Best movies like The Water Diviner

Similar in 77%

Captain Conan (1996)

Plot Summary:

Bulgaria near the end of World War I: Conan, warrior and wolf, leads a band of 50 ruthless French fighters who love hand-to-hand combat. Their motto: "We forgot to take prisoners, Captain." At war's end, the unit goes to Bucharest, where Conan tries to keep them out of trouble, defends them when they behave as warriors, and finds he's unsuited for peacetime. His friendship with Norbert, a teacher turned lieutenant, is tested when Norbert accepts a job as court-martial prosecutor because he's learned that Conan will be facing charges and he wants to protect his friend. When they are sent to the Russian border to fight Bolsheviks, Conan is back in his element and Norbert is off the hook.

Similar in 78%

120 (2008)

Plot Summary:

During the Sarikamis Battle, the Ottoman army runs out of ammunition and appeals to the people of Van for help, who happen to have supplies. However, the First World War is on and all men are fighting at four corners of the empire and therefore can not respond to to the appeal. The young children of Van want to do something.

Similar in 85%

Breaker Morant (1980)

Plot Summary:

During the Boer War, three Australian lieutenants are on trial for shooting Boer prisoners. Though they acted under orders, they are being used as scapegoats by the General Staff, who hopes to distance themselves from the irregular practices of the war. The trial does not progress as smoothly as expected by the General Staff, as the defence puts up a strong fight in the courtroom.

Similar in 76%

Taking Chance (2009)

Plot Summary:

Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, a volunteer military escort accompanies the body of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps to his hometown in Wyoming.

Similar in 89%

Winter in Wartime (2008)

Plot Summary:

During World War II in the freezing Netherlands winter of 1944/1945 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.

Similar in 78%

Philomena (2013)

Plot Summary:

A woman searches for her adult son, who was taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.

Similar in 90%

The Lighthorsemen (1987)

Plot Summary:

Palestine, 1917. The British advance has been stopped by the Turkish line running from Gaza to Beersheba. The latest attack on Gaza has failed. The attacking forces included a regiment of Australian mounted infantry, the Light Horse... Lighthorseman Frank is wounded in a skirmish with Bedouin. He is replaced by a young soldier, Dave, who proves to be a crack shot, but reluctant to fire at the enemy. Dave proves himself during a German biplane attack. Recuperating in hospital, he meets a sympathetic nurse, Anne... The regiment is called upon for a bold flanking attack on Beersheba. But how do you convince the Turks the main attack will come at Gaza? And how do you attack across a desert without water?.

Similar in 76%

My Boy Jack (2007)

Plot Summary:

Author Rudyard Kipling and his wife search for their 17-year-old son after he goes missing during WWI.

Similar in 84%

Beneath Hill 60 (2010)

Plot Summary:

The true story of Australia's cat-and-mouse underground mine warfare – one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented and mystifying conflicts of WW I. It was a secret struggle BENEATH the Western Front that combined daring engineering, technology and science, and few on the surface knew of the brave, claustrophobic and sometimes barbaric work of these tunnellers.

Similar in 75%

Gallipoli (1981)

Plot Summary:

As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank, both agile runners, become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.

Similar in 78%

Journey's End (2017)

Plot Summary:

Set in a dugout in Aisne in 1918, a group of British officers, led by the mentally disintegrating young officer Stanhope, variously await their fate.

Similar in 75%

Stop-Loss (2008)

Plot Summary:

A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.

Similar in 79%

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Plot Summary:

A group of working-class friends decides to enlist in the Army during the Vietnam War and finds it to be hellish chaos -- not the noble venture they imagined. Before they left, Steven married his pregnant girlfriend -- and Michael and Nick were in love with the same woman. But all three are different men upon their return.

Similar in 79%

The Alamo (2004)

Plot Summary:

Based on the 1836 standoff between a group of Texan and Tejano men, led by Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, and Mexican dictator Santa Anna's forces at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.

Similar in 75%

Empire of the Sun (1987)

Plot Summary:

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor named Basie, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirits, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

Similar in 86%

The Promise (2016)

Plot Summary:

Set during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, a love triangle develops between Mikael, a brilliant medical student, the beautiful and sophisticated artist Ana, and Chris, a renowned American journalist based in Paris.

Similar in 90%

City of Life and Death (2009)

Plot Summary:

City of Life and Death takes place in 1937, during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Imperial Japanese Army has just captured the then-capital of the Republic of China, Nanjing. What followed was known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, a period of several weeks wherein tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed.

Similar in 78%

The Flowers of War (2011)

Plot Summary:

A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.

Similar in 82%

Land of Mine (2015)

Plot Summary:

In the days following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, a group of young German prisoners of war were handed over to the Danish authorities and subsequently sent out to the West Coast, where they were ordered to remove the more than two million mines that the Germans had placed in the sand along the coast. With their bare hands, crawling around in the sand, the boys were forced to perform the dangerous work under the leadership of the Danish sergeant, Carl Leopold Rasmussen.

Similar in 79%

The Outpost (2019)

Plot Summary:

A small unit of U.S. soldiers, alone at the remote Combat Outpost Keating, located deep in the valley of three mountains in Afghanistan, battles to defend against an overwhelming force of Taliban fighters in a coordinated attack. The Battle of Kamdesh, as it was known, was the bloodiest American engagement of the Afghan War in 2009 and Bravo Troop 3-61 CAV became one of the most decorated units of the 19-year conflict.

Similar in 80%

The Grey Zone (2001)

Plot Summary:

A Nazi doctor, along with the Sonderkomando Jews – who are forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz against their fellow-Jews – find themselves in a moral grey zone.

Similar in 83%

Defiance (2008)

Plot Summary:

Based on a true story, during World War II, four Jewish brothers escape their Nazi-occupied homeland of West Belarus in Poland and join the Soviet partisans to combat the Nazis. The brothers begin the rescue of roughly 1,200 Jews still trapped in the ghettos of Poland.

Similar in 88%

Testament of Youth (2014)

Plot Summary:

Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.

Similar in 78%

War Horse (2011)

Plot Summary:

Follows a young man named Albert and his horse, Joey, and how their bond is broken when Joey is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War One. Despite being too young to enlist, Albert heads to France to save his friend.

Similar in 86%

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Plot Summary:

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

Similar in 80%

1917 (2019)

Plot Summary:

At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield and Blake are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers—Blake's own brother among them.

Similar in 78%

We Were Soldiers (2002)

Plot Summary:

The story of the first major battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War and the soldiers on both sides that fought it.

Similar in 83%

The Patriot (2000)

Plot Summary:

After proving himself on the field of battle in the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin wants nothing more to do with such things, preferring the simple life of a farmer. But when his son Gabriel enlists in the army to defend their new nation, America, against the British, Benjamin reluctantly returns to his old life to protect his son.

Similar in 79%

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Plot Summary:

WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Similar in 75%

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Plot Summary:

As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.