10 Great World War 1 Films You've Probably Never Seen

Four years prior to Inglorious Basterds, co-stars Diane Kruger and Daniel Brühl teamed up for an altogether different kind of war movie. Joyeux Noel or Merry Christmas might have come off as corny or overly sentimental in the wrong hands.

But French director Christian Carion does a def job of imbuing a well-known story with poignancy. It’s a quietly powerful watching experience, celebrating an extraordinary moment in history and humankind, when numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal and unauthorised truce to mark Christmas.

Soldiers from the French, Scottish and German battalions came together in No Man’s Land for a December 25th with a difference. A rare moment of peace and goodwill to contrast the fighting that came before and after, it’s a sensitively rendered experience that offers a fascinating dramatised glimpse of what unfolded over those magical hours.

On one level Joyeux Noel is a Christmas film, but that fails to do justice to the movie’s wider themes around the celebration of human resilience and the common traits that exist between people of all nations. That it is only a fleeting change only adds to the dramatic weight of the film.