The 100 Best Political Films

The personal and governmental affairs of the Julio-Claudian dynasty at the beginning of the Roman Empire, as recalled by one of its rulers.

In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.

The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.

In the 1950s, fear and violence escalate as the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government.

A mentally unstable American general orders a hydrogen bomb attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to global nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

The early life and career of Vito Corleone in 1920s New York City is portrayed, while his son, Michael, expands and tightens his grip on the family crime syndicate.

Alex DeLarge and his droogs barbarize a decaying near-future.

Traudl Junge, the final secretary for Adolf Hitler, tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.

A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.

The public murder of a prominent politician and doctor amid a violent demonstration is covered up by military and government officials. A tenacious magistrate is determined not to let them get away with it.

An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.

During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.

During the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the Resistance leader, Giorgio Manfredi, is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.

A war-hardened general, egged on by his ambitious wife, works to fulfill a prophecy that he would become lord of Spider's Web Castle.

The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave.

Two underground black marketeers, Marko and Blacky, sell weapons to the Communist resistance in wartime Belgrade, living the good life along the way.

A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god.

When a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity.

A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about mass media for its own profit, but finds that his message may be difficult to control.

Twins journey to the Middle East to discover their family history and fulfill their mother's last wishes.

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit.

A young boy, left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime.