Overlord

A young English recruit trains for the coming invasion of Normandy while haunted by a recurring premonition of his own death. Blending original narrative footage with genuine Imperial War Museum archival material, the film builds a melancholic portrait of a soldier's final months before D-Day.

Produced using extensive authentic wartime footage from British archives, the film captures the mood of British society and military preparation in the lead-up to the Normandy invasion. Its documentary-fiction hybrid approach was distinctive for war films of its era.

The archival footage is genuine, though the protagonist and his story are fictional composites representing typical wartime experience.

With the British Expeditionary Force and French units cut off against the Channel, the Royal Navy and hundreds of civilian craft lifted the trapped armies off the beaches and mole at Dunkirk.

A German halt order and stubborn rearguard actions at Calais and along the Lys bought time. Over nine days roughly 338,000 British and Allied troops were evacuated, though nearly all heavy equipment was abandoned.

Directed by Stuart Cooper

Cast: Brian Stirner, Davyd Harries, Nicholas Ball

Positioned at 1944 within the Preparation for and execution of D-Day phase of the war, as part of the Operation Overlord. This is entry 106 of 150 in the chronological archive.

• D-Day preparation
• archival footage
• British soldier
• premonition
• documentary hybrid

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  D-Day the Sixth of June

  6 June 1944

• 

  Storming Juno

  6 June 1944

• 

  The Longest Day

  6 June 1944

• 

  Saving Private Ryan

  6–13 June 1944

• 

  Ike: Countdown to D-Day

  February–June 1944

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  Atonement

  1935–1940