Steven Spielberg · 1987 · survival

Steven Spielberg's 1987 film, from J. G. Ballard's novel. When the Japanese seize Shanghai in 1941, a privileged English boy named Jim is separated from his parents in the chaos and, after scavenging alone in the emptied city, is interned in the Lunghua camp near a military airfield. Across the years of war he comes of age amid deprivation and wonder, until liberation returns him to a changed world.

1. 1
   Shanghai

   The cosmopolitan city where the sheltered English boy Jim lives in luxury, until the Japanese attack of 1941 throws the International Settlement into chaos and tears him from his parents.

2. 2
   Lunghua Camp

   The Japanese internment camp beside a military airfield where Jim is held for years, surviving by his wits and cunning, dazzled by the warplanes even as the prisoners starve.

3. 3
   Shanghai

   Liberated at the war's end, an aged-beyond-his-years Jim is returned through the wreckage to the city and a reunion with the parents he barely recognizes.