Das Boot

Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot opened in West Germany in 1981 and at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, after a six-year production on what was then the most expensive German film ever made. The film received six Academy Award nominations including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay — a record for a non-English-language film at the time. The 209-minute director's cut is now the standard release; a 293-minute television version exists for the truly committed.

1941. A German U-boat under the command of a war-weary captain (Jürgen Prochnow) leaves La Rochelle for an Atlantic patrol that will bring it within metres of destruction multiple times. Petersen and cinematographer Jost Vacano shot inside a full-scale U-boat replica using a hand-held Arriflex bolted to a custom mount, producing the claustrophobic, propulsive interiority that defines the film. Klaus Doldinger's electronic score is an enduring earworm.

The film is unusual within German cinema for centring Wehrmacht combatants without either condemning or celebrating them; it presents the U-boat war as systemically unwinnable and individually destructive, with the crew's eventual fate offering no consolation. Decades later, a Sky/UFA series revival continues the story; the 1981 original remains the definitive submarine film, alongside Run Silent, Run Deep and The Hunt for Red October.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The greatest submarine film ever made, and one of the most morally honest German engagements with World War II. The closing minutes of the patrol contain some of the most sustained suspense in any war film.