Ayla: The Daughter of WarMovies like Ayla: The Daughter of War
- Key Features:
- Korean War, Humanitarian, Father-daughter relationship, Survival, Sacrifice, International conflict, Based on a true story, War drama, Adoption
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, earnest
- Target Audience:
- War drama enthusiasts, Humanitarian stories, Emotional narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Despair → Hope
Ayla: The Daughter of War

In 1950, amidst the ravages of the Korean War, Sergeant Süleyman stumbles upon a a half-frozen little girl, with no parents and no help in sight and he risks his own life to save her, smuggling her into his army base and out of harm’s way.
Ayla: The Daughter of War
When two brothers are forced to fight in the Korean War, the elder decides to take the riskiest missions if it will help shield the younger from battle.

At 2 Ela lost her ability of seeing and hearing because of a severe illness. And then she became a total disappointment of her family due to her untamed behaviors. But everything changed after an unorthodox teacher stepped into their lives to educate Ela while healing himself.

Zuhtu, a nosy hawker who sells meatballs, one night finds a young girl escaping from her cruel relatives. He intends to help the girl but this costs him too much.

Separated from his daughter, a father with an intellectual disability must prove his innocence when he is jailed for the death of a commander's child.

Duk-soo lost his father and younger sister while taking refuge during the Korean War. He leaves for Germany to work as a miner and enters the Vietnam War. He wishes to find his sister.

After 8-year-old So-won narrowly survives a brutal sexual assault, her family labors to help her heal while coping with their own rage and grief.

Accompanied by a ward, a prisoner travels to his hometown to reconnect with his daughter and make amends, but a tragic truth mars his journey.

Korean War, winter 1950. In the frozen and snowy area of Changjin Lake, a bloody battle is about to begin between the elite troops of the United States and China.

Company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men are stationed in Helmand, Afghanistan. Meanwhile back in Denmark, with a husband at war and three children missing their father, everyday life is a struggle for Claus' wife Maria. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy Taliban crossfire. In order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that ultimately sees him return to Denmark accused of a war crime.

Bahar, the commanding officer of the Daughters of the Sun, a battalion made up entirely of Kurdish female soldiers, is on the cusp of liberating their town, which has been overrun by ISIS extremists.

Two soldiers return home from their military service in southeastern Turkey with disabilities.

After the death of their father, two siblings are raised by their father's best friend. However, when one gets kidnapped just before her wedding, the other rises against the Manchus.

In 1915 a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them.

A love story between a poor man and a rich girl. The rich girl's father tries to prevent their marriage and he declares a war against the poor boy's family.

1917. Bakary Diallo enlists in the French army to join his 17-year-old son, Thierno, who has been forcibly recruited. Sent to the front, they will have to face the war together. While Thierno learns to become a man, Bakary will do everything to bring him back safely.

In the southeast region of Turkey, the Kurdish family of Altun lives in a small mountainside village plagued by a 25-year war that makes their daily lives a hellish struggle. As the war intensifies, the family is forced to migrate west to the city of Istanbul.

How many Yamil remembers himself, war has always been. He is very much waiting for it to end - after all, then the father will return, whom the boy knows only from photographs and letters. One day, Mom leaves for a distant city and brings the silent girl Oksana with her. Mum transmits the order of his father to take care of Oksana, as if he was a little sister ... A film adaptation of the story “The Joy of Our Home” by the classic of Soviet literature Mustay Karim.

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

Mukhtar Yusuf Ağa’s unregistered village in eastern Anatolia has been championed through letters to government officials, and his lost son İbrahim, rescued and registered by Father Hana, is finally returning at age 30 with his American love Jessica; the question is whether Tinne can become their true homeland.

Sent from Seoul to serve in a remote coastal village, a policewoman gets involved in the life of a mysterious teenage girl who is abused by both her father and her grandmother.

Based on the long running play by Jang Jin, the story is set in Korea during the Korean War in 1950. Soldiers from both the North and South, as well as an American pilot, find themselves in a secluded and naively idealistic village, its residents unaware of the outside world, including the war.

In the follow-up to "The Battle At Lake Changjin", brothers Wu Qianli and Wu Wanli undertake a new task for the People's Volunteer Army, defending a bridge part of the American troops' escape route from the advancing Chinese.

A woman's past as a convict follows her everywhere and because of this she doesn't open up to others. But then she strikes up a friendship with a broken child who has suffered from domestic violence and decides to save the girl from the cruel world. A man who holds feelings for the woman, tries to protect her in his own way.

After completing his required decade of military service and being honored as a hero, a North Korean sergeant makes a sudden shocking attempt to defect to the South, risking life and limb for the chance to finally determine his own destiny.

A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.

A U.S. Navy pilot and his squad are assigned to bomb a group of heavily defended bridges deep behind enemy lines during the Korean War.

Based on a true story set in 1948, customs officer Mehti is faced with the duty of formally setting up the border between Turkey and Syria, dividing his hometown. He is unaware of the pain that will eminently unfold, as families, languages, cultures and lovers are both ripped apart and clash head on in a village once united.

Natural changes have the clans moving. Iza, medicine woman of the "Clan of the Cave Bear" finds little Ayla from the "others"' clan - tradition would have the clan kill Ayla immediately, but Iza insists on keeping her. When the little one finds a most needed new cave, she's allowed to stay - and thrive.

Aydın is a hotel owner and a retired actor in rural Turkey. As winter emerges he begins navigating the conflicts within the relationships with his wife, sister and existence.

Asya, a peasant girl, marries İlyas, a truck driver. The couple, who love each other very much, are separated when İlyas cheats on her, and their epic love story comes to an unexpected end. After that, Asya takes her son and wanders away, not knowing where she is going, until a familiar hand reaches out to help her selflessly.

Three strangers with one thing in common — the same father — come to a Turkish village to bury him, and learn about him and each other.

Shortly after the Korean war, a father and a son are wandering through the country and make a stop in a remote village, where strange and dangerous happenings occur.

A debt collector who looks intimidating, but actually has a warm heart, ends up becoming the guardian of a child, who has been left behind as collateral by her illegal immigrant mother.

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.

Palestine, 1948. After the withdrawal of the British occupiers, tensions rise between Arabs and Jews. Meanwhile, Farha, the smart daughter of the mayor of a small village, unaware of the coming tragedy, dreams of going to study in the big city.

Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.

Kingdom of Goguryeo, ancient Korea, 645. The ruthless Emperor Taizong of Tang invades the country and leads his armies towards the capital, achieving one victory after another, but on his way is the stronghold of Ansi, protected by General Yang Man-chu, who will do everything possible to stop the invasion, even if his troops are outnumbered by thousands of enemies.

Three years ago, a father saved his daughter's life. After she's involved in a car accident, it looks like he'll have to do it again, no matter how many attempts it takes.

A stagnant and gloomy village in the 1980s. Reyhan, Nurhan, and Havva, three sisters were sent to town as 'besleme' (foster child and maid). Since they fail their foster parents for different reasons, they are sent back to their father's house in their poor village. Deprived of their dreams of a better life, they try to hold on to each other.

Young Jin-hee is taken by her father to an orphanage near Seoul. He leaves her there never to return, and she struggles to come to grips with her fate. Jin-hee desperately believes her father will come back for her and take her on a trip.

Through their shared grief and connection to music, an orphaned girl bonds with her emotionally aloof, successful violinist uncle.

In 1951 ceasefire is declared, but two remaining armies fought their final battle on the front line Towards the end of the Korean War, a South Korean battalion is fiercely battling over a hill on the front line border against the North in order to capture a strategic point that would determine the new border between two nations. The ownership of this small patch of land would swap multiple times each day. Kang is dispatched to the front line in order to investigate the tacit case that’s been happening there.

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.

In a small, poor village leaning over high rocky mountains, the villagers are simple and diligent people who struggle to cope with a harsh nature. They earn their living off the earth and a few animals they feed. Fathers always prefer one of their sons. Mothers command their daughters ruthlessly. Ömer, the son of the imam, wishes hopelessly for the death of his father. When he understands that wishful thinking does not have any concrete results, he begins to search for childish ways to kill his father. Yakup is in love with his teacher, and one day after seeing his father spying on the teacher he dreams too, like Ömer, of killing his father. Yıldız studies and tries to manage the household chores imposed by her mother. She learns with irritation about the secrets of the relationship between men and women.

Korean War, September 1950. In order to fight the enemy forces based in the South of the peninsula, General MacArthur orders the start of the Incheon Landing Operation, deploying diversionary attacks in other locations. Without real military forces to spare, 772 very young Korean student soldiers, barely trained, are sent to Jangsari Beach, where they will face a heroic fate and discover the value of friendship. (A sequel to Operation Chromite, released in 2016.)

A historical drama set in the Koryo dynasty and focused on the relationship between a king and his bodyguard.

In feudal Korea, a group of starving villagers grow weary of the orders handed down to them by their controlling king and set out to use a deadly monster under their control to push his armies back.

A young Kyrgyz immigrant tries to eke out a living in Moscow after abandoning her newborn and fleeing the hospital.

A biopic about the Turkish vocal artist Müslüm Gürses. Born into a poor household, Muslum found his redemption in music from the initial trauma that lingered over his musical and personal life as internalizing the grief. He rose through his ashes of shattered dreams like a phoenix. He walked in darkness, sang songs filled with sorrow which stirred people's souls and created a cult following. They were calling him "Baba" (The Father).

After being involved in a traumatic incident, 17-year-old Gong-ju is forced to change schools. Uncared for by her parents, her previous teacher arranges for her to hide away at his mother's place. It takes time for her past to catch up with her, but when it does the revelation is devastating.

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

A drama centered on an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict.

Struggling to survive in post-WWI Copenhagen, a newly unemployed and pregnant young woman is taken in by a charismatic elder to help run an underground adoption agency. The two form an unexpected bond, until a sudden discovery changes everything.

A family battles against the odds to stay together when small lies grow into an extravagant cover-up. In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing “Three Monkeys” invalidate the truth of its existence?

After living 45 years in Germany, the Turkish Hüseyin Yilmaz, seventy, announces to his family that he has bought a house in Turkey and they should return to make the necessary reforms. The idea is unwelcome and causes very heated discussions. In addition, Canan, a granddaughter of Hüseyin, announces she is pregnant and the father is her English boyfriend, and no one knew anything.

January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Her name was Hind Rajab.

Halla declares a one-woman-war on the local aluminium industry. She is prepared to risk everything to protect the pristine Icelandic Highlands she loves… Until an orphan unexpectedly enters her life.

A left-wing journalist whose wife died while giving birth to his son during a military coup returns to his family's farm. Estranged from his father for turning his back on the family and wasting his life with political activism instead, he tries to reconnect with him so that his son will have a place to live as his health is deteriorating due to the extensive torture he had to endure.

A small task force of the Turkish army have to defend a relay station in the middle of nowhere against a possible terrorist raid.

In Korea, on 6 September 1950, Lieutenant Benson's platoon finds itself isolated in enemy-held territory after a retreat. Soon they are joined by Sergeant Montana, whose overriding concern is caring for his catatonic colonel. Benson and Montana can't stand each other, but together they must get the survivors to Hill 465, where they hope the division is waiting. It's a long, harrowing march, fraught with all the dangers the elusive enemy can summon.

A father says goodbye to his young daughter. In time the daughter grows old, but within her there is always a deep longing for her father.

A tragicomedy dramatizing how an innocent villager is driven into the crime world only to collect enough cash to make his biggest dream come true: Return to his village home and marry the girl next door.

An aspiring filmmaker visits his parents and begins to devise a movie. Amidst creating and casting for the film, he encounters with family & friends who struggle with their own problems, dreams and life.

25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area.

A pretty young girl falls for an enigmatic, shy man who sweeps her off her feet. She becomes pregnant but is not allowed to tell him. His advisers are adamant. Back home, they have set up a wedding with the daughter of an antagonistic family and marriage will put an end to the blood feud between them.

The harrowing true story of two elite US Navy fighter pilots during the Korean War. Their heroic sacrifices would ultimately make them the Navy's most celebrated wingmen.

A young man released from prison visits the widow of the man he killed drunk-driving and becomes infatuated with his cerebral palsy-stricken daughter.

A girl who went missing after an accident returns 10 years later and reunites with her grandmother.

After being blinded in a coup against the king, Joseon's greatest swordsman goes into hiding, far removed from his city's anguish. But when traffickers kidnap his daughter, he has no choice but to unsheathe his sword once more.

The son of a North Korean spy decides to follow in his father's footsteps to protect his little sister.

After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines.

Kenza and Yaël are two young French women who go to Syria to fight alongside the Kurdish forces. There they meet Zara, a Yezidi survivor. Born in different cultures but deeply united, the women-fighters heal their past wounds and discover their present strength, especially the fear they inspire in their opponents. The three young women soon bound together and become true sisters-in-arms.

Ex-military specialist Clair Hamilton returns home from her tour in the Middle East due to her father's passing and to claim her inheritance. Her son is then kidnapped and held for ransom by a gang led by a mysterious figure known only as “Father”.

When Sgt. First Class Brian Eisch is critically wounded in Afghanistan, it sets him and his sons on a journey of love, loss, redemption and legacy.

A widowed new dad copes with doubts, fears, heartache and dirty diapers as he sets out to raise his daughter on his own. Inspired by a true story.

During the invasion of Normandy the photograph of a slim Korean man in German uniform was found. It transpired that the man had served as a soldier in the Japanese, Russian and German armies. His incredible story inspired director Kang Je-Gyu to create this epic war drama.

In the streets of Istanbul, ailing waste warehouse worker Mehmet takes a small boy under his wing and must soon confront his own traumatic childhood.

1960s Turkey countryside. A newly assigned teacher finds out that the solitary village is missing a school. He gets fond of the village people and especially a disabled man. The teacher helps the village to build a new school and educate the children and the disabled man.

A daughter torn between two mothers, one who raised her with love and her biological mother, who instinctively claims her back.

A story about a mentally ill man wrongfully imprisoned for murder and his relationship with his 6 year old daughter.

The love story of sixteen-year-old Arturs is interrupted by the First World War. After losing his mother and his home, he finds some consolation in joining the army, because this is the first time national battalions are allowed in the Russian Empire. But war is nothing like Arturs imagined – no glory, no fairness. It is brutal and painful. Arturs is now completely alone as war takes the lives of his father and brother. Also, no progress is made in the promised quick resolution of the war and timely return home. Within the notion that only he alone cares about returning home and that his homeland is just a playground for other nations, Arturs finds strength for the final battle and eventually returns home to start everything from scratch, just like his newly born country.

In a desolate war zone where screams of the innocent echo, on the very line between disaster and valor, 7 Maroon Berets will dance with death.

In the Joseon Dynasty, two friends who grew up together — one the master and one the servant — reunite post-war as enemies on opposing sides.

To end an apocalyptic war and save her daughter, a reluctant soldier embarks on a desperate mission to cross a frozen sea carrying a top-secret cargo.

Based on the experiences of Agu, a child fighting in the civil war of a West African country. Follows Agu's journey as he's forced to join a group of soldiers. While he fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination.

Hanzo, who was lost as a baby and raised by bears in the wild forest, behaving like them, is captured one day by a group that comes to the village for excavation.

After the death of his wife and father, Kudret, who has always lived by the book, decides to go on a road trip to save a girl.

A village girl agrees to a marriage to a king she has never met after he sends her a photograph of himself. But the man in the photograph is not the king but his most loyal slave, the handsome but mute Shankar.

During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who's now a captive in his camp he oversees. Their once promising connection has become ambiguous as their motives have changed.

A soldier and his team battle hordes of post-apocalyptic zombies in the wastelands of the Korean Peninsula.

Şaban, who works as a clerk in a factory, is madly in love with Bahar, who works as a secretary in the same factory and attends university thanks to the financial support of the famous oil tycoon Adnan Bıçakçı. However, Bahar has her eye on the famous athlete Erkan. After Adnan Bıçakçı reveals that Bahar is his granddaughter, she is kidnapped by gangsters. However, the only person who tries to rescue her is not her boyfriend Erkan, but Orta Direk Şaban.

A stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.

Stranded in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, a man sets in motion an unlikely plan to protect the precious cargo he carries: his infant daughter.

Two North Korean soldiers are killed in the border area between North and South Korea, prompting an investigation by a neutral body. The sergeant is the shooter, but the lead investigator, a Swiss-Korean woman, receives differing accounts from the two sides.

Tragedy, betrayal and a mysterious discovery fuel a woman's vengeance for the loss of her tribe and family.

Yoon-young, a 19-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a civil servant, is framed as a murderer and imprisoned in a women's prison.

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.

Sang-hyun is always struggling from debt, and Dong-soo works at a baby box facility. On a rainy night, they steal the baby Woo-sung, who was left in the baby box, to sell him at a good price. Meanwhile, detectives were watching, and they quietly track them down to capture the crucial evidence.

