Death Before Birth in Anti-War Cinema and in the Reality of Wars
In every war, the number of victims is not limited to those who are killed on the battlefield or those who die beneath the rubble of destroyed cities. War has other victims as well—victims who rarely appear in any official statistics: children who never have the chance to be born. They have no names in cemeteries, no place in military reports, and no role in the heroic narratives of war. Yet the truth is that every war, before it takes the lives of the living, destroys a future that has not yet taken shape.
Cinema—especially anti-war cinema—has repeatedly attempted to portray this silent tragedy. Many of the most important films about war are not merely about death, but about the destruction of the future. That future lives in the faces of children and in the possibility of generations yet to come. In such narratives, war becomes not only the killer of human beings but also the destroyer of time, hope, and the very possibility of life.
When people speak about war, the image that usually comes to mind is that of soldiers on the battlefield. Yet filmmakers who have looked deeply at the true nature of war understand that its tragedy extends far beyond combat zones. In many cinematic works, children who are killed—or children who are never born—become symbols of a future that war has erased.
In the famous film All Quiet on the Western Front—one of the earliest and most important anti-war works in cinema—we encounter young men who are sent to the battlefield before they ever have the opportunity to build their lives. These young soldiers might have become fathers, formed families, and brought new generations into the world. Their deaths are not merely the loss of individual lives; they are the loss of generations that will never be born.
This idea appears again and again in many of the greatest anti-war films. In the devastating film Come and See (1985), directed by Elem Klimov, which presents one of the most horrifying depictions of World War II, the destruction of entire villages in Belarus signifies the destruction of the future of those communities. When a village and all of its inhabitants are massacred, the victims are not only those who die at that moment—entire generations that might have been born there disappear forever.
In the heartbreaking Japanese animated film Grave of the Fireflies (1988), directed by Isao Takahata, the story of two children struggling to survive in Japan during the final months of World War II becomes a portrait of the death of a generation. The film shows how war can rob children not only of their lives but also of their future.
Yet cinema does not focus only on children who have already been born. In many films, the image of a pregnant woman in the midst of war becomes a powerful symbol of fragile hope. War creates conditions in which constant fear, lack of food, the collapse of medical care, and overwhelming psychological pressure can endanger pregnancy itself.
War does not kill only with bullets and bombs. War kills with anxiety, sleeplessness, hunger, and constant insecurity. A woman living in a bombed city is not threatened only by explosions or flying shrapnel; her body itself becomes vulnerable to the psychological weight of war.
Under such conditions, the victims of war are not limited to those killed in combat. Sometimes the true victims are children who never even have the chance to take their first breath.
Cinema has depicted this tragic reality in many different ways. In The Pianist (2002), directed by Roman Polanski, the destruction of Jewish neighborhoods in Warsaw during the Holocaust is not only the murder of those who lived there. When families are destroyed, their futures vanish as well. Every family that perished could have brought new generations into the world—generations that will now never exist.
In Life Is Beautiful (1997), directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, the story of a father trying to shield his son from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp becomes a story about preserving hope amid devastation. Yet behind that narrative lie thousands of other children who were never given such a chance.
In Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro, set in Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a child becomes the embodiment of innocence and imagination confronting the brutality of authoritarian power. In this film as well, war is not simply military conflict—it is an environment in which the future of children is constantly threatened.
But in the real world, wars produce exactly the same consequences. In cities under bombardment, life for pregnant women becomes a constant nightmare. The sounds of sirens, explosions, and missile strikes threaten not only buildings and infrastructure—they place enormous stress on the human body itself.
Life in war zones is often marked by malnutrition, shortages of medicine, the destruction of hospitals, and severe psychological strain. All of these conditions can increase the risk of premature birth or low birth weight. For this reason, doctors working in war-torn regions have often reported increases in miscarriages and high-risk pregnancies during periods of intense conflict.
This reality has appeared in nearly every war: war not only kills people—it disrupts the birth of future generations. In recent years, military confrontations and escalating tensions in the Middle East have raised similar concerns. When cities live under the constant threat of bombardment, pregnant women become among the most vulnerable members of society.
During the attacks and confrontations that took place between the United States and Israel and Iran, reports emerged describing how residents in some cities spent their nights listening to explosions and air-raid sirens. Under such conditions, pregnant women face immense physical and psychological vulnerability.
Imagine a mother in the early months of pregnancy waking in terror each night to the sound of explosions. Imagine another woman in the middle of her pregnancy forced to spend nights in shelters or damaged homes. The combination of severe stress, lack of consistent medical care, and constant anxiety can threaten both her health and that of her unborn child.
Many physicians have noted that the psychological pressure created by bombing, missile attacks, and life under the threat of war can increase the likelihood of miscarriage. In this sense, war does not kill only through bombs—it also kills through the fear that settles deep within the human body.
Under such conditions, war silently destroys the next generation. If one day filmmakers create works about the wars of our own time, some of the most painful scenes may not take place on the battlefield but inside empty hospital rooms—rooms where children who might have been born never came into the world.
In such a film we might see a mother struggling to protect her unborn child amid the wail of sirens and distant explosions. We might see a doctor working in a half-destroyed hospital trying desperately to save pregnant women. And we might witness the silence that settles over a city after each attack—a silence that contains not only the memory of lives lost but also the absence of lives that were never allowed to begin.
War does not only kill the living. War kills the future. When a child dies, one life is lost. But when a child is never born, an entire future disappears. This is the tragedy that anti-war cinema has repeatedly tried to remind us of. Great filmmakers understand that to portray the true horror of war, it is not always necessary to show the battlefield. Sometimes it is enough to show the silence that remains after a city has been destroyed.
In that silence, one can almost hear the voices of children who were never born. Perhaps the greatest responsibility of cinema in the face of war is precisely this: to ensure that those children are not forgotten. Because in the end, every war destroys not only the past but also steals the future. And among all the victims of war, perhaps the most heartbreaking are those children who never even had the chance to live.
