Au point culminant de son avance en Égypte en 1942, l'armée italienne approche d'El Alamein, où les Britanniques se défendent de pied ferme. Privées d'essence, les forces de l'Axe sont bientôt contraintes à la défensive. Le lieutenant italien Giorgio Borri, un patriote idéaliste qui croit encore en la victoire, est affecté à la division parachutiste Folgore (La Foudre). Son unité est envoyée dans le désert pour y tenir des tranchées et attendre l'inéluctable contre-offensive anglaise.
En 1942, en Afrique du Nord, une jeune femme (Marlène Jobert) aide un officier anglais (Michael York) à échapper aux Allemands, avec l'aide d'un escroc (Michel Piccoli) et d'un Tunisien (Amidou). Ils vivront mille aventures dans le désert.
The film tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo (Jacques Perrin), and the time that he spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. It has interesting scenery, the lighting and cinematography, and the psychological questions it raises, are of iterest.
During 1904, Morocco is the source of conflict among the powers of Germany, France, and the British Empire, each of which is trying to establish a sphere of influence in that country. Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli is the commander of a band of Berber insurrectionists opposed to the young Sultan Abdelaziz and his uncle, the Bashaw (Pasha) of Tangier, whom Raisuli considers corrupt and beholden to the Europeans. He kidnaps Eden Pedecaris and her children, William and Jennifer, in a raid on their home, during which Sir Joshua Smith, a British friend of Eden's, is killed. Raisuli then issues an outrageous ransom demand, deliberately attempting to provoke an international incident in order to embarrass the Sultan and start a civil war.
In French Tunisia, during the Second World War, a convoy of the French Foreign Legion is charged to recover gold bars of six billion francs from a bank in El Ksour in order to bring them into a safe place for the French government.
Gwen is a young girl adopted by a nomad tribe in a desert post-apocalyptic world. In the desert, where only few animals, like ostriches or scorpions, can survive, a mysterious entity regularly drops gigantic replicas of everyday life objects from our world, such as bags, telephones, clocks and armchairs. When a young boy, Gwen's friend, is kidnapped by said entity, Gwen and an old woman called Roseline start on a trip to find him back. They eventually encounter other people living in an isolated city and preserving remains of the old civilisation in strange ways.
Narrant la célèbre bataille d'El-Alamein, le film se place surtout du côté italien, car on voit les troupes italiennes encerclées et se battant avec bravoure et l'énergie du désespoir, même en sachant que tout était perdu, tandis que les troupes britanniques ne faisaient que « ramasser les miettes ».
Aviator Marie Vallières de Beaumont (Cotillard) goes on a journey to find her lover Bill Lancaster after his plane disappears in the Sahara. After her plane is forced down in the Ténéré she meets Lieutenant Antoine Chauvet (Canet) of the French Camel Corps who joins in the hunt for Lancaster. As the two endure hardships in the desert, they begin to develop feelings for each other.
During the Second World War Field Marshal Erwin Rommel has placed two spies in Cairo, at the headquarters of the British Eighth Army. They are able to monitor every move of the British. It falls to British intelligence to hunt down the spies before they do too much damage to the war effort.
Two US Marines who are so incompetent that they are sent to the European Theatre of Operations end up in the Battle of Anzio where they face the German's giant artillery piece "Anzio Annie".
The film is set in 1941 during the Second World War, when the city of Benghazi in Italian-ruled Libya was occupied by British forces. Italian inhabitants of Benghazi work to resist the British and discover their military plans. One man, Captain Enrico Berti, appears to be collaborating with the British but is in fact working undercover for Italian intelligence. The film ends with the city being recaptured by Italian troops and their Nazi German allies.
Three friends are droving cattle in Australia in 1939: the restless Bluey Donkin, easy-going Milo Trent and English Peter Linton, who is in the country on a working holiday. Squatter's daughter Kate Carmody is in love with Bluey but he refuses to be tied down to any one woman. War breaks out and the three men enlist in the Australian army and are assigned to the 9th Division. They ship out to Africa.