The Red and the White

The Red and the White (Csillagosok, Katonák, 1967) — watch online on iFILM. Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó drops you into the summer of 1919 along the Volga, where Hungarian Red Guards fight alongside the Bolsheviks against the White Army. A monastery and a field hospital change hands again and again, each takeover quieter and more brutal than the last.

Jancsó strips the war film of its usual grammar — no clear heroes, no dramatic score. Just sweeping long takes across open terrain and bodies falling on both sides with the same indifference. A young soldier named László tries to survive as the lines keep shifting. A brief appearance from Nikita Mikhalkov, who later became one of Russia's most celebrated directors, adds its own small footnote.

Selected for the Cannes Film Festival, The Red and the White remains one of the most formally daring anti-war statements in European cinema. Stream it on iFILM.