The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British and American film directed by David Lean, set among British prisoners of war forced by their Japanese captors to build a railway bridge over the river Kwai in Thailand during the Second World War. The story centers on the senior British officer, Colonel Nicholson, whose insistence on doing the work properly as a matter of military discipline and pride gradually shades into an uncomfortable collaboration with his captors' war effort, alongside a parallel escape and demolition mission mounted by Allied commandos. It won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and was the highest grossing film of 1957, though historians note it takes considerable dramatic license with the actual history of the Burma railway and its prisoners.