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Confronting Past Dictatorships

A collection of films about life within dictatorships or under oppressive regimes, as well as films that relate to real-life dictatorships in more abstract / metaphorical ways.

This list is not trying to morally equate all these governments as the same, or to say that other forms of oppression haven't happened in other places. This is just a list of films about sad and serious events from history that we must learn from.

Generally I am looking for films which are made by people from the countries depicted.

Suggestions welcome.

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  • Evolution of a Filipino Family
  • A Special Day
  • No
  • Entranced Earth
  • Pan's Labyrinth
  • From What Is Before
  • Hissein Habré, A Chadian Tragedy
  • The Battle of Chile: Part I
  • The Dinner
  • A City of Sadness
  • Azor
  • A Brighter Summer Day
  • The Official Story
  • Twenty Years Later
  • The Sidewalks of Saturn
  • The Missing Picture
  • The Lives of Others
  • The Wolf House
  • To Live
  • Post Mortem
  • The White Ribbon
  • La Llorona
  • This Is Not a Film
  • Wife of a Spy
  • Peppermint Candy
  • Timbuktu
  • A Hidden Life
  • Dear Comrades!
  • 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
  • Parallel Mothers
  • Barber's Tales
  • The '70s
  • Manila in the Claws of Light
  • Amarcord
  • Z
  • All My Good Countrymen
  • Moloch
  • Taurus
  • The Sun
  • The Breadwinner
  • Persepolis
  • The Secret in Their Eyes
  • Wadjda
  • The Devil's Backbone
  • The Act of Killing
  • The Look of Silence
  • Fight for Us
  • Platform
  • Osama
  • Blood of the Condor
  • Sambizanga
  • Teza
  • Farewell My Concubine
  • Four Days in September
  • The Ninth Circle
  • No Regrets for Our Youth
  • Tomka and His Friends
  • The Present
  • Beatriz's War
  • Hands Up!
  • The Witness
  • The Tenants
  • This Is My Country
  • Pisay
  • Apparition
  • Season of the Devil
  • Respect
  • Marighella
  • A Taxi Driver
  • Eva Doesn't Sleep
  • Argentina 1985
  • The Spider's Stratagem
  • Nostalgia for the Light
  • The Conformist
  • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
  • Memories of Murder
  • Cria!
  • Before Night Falls
  • I Am Cuba
  • Repentance
  • The Seven Cervi Brothers
  • The Assassination of Matteotti
  • Christ Stopped at Eboli
  • The Night of the Shooting Stars
  • El Conde
  • The Death of Stalin
  • I'm Still Here
  • Missing
  • El Norte
  • The Hourglass Sanatorium
  • Europa Europa
  • Ay, Carmela!
  • The Day That Lasted 21 Years
  • Baptism of Blood
  • Torre das Donzelas
  • How Good to See You Alive
  • Libelu: Down With The Dictatorship
  • Seventy