Seeds of Destiny

Jan 1, 1946

0h 20m

★ 6.5

Overview

Oscar winning postwar propaganda film in support of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Strident but poignant, focusing on children. The film surveys the Nazi/Japanese atrocities, post-war devastation and the early relief efforts. This film was responsible for raising over $200,000,000, making it a top moneymaking film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

Genres

Documentary

War

Production Companies

U.S. War Department

Seeds of Destiny Trailers

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Cast

Narrator

Ralph Bellamy

The work of Leiden professor Bastiaans on dealing with the trauma of war victims attracts the attention of filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. He decides to make a film about the psychotherapeutic treatment with LSD of a former concentration camp prisoner in the clinic of Bastiaans. Patient Joop is arrested in September 1941 and begins a long hellish journey through various camps, until he is liberated by the Russians. When he returns to his wife, he has become a completely different man. Joop suffers from nightmares and is incapable of normal human contact. With two cameras, Van Gasteren records approximately six and a half hours of the first treatment that Joop undergoes with Bastiaans (four more will follow later). Special attention is paid to details: Joop's hands, the sweat on his forehead, a tear running slowly down his cheek. Van Gasteren reduces the recordings to more than an hour.

0.0

Maïco : Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, la révoltée

May 25, 2024

Communist, resistance fighter, deportee, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier is one of the great heroines of the 20th century. Nicknamed Maïco, she became a photojournalist and embraced the class struggle at the same time as she fell in love with one of the figures of the Popular Front, Paul Vaillant-Couturier. During World War II, she joined the Resistance and later gave decisive testimony at Nuremberg.

0.0

Ralph Rush: Concentration Camp Liberator

Sep 1, 2015

Ralph Rush, a Scout in General George S. Patton's World War II Intelligence & Reconnaisance Platoons went from digging up German mines to being the first American to enter the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp; the first concentration camp liberated by the Allies.

7.6

The Dirty Dozen

Jun 15, 1967

12 American military prisoners in World War II are ordered to infiltrate a well-guarded enemy château and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers, most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety of violent crimes, agree to the mission and the possible commuting of their sentences.

6.6

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

Apr 7, 2005

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

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10.0

Battle Front in Britain

Jun 1, 1918

From growing potatoes in Green Park, London, to transforming rabbit crates into seed boxes – just a couple of the many ingenious ways of supporting the war effort which are covered in this film from the Ministry of Information.

6.2

Naked Among Wolves

Apr 10, 1963

Based on a true story of inmates at KZ Buchenwald that risked their lives to hide a small Jewish boy shortly before the liberation of the camp.

7.0

Valkyrie

Dec 25, 2008

Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.

5.3

Hear the Silence

Jun 11, 2016

1941, Ukraine. A group of German soldiers occupy a small town populated exclusively by women and children of German descent, way behind enemy lines. There's tension from the beginning, that always threatens to erupt in violence from both sides.

3.0

The Street Performers

Oct 5, 2015

This documentary-style short follows two impoverished teens performing on the streets of London in the days leading up to the London Blitz of 1940.

7.0

Betrayed

Dec 25, 2020

During World War II, millions of Jews from all over Europe are deported and killed in German concentration camps. When the German troops invade Norway, the Norwegian Jews feel safe and protected. But anti-Semitism knows no borders and as the war escalates in Europe, the situation changes drastically. Suddenly, their radios are taken away; their passports are stamped with a big J and one day, all the men men over the age of 15 are arrested and taken to prisons camps. Many of the women left behind are too frightened to escape and are desperately waiting for their husbands and sons to come back home. On November 26, 1942, hundreds of Jews are picked up by the police in the middle of the night and are transported to the dock in Oslo. Unknowing and frightened men, women, children, sick and old are forced on board the awaiting German cargo ship "SS DONAU". The ship leaves with 532 Norwegian Jews onboard; 302 men, 188 women and 42 children. The end station is Auschwitz.

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4.2

Gestern und heute

Apr 7, 1938

Nazi propaganda film contrasting Germany in the days before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor with the Germany of "today" and how much better it is.

4.1

The Last Drop

Apr 13, 2006

Different factions in WWII-era Holland race to find a stash of Nazi gold.

6.5

The Cardinal

Dec 12, 1963

A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.

6.2

The Victors

Nov 22, 1963

Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.

8.0

Le Bataillon du Pacifique

Jun 23, 2024

No overview available.

6.8

The Assault

Feb 6, 1986

At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.

0.0

Two Mothers

Jun 28, 1957

The story of two women, one French and the other German, who fight for a child who has been mistakenly taken by the Germans after a bomb raid.

7.2

Operation Petticoat

Dec 5, 1959

A World War II submarine commander finds himself stuck with a damaged sub, a con-man executive officer, and a group of army nurses.

5.3

The Lancaster at War

Jul 25, 2009

The incredible story of the Avro Lancaster, one of the finest bombers of the Second World War, which played a crucial role in the long and savage campaign to defeat Hitler's Third Reich. This documentary features interviews with surviving veterans of Bomber Command, who share frank personal accounts of their part in an aerial battle of attrition which claimed the lives of 55'000 aircrew.

Seeds of Destiny

Overview

Genres

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