Apocalypse: World War I (Season 1)

Apocalypse: World War I (2014) is a documentary series directed by Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle — watch it online on iFILM. The filmmakers assembled more than 500 hours of archival footage, much of it previously unseen, then had it colorized and given ambient sound. The result pulls the war out of black-and-white history and into something that registers as immediate.

The series doesn't stay in the trenches of France. Clarke and Costelle trace the Italian-Austrian front, the fighting in Russia, Serbia, and the Ottoman campaigns in Palestine, plus the often-forgotten battles in Germany's African colonies — the parts of the war that don't make it into most textbooks. Narrated by Matthieu Kassovitz, the production was a joint effort between France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For anyone who wants to understand what those four years actually looked like from the ground, this is the clearest visual record available. Stream Apocalypse: World War I online on iFILM.