Germany, January 1939: a day in a concentration camp. Subjected to harsh military discipline the hungry prisoners are digging a huge hole and filling it up again. Several are tortured, die of exhaustion, in the electric fence, or are shot.
Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and sabotage the plant. The film alternates between German developments of the V-1 missile and V-2 rocket (with a German cast speaking their own language) and discovery by British Intelligence of the weapon.
In Laos, 1954, eight days before the french defeat in the Indochina war, the 317th platoon – four french soldiers and 41 laotian combatants – has been ordered to leave its outpost and to retreat for the plains of Diên Biên Phu, where the french army is getting stucked. Led by the inexperienced and idealistic sous-lieutenant Torrens, fresh out of the military academy, and by adjutant Willsdorf, a WWII veteran of the Werhmacht, the group must cross 150 kilometers of jungle. But dripping rainwater, hostile nature, and the Viêt-minh ambushes expose them to constant danger.
In the midst of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, a group of five disgraced and imprisoned Filipino soldiers, led by Sergeant Sanchez, are offered a pardon in exchange for a near-suicidal mission. They must intentionally get captured and sent to a brutal Japanese prison camp to rescue two American officers who hold a vital, secret message from General MacArthur. Once inside, they discover the camp is run by the cunning Major Hayashi and that a traitor among the Filipino prisoners is feeding him information, foiling all escape attempts. Realizing their own plan to tunnel out is compromised, Sanchez and his allies devise a new, more audacious strategy: to tunnel directly into the commander's office. The mission culminates in a violent and desperate breakout, where they must secure the message, capture the enemy commander, and fight for their freedom and honor.
In the Spain of 1939 during the Civil War, a woman searches for her husband who has disappeared, a search that takes her across the border into France.
The year is 1937, just prior to the Japanese invasion of China. Painters Ju Rui and Lao San stumble upon He Hua, a woman sold into the sex industry at a local brothel.
A young intellectual conscientious objector is forced to serve with the Japanese army in Manchuria. He joins with a dim-witted former gangster in an effort to desert by stealing a train.
In 1916 as an officer in the Habsburg Army ethnic Romanian Apostol Bologa is torn between remaining loyal to the Habsburgs or deserting to the Romanian Army across enemy lines.
During the last winter of the Civil War, cavalry officer Amos Dundee leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners and scouts on an expedition into Mexico to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding U.S. bases in Texas.
Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soldiers, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate. Seijun Suzuki's Story of a Prostitute is a tragic love story as well as a rule-bending take on a popular Taijiro Tamura novel, challenging military and fraternal codes of honor, as seen through Harumi's eyes.
American and Japanese soldiers, stranded on a tiny Pacific island during World War II, must make a temporary truce and cooperate to survive various tribulations. Told through the eyes of the American and Japanese unit commanders, who must deal with an atmosphere of growing distrust and tension between their men.
The German intelligence officer Sturmer, under the guise of captain Voron, commits sabotage one after another with the aim of reaching the commander of the partisan detachment of Stration. Galinka, the daughter of Stration, who fell in love with Voron, invades their duel.
In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a doctor-turned-warehouse employee reluctantly agrees to treat a gravely wounded political fugitive, putting himself and everyone living in his building complex in danger.