The gray dust blanketing the streets of Kraków and the echo of stones beneath the boots of SS officers reveal an eerie order established in the midst of war. The black-and-white images, rather than obscuring an inhuman brutality, transform it into an even more stark reality. Oskar Schindler, a merchant and industrialist in German-occupied Poland, slowly comes face to face with a different reality in this bleak world he entered in search of cheap labor. Amid the smoke rising from the concentration camp’s chimneys, as he witnesses people struggling to survive within the factory’s machinery, his greed for profit gives way to a different struggle for survival. Set against the harshest and most tense backdrop of historical drama, this narrative shows that a space for resistance can be created even in the darkest of rooms. Every name written in Schindler’s list is a silent step taken in the midst of hell.

Won 7 Oscars. 91 wins & 49 nominations total