The Adventures of Tartu: In this 1943 film, the resistors are the Czechs who don't agree with their Nazi occupiers. Terence is a British spy who has come to infiltrate a gas plant and has difficulty reaching the underground network to complete his mission, and his cover is so good, they think he's trying to infiltrate them and kill them one by one.
Æon Flux: The Monicans. who are struggling to bring down the Goodchild regime.
Apocalypse: The Haters, which is One Nation Earth's name for underground groups of persecuted Christians during the Tribulation in this film series.
Army of Shadows: Another French film about the Resistance, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, an actual Resistance fighter. He was critical of romanticized depictions of the resistance, and called out some of his countrymen for falsely claiming, after France was liberated, to have been resistance fighters.
Barbarella: The Always Chaotic Evil city of Sogo has an underground resistance movement that wants to overthrow the Black Queen and start a regime that's more similar to the peaceful, free-loving 41st century Earth. The resistance is led by Dildano, who rescues Barbarella from being executed and they team up to take down the Black Queen. Ultimately it's all for nothing, as the entire city gets destroyed and everyone in it dies at the end.
The Birth of a Nation (2016): A historical drama about Nat Turner and his attempted slave rebellion in the Antebellum South in 1831 (see Real Life for more details).
Captive State: Rafe is a member of a resistance cell called "Phoenix" that opposes the Legislators. It's later shown there's a national network in the US which they're a part of.
Casablanca: Has the French partisans and their counterparts from the rest of Occupied Europe. Their singing of "La Marseillaise" (see the page quote) is a key emotional moment in the film.
The Union in Neo Seoul. A case of Adaptational Heroism, as in the book Somni states Union is merely a front for Neo Seoul's government to identify and eliminate dissent, while the film plays it straight.
Cavendish mounts a minor one in the retirement home.
Defiance: The Bielski Partisans form such a group against German occupation of Belarus, as do the Soviet Partisans also featured in the movie.
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America: The John Brown Underground, an abolitionist movement operating out of Canada to undermine the Confederate States of America. Among other things, they're accused of being behind the assassination of John Ambrose Fauntroy IV and the "One Drop Scandal" that led to the suicide of his son, John Ambrose Fauntroy V over accusations of having black ancestry.
Demolition Man: Features a resistance which is all about, amongst other things, the "choice to run naked down the street covered in lime jello."
Double Dragon (1994): There's a neon-overall-clad teenage resistance named the Power Corps, which is led by the Action GirlLove Interest in the battle against Vanilla Ice as played by T-1000.
In Dune, the Harkonnen ruthlessly occupy the planet Arrakis/Dune to harvest the Spice, killing or enslaving the native Fremen, and the film opens with the Fremen launching a surprise attack on a Harkonnen convoy. In Dune: Part Two, Paul Atreides, who survived the massacre of the Atreides by the Harkonnen, starts leading the Fremen to accomplish his revenge against the conspirators.
In Eastern Condors, Tung Ming-sum and The Squad join up with a band of Cambodian guerillas who are fighting the Vietnamese army. The two groups combine forces to complete the mission of locating and destroying the bunker.
Escape from New York: A woman from the communist resistance/terrorist organization named the National Liberation Front hijacked Air Force One somehow and crashes it into Manhattan Island in hopes of killing the US President.
The Exception: Mieke and the local pastor in a nearby village both are with the Dutch resistance. He has a radio transmitter to communicate with the British, she's in the household of the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm.
In The Forgotten Battle, the World War II Dutch Resistance in the Walcheren area is a small group of young men and women with limited resources. Although one character initially hopes that they might the sort of Resistance who could rescue her brother from imprisonment and execution by the Germans, their activities are mostly limited to cautious spying. However, this actually proves crucial to the story of the film, as the information which they are able to get to the Allies enables them to get a small force across an obstructive river by boat, outflank the German positions, and win the day.
The "X" organisation composed of a group of Allied POWs who stage the titular escape attempt. Part of their motivation is to disrupt Nazi operations by forcing them to start a manhunt for escaped prisoners.
One of the escapees is eventually aided by members of the French Resistance who protect him from a drive-by shooting of Nazi officers and help him make his way to Spain. He's ultimately one of the few escapees who wasn't either recaptured or killed.
The Grey Zone: The Sonderkommandos are planning an uprising from within the Crematoria to destroy the largest furnaces and reduce the death camp's killing potential. Poles in the countryside smuggled the gunpowder needed by the rebels into the camp.
The Czech Resistance against the Nazi occupiers is one of the main focal points of Hangmen Also Die!, being responsible for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in this version of history.note The assassination of Heydrich was carried out on May 27, 1942 (though he didn't die of his injuries until June 4), and the film was released on March 27, 1943 — less than a year later. Because the film was made so shortly after the real events, and WWII was still ongoing, the details were not known to the filmmakers. Hence, the film is Very Loosely Based on a True Story.
Head in the Clouds: Guy's mission during World War II is to coordinate various French Resistance attacks in support of D-Day for the British SIS.
Hero (2002): Only a small group of five elite assassins is actually seen, but apparently assassins from the other conquered Kingdoms try to kill the emperor every other week.
Heroes of the Underground, set during the Sino-Japanese war, has a group of local resistance fighters led by their local folk hero, Dong Yi-shan.
The House of Flying Daggers: The title of the film is actually the name of a resistance group.
Independence Day: Resurgence: The Sphere, a benevolent alien supercomputer discovered by the protagonists, has gathered survivors of the Harvester aliens' previous attacks on a secret planet to train them for warfare. At the end of the movie, it asks humanity to join and lead the war against the Harvesters.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. King Vortigern's rule is already opposed even before Arthur is forced to join their cause. They are specifically referred to as the "resistance", as opposed to outlaws or rebels; hardly the only anachronism in the movie.
Both of Jojo from Jojo Rabbit’s parents are active members of the German Resistance against the Nazis. His father defected to fight for the Allies and his mother harbors a Jewish girl in their house and distributes anti-party leaflets around the town. However, she gets busted and is publicly hanged as a traitor.
Kanał: About the Polish Home Army and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, in which the Home Army fought for control of the city against the occupying Germans.
In Lacombe, Lucien, a teenaged boy tries to join the Resistance. The leader rejects him, so he joins the Milice (the French Gestapo) instead.
Land of the Blind: The film has the resistance be popular at the beginning, then after taking power become at least as bad or worse than the dictator they overthrew.
The Matrix: Has a population of humans attempting to strengthen numbers by freeing people imprisoned in a virtual simulation created by advanced artificial intelligence using them as a fuel source.
Monty Python's Life of Brian: Hilariously parodied, where there's more than one resistance, they don't do anything other than discuss things around a table, and the only time they actually do something they screw it up by arguing with each other. "THE JUDEAN PEOPLE'S FRONT? Splitters!" Even better if you take it as a comment on the state of left-wing and Palestinian movements in that time (though the Jewish rebels then also had this).
Night Train to Lisbon: This movie, set partly during the dictatorship of Salazar in Portugal, features one of the most relevant groups throughout the film.
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) is about a left-wing Japanese student who joins the underground anti-war left, as fascism rises in Japan. He's eventually arrested by State Sec.
Oblivion (2013): A big group of humans led byMalcolm Beech who live underground the wasteland Earth. They may or may not be all that's left of the human race.
Pan's Labyrinth: Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the film features rebels fighting Franco's fascist regime; this example overlaps somewhat with The Remnant, since by the time the movie takes place (1944) the Republicans had already lost the war, and there were only a few isolated pockets of resistance remaining. Several of the rebels are keenly aware that their cause is likely lost, and that they can only be Doomed Moral Victors, but nevertheless continue their struggle.
"Pimpernel" Smith: This film, which is The Scarlet Pimpernel in World War II, with a stuffy English professor running a resistance network rescuing Jewish and other persecuted prisoners and funneling them to Britain.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: Has the pirates of the world resisting termination at hands of the East India Trading Company. Ironically, when your cast is made of an Anti-Hero couple, a Gentleman Thief and an Affably Evil pirate, the only way to cheer for their resisting the law is by making the Government absurdly evil and corrupt.
Red Dawn (1984): The school kids who head off into the mountains to fight the Evil Empire in the movie are a perfect example of this trope. Readers here may be more familiar with it being referred to as a documentary on one of the radio stations in GTA Vice City. ''Wolverines!'
Red Dawn (2012): The same goes for this remake except instead of the Soviet Union, it's now North Korea overrunning the United States.
By the end of Shredder Orpheus, Axel, Scratch, and Razoreus are inspired to strike against Hades' network, both physically by blowing up an EBN satellite dish, and mentally by leading other skaters in remembering Orpheus and his quest to save Eurydice.
Soldier of Orange: It's pretty much a heroic tale of the Dutch resistance fighting against the German occupiers.
The trope namer is examined in The Sorrow and the Pity, a documentary about France during the years of Nazi occupation. While several Resistance members are interviewed and tell their stories, the film makes clear that the Resistance wasn't universally supported, not by a long shot. A theater owner calls them "terrorists", and a French aristocrat talks about how the Resistance tried to recruit him, but instead he decided to fight for the Germans and joined the Waffen SS.
The Force Awakens, set three decades after the original trilogy, introduces a group called "The Resistance", a scrappy insurgency who fight the First Order. The Resistance has the unofficial support of the New Republic (the government born out of the Rebel Alliance), who won't commit to open war with the First Order. The Resistance is technically an aversion — it exists not as a resistance movement as such, but as a private military operated by Leia Organa.
In The Last Jedi, Poe Dameron introduces himself to the First Order as a Commander "of the Republic fleet", since with the destruction of the New Republic capital and its fleet, the Resistance is the de-facto remnant of the New Republic, but the First Order simply view them as rebels by this point.
The Resistance Banker shows both a more traditional version of this trope, but focuses on the Dutch financial elite financing their activities. Instead of attacking Nazis or sabotaging railroads, a lot of what they do is talking to other rich people in restaurants, salons or swimming pool.
Valkyrie: Unusually for this trope, this movie focuses on the German resistance during World War II rather than that of the occupied countries.
Li Jundong from When Taekwondo Strikes leads a Korean resistance movement against the Japanese colonizers. His followers live in a group of huts in the countryside, where he trains them in Taekwondo and sends them on important missions.
The X-Men of the Bad Future in X-Men: Days of Future Past, though by the time the movie starts they seem to be able to accomplish little but stay one step ahead of the enemy.
Zwartboek (Black Book): Deals with the Dutch resistance in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.
