Best movies about dictatorships

In 1944 Spain, a girl is sent to live with her ruthless stepfather. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun. He tells her she's a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks.

In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.

During the period of 1964 to 1985, Brazil lived a military dictatorship. In the 60s, the Dominican friars Tito, Betto, Fernando and Ivo help leftist organizations. However, they are arrested and tortured by the despicable Chief of DOPS Fleury, who is trying to arrest the leader Carlos Marighella. Tito and Fernando do not resist the violent torture and betray Marighella, who is ambushed and executed by Fleury. In 1973, in France, the exiled friar Tito is unable to overcome his trauma and depression and commits suicide in the Convent of La Tourette.

David is an unemployed communist that comes to Spain in 1937 during the civil war to enroll the republicans and defend the democracy against the fascists. He makes friends between the soldiers.

A look behind the barricades of the besieged city of Homs, where for nineteen-year-old Basset and his ragtag group of comrades, the audacious hope of revolution is crumbling like the buildings around them.

Four vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.

An adaptation of the namesake play by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, which tells the story of Manguari Pistolão, an anonymous militant, that after 40 years of fighting for what he thought was new and revolutionary, his son accuses him of being conservative, antiquated, and anachronistic. With no money to pay the monthly bills, suffering chronic arthritis pain, and in a growing conflict with Luca, Manguari recalls his past and sees himself repeating the same attitudes as his father. Staggering fragments of various moments of Manguari's life, the film shows forty years of Brazilian political history through a father-son relationship.

Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970s.

São Paulo police mistakenly thinks a folk poet and singer is the same man who had stabbed his boss.

Union leader's son doesn't want to engage in a strike, because his wife is pregnant, thus disregarding his father's tradition of political activism.

Story of the 1974 coup that overthrew the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship--which continued the fascist policies of long-time dictator Antonio Salazar--and of two young army captains who were involved in it.

Two youths sent for a Maoist "re-education" in the mountains fall in love with the village tailor's granddaughter.

The story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemontree field when a new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down.

"In the Salvadoran civil war, my father and thousands more were captured and tortured by the State. These are some of their stories. When I turned 33, my mother told me that my father, during the Salvadoran civil war, had been captured and tortured for 33 days by the National Police. Two years later I had the courage to ask him and other men and women about those days. These people do not ask for revenge, all that they ask is to know the truth."

The Trial documents the trial of Dilma Rousseff, focusing on the defense team, who struggles to prove her innocence against a majority vote by a Congress riddled with corruption. A tale of betrayal and corruption, the film presents Rousseff's personal story: herself imprisoned and tortured by the country's former military dictatorship, she now faces impeachment accused of fiscal crimes. Rousseff declares herself innocent and accuses the right-wing opposition of perpetrating a parliamentary coup d'état. The Trial witnesses how the impeachment triggers a profound political crisis in Brazil. It looks at the collapse of the democratic institutions and at the economic and geopolitical interests at the very heart of this crisis. The film offers a behind-the-scenes look at this historical moment. The filmmaker was granted unique access to the defense team, to deputies and senators and to President Rousseff herself. Ramos' technique is wholly observational, without interviews and narrations. The camera captures physical and conversational interactions in private and political spheres while offering viewers a glimpse of the outdoor mass demonstrations.

1973. Uruguay is governed by a military dictatorship. One autumn night, three Tupamaro prisoners are taken from their jail cells in a secret military operation. The order is precise: "As we can't kill them, let's drive them mad."

A documentary that chronicles the life of young college professor Angela Davis, and how her social activism implicates her in a botched kidnapping attempt that ends with a shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.

In 1947, Dalton Trumbo was Hollywood's top screenwriter, until he and other artists were jailed and blacklisted for their political beliefs.

A low-life bandit and an I.R.A. explosives expert rebel against the government and become heroes of the Mexican Revolution.

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.

During the final months of Argentinian Military Dictatorship in 1983, a high school teacher sets out to find out who the mother of her adopted daughter is.

An advertising executive comes up with a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum.

Neil Jordan's historical biopic of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, the man who led a guerrilla war against the UK, helped negotiate the creation of the Irish Free State, and led the National Army during the Irish Civil War.

In 1979 a teenage girl emigrates back to Brazil from Paris, plunging her into the political and social storm of that country, and forcing her to confront the disappearance of her father many years earlier.

This movie is about one of the worst periods for the Brazilian people. Shows the days of military dictatorship when the Brazilian people against the government were put in jails, tortured, and some of them assassinated by the military and para-military people. At the same time, the same government censored the press and didn't allow anything but news about three times-champion soccer team. While the people made parties, etc for the soccer team, in the underground, people suffered all kinds of torture.