As the horrors of life in the time of senseless war unfold before our eyes in the ongoing TV and social media coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, two films new to home video deal with those issues in a muted way.

Belfast, nominated for seven Oscars, and Flee, nominated for three, deal with senseless war in an abstract way. Both are seen through the eyes of children. In the first, they’re the thinly disguised biographical memories of the film’s writer-director. His family escapes the war presumably without repercussions. In the second, they’re the memories of the film’s central figure whose horrific early life has left scars so deep he has secrets he keeps to himself into middle-age, even from the man he is about to marry.

Kenneth Branagh was born in 1960. He first appeared on screen in an uncredited role as a student in the 1981 Oscar winner Chariots of Fire. His first film as a director, 1989’s Henry V, received three Oscar nominations, two of them for Branagh for Best Actor and Best Director. They were the first two of his eight nominations to date.

Belfast takes place in 1969 during the Irish “Troubles” of the day. Branagh’s fictional version of himself is an eight-year-old Protestant boy nicknamed Buddy. He lives with his Ma, Pa, and older brother, in a mixed neighborhood where the Catholics and Protestants have always gotten along. He even has a crush on the Catholic girl down the block. His extended family includes his father’s parents, Granny and Pop, who are liberal minded salts of the earth.

To Buddy and his family, the neighborhood unrest is something they want to avoid as long as they can, finding refuge in things they like to do, such as going to the movies.

Buddy is played by newcomer Jude Hill who brings back memories of child actors of long-ago such as Roddy McDowall in How Green Was My Valley, Dean Stockwell in The Green Years, and Claude Jarman Jr. in The Yearling. Ma is played by Caitriona Balfe (TV’s Outlander) and Pa by Jamie Dornan (Fifty Shades of Grey). At times they evoke memories of Donald Crisp and Sara Allgood as McDowall’s parents in How Green Was My Valley. At other times, they invoke memories of Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman as Jarman’s parents in The Yearling.

Granny is played by Oscar nominee Judi Dench (Philomena) and Pop by fellow Oscar nominee Ciaran Hinds (TV’s Game of Thrones). They show flashes of Charles Coburn and Gladys Cooper as Stockwell’s great-grandparents, Coburn as his maternal grandmother’s father and Cooper as his maternal grandfather’s mother in The Green Years.

Colin Morgan (The Happy Prince) is the neighborhood antagonist who tries to bully Pa into joining his crusade against the local Catholics.

The film ends on a freeze-frame of 87-year-old Judi Dench’s face. Included as an extra on the Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film are a scene in which Branagh as the present-day Buddy returns to his now-deserted old neighborhood.

If Belfast has a precedent in film history it would be John Boorman’s Hope and Glory about a young boy living through World War II that earned five 1987 Oscar nominations, losing Best Picture to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor about a boy who becomes a man in a repressed modern Chinese society.

Films about the Irish “Troubles” have been plenty. They include Alfred Hitchcock’s Juno and the Paycock (1930), John Ford’s The Informer (1935), Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1987), Michael Anderson’s Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970), Pat O’Connor’s Cal (1984), Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992), Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father (1993), and John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998). All are worth catching up with.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee makes history by becoming the first film nominated for best picture in three Oscar categories: Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature, and Best International Feature.

The Danish film centers on the real-life experiences of Rasmussen’s friend of 25 years, an Afghan refugee who was the son of an Afghan scholar arrested by the Taliban after the Russians left the country in 1989. A young boy at the time, he lived with his parents, two older sisters, and an older brother. One day, the Taliban comes and takes away his father. The family is able to visit the father for three months, after which he vanishes. It turns out that Amin (not his real name) has an older brother who had escaped to Sweden to avoid the draft several years earlier. The brother, working as a cleaner at minimum wages, uses his savings to have the remaining family relocated to Russia in the nick of time as their entire neighborhood is destroyed by the Taliban.

Life in Russia is hard. Once their temporary visas run out, the family has to stay hidden from the Russian police until Amin’s older brother can get them safely out of Russia and into Sweden. The girls are the first to escape but the trip is so harrowing that they are traumatized upon their arrival, barely able to speak. Amin, his mother, and brother, make a false start in leaving. Set adrift, they are captured by the Estonian police and held captive for six months before being returned to Russia where further turmoil awaits. Eventually the older brother has saved enough money for one of them to leave. It is decided that the now teenage Amin should be the one.

Through a series of missteps Amin ends up in Denmark instead of Sweden where he continues his interrupted education. He is befriended by classmate Rasmussen, now a filmmaker who wants to tell Amin’s story to the world. The problem is that Amin is very tightlipped about his past, telling everyone, including Rasmussen, that he is the only surviving member of his family. Is that true? If not, why would he tell such a lie? You’ll have to see the movie to find out.

The film ends with Amin living happily ever after on a farm with his Danish husband. A question-and-answer session with Rasmussen at the film’s New York Film Festival premiere is included as an extra in the film’s Blu-ray and DVD release. He reports that the only negative comment to the film came from Amin’s husband who wanted to know why he wasn’t given a bigger part in the story. Rasmussen’s answer was because the film wasn’t about him.

This week’s new releases, as mentioned above, include Oscar nominees The Matrix Resurrections and Coming 2 America.