Memorial Day weekend is more than the unofficial start of summer. It’s a moment to pause and think about the men and women who gave everything in service of this country — their youth, their health, sometimes their lives. Hollywood has always had a complicated relationship with that story, packaging sacrifice into spectacle for mass consumption. But some of the most honest and affecting films about war and its aftermath have come not from the big studios, but from independent filmmakers working with small budgets and big intentions. This Memorial Day, skip the blockbuster and give one of these a shot. Film Threat — the bible of indie cinema — has covered all five.
1. The War Between (2024) Reviewed by Bradley Gibson
A Union soldier and a Confederate soldier, stranded together in the Arizona desert in 1862, must choose between their ideologies and their survival. This fits the list because it brings to life a rarely told corner of the Civil War — the forgotten fight for the American Southwest — on an independent budget and with genuine philosophical ambition. Gibson called it “a soaring achievement” that uses familiar Western tropes to launch into “a deep philosophical discussion of culture and nationalist zealotry.” It earned a remarkable 8 out of 10.
2. Alone We Fight (2018) Reviewed by Bradley Gibson
A squad of American soldiers volunteers for a suicide mission to slow the German advance during the brutal and little-known World War II battle of Hürtgen Forest. This one earns its spot on the list because director Justin Lee made it as a personal tribute — his own grandfather fought at Hürtgen — tackling a battle that history has largely overlooked. Gibson acknowledged that Lee was “going for a ground-level intimate Thin Red Line vibe,” and respected what the filmmaker was clearly trying to accomplish with limited resources and deeply personal stakes.
3. Bastards’ Road (2020) Reviewed by Dylan Andresen
Iraq War veteran Jonathan Hancock walks 5,800 miles across America — from Maryland to Camp Pendleton, California — visiting fellow veterans along the way to raise awareness about the struggles soldiers face when they come home. This documentary belongs on any Memorial Day list because it puts faces and voices to the cost of war that never appear in recruitment posters. Andresen gave it a perfect 10 out of 10, writing that the film’s stunning aerial photography of America’s landscape is brilliantly juxtaposed with the veterans’ stories — “you are not made merely to understand what they went through — you see what they fought for in America’s natural splendor.”
4. Homemade (2019) Reviewed by Bobby LePire
Over five years, filmmakers follow Force Reconnaissance Marine Adam Sorensen and his wife Victoria as they navigate his PTSD, addiction, and traumatic brain injury after his deployment to Afghanistan. This is the war movie that takes place after the credits roll on every other war movie — the unglamorous, invisible fight that veterans and their families wage at home. LePire scored it 9 out of 10, praising it as “pretty fantastic” and noting that “in terms of pulling at your heartstrings, Homemade is remarkably successful.”
5. The Longest War (2020) Reviewed by Alex Saveliev
A documentary tracing America’s 40-year entanglement in Afghanistan — from the Soviet-era proxy conflict through 9/11, the hunt for bin Laden, and the grinding, inconclusive years that followed. It earns its Memorial Day place because it asks the question no recruitment poster ever does: what were all those lives actually spent on? Saveliev gave it 7 out of 10 and called it “expectedly gripping,” praising what is on display as “both remarkably tense and highly devastating.”
Each of these films was made outside the Hollywood machine, which is exactly why they’re worth your time this weekend. No one signed off on the script to make the military look good. No defense department consultant softened the edges. Just filmmakers who cared enough about the truth to go make it themselves.
