This cable-TV movie based on Howard Fast's novel, skillfully dramatizes Gen. George Washington's (Jeff Daniels) daring and winning maneuver. Washington's officers are divided along class lines. The aristocratic Gates (Nigel Bennett) and the fisherman Glover (Sebastian Roche) must assemble and navigate the boats for the landing together.

Open City (1945)

There are times when a Christian must abandon non-violence and stand up and fight. The evil perpetrated by fascist aggression during World War II couldn't be stopped by prayerand good works alone. Open City, one of the Vatican's 45 top films, persuasively establishes the righteousness of partisan uprisings against totalitarianism.

Director Roberto Rossellini (The Flowers of St. Francis ) intertwines the storyof an Italian partisan uprising with the personal lives of three participants: a priest (Aldo Fabrizi), a communist revolutionary (Marcel Pagliero) and a guerrilla fighter named Francesco (F. Grandjacquet). Under Nazi interrogation, the priest declares: “I believe one who fights injustice walks through the path of God.” He is martyred.

Man of Iron (1981)

Director Andrzej Wajda uses the same investigative reporting techniques that he perfected in his anti-Stalinist Man of Marble, mixing real-life figures like Lech Walesa with fictional characters in interviews and documentary footage, both genuine and re-created. he chronicles the political upheavals in the ship-building city of Gdansk from the student reform movement of 1968 to the Solidarity strikes in 1980. The movie, which was made just before the communists’ imprisonment of the Solidarity leadership, won the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prize in 1981.

— John Prizer