During four decades of Communist Party rule, the film industries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia were under state control. One positive result of this was ample funding for serious films about social and political topics. In certain thematic areas, particularly those dealing with racial and ethnic intolerance and with the plight of women in patriarchal societies, filmmakers in East Central Europe were often able to be more incisive, frank and provocative than is often the case in profit-driven Hollywood film. Talented and committed filmmakers crafted powerful films which the regimes had no ideological grounds to suppress; this tradition of critical filmmaking has continued into the post-Communist period. The films we study concern the Holocaust, women's lives under state socialism, and the ethno-nationalism that led to the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. We view and discuss fourteen films from East Central Europe dealing with the above issues, considering the artistic structure of the films as well.