Many Wars Ago

Uomini contro internationally released as Many Wars Ago is a 1970 ItaloYugoslav anti war drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It is based on the memoir by Emilio Lussu Un anno sullaltopiano The Italian title is most likely ambiguous and difficult to translate Men against is a word by word translation. However Un anno sullaltopiano means A year on the plateau. The film was screened at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in honor of Francesco Rosi, deceased a few weeks before.

Time after time the soldiers are forced to leave their trenches in attempts to storm the enemy positions, always with the same horrific result. The AustroHungarian machine guns inevitably mow them down. In one attack a major is killed, and subsequently every sixth man of his platoon is chosen to be executed by a firing squad of his comrades, in some bizarre kind of compensation for the killed officer. And it gets only worse...

Source: Wikipedia