The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spawned a new generation of war movies, with the genre being embraced by Hollywood even as the fighting unfolds.

Some 20 films about the post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been shot, or are in production or about to start filming.

The explosion of war films has been likened to the proliferation of movies during the Second World War and Vietnam. But for Hollywood, this new flurry of war films is still a gamble.

The films made during the Second World War were intended as propaganda and the movies that helped to frame Vietnam in the popular imagination, such as Apocalypse Now, The Deerhunter and Platoon, were made after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Those that sought to satirise the war effort made their points allusively, such as the revisionist Western Soldier Blue and M*A*S*H, which was set during the Korean War.

In 2007, the conflicts depicted are very much ongoing. Prominent among the films adressing them is Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs, starring Redford, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. Interweaving the stories of two American students who end up in Afghanistan, and an idealistic professor, a senator and a journalist, it has been savaged by American conservatives who have yet to see it.

With the US body count continuing to mount, such controversy is inevitable. Other high-profile projects include Rendition, with Reese Wither-spoon, and Charlie Wilson’s War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, already tipped as an Oscar contender. Imperial Life in the Emerald City, directed by Paul Greengrass, who made The Bourne Ultimatum, also forms part of the list. Greengrass has already made a film about 9/11 - United 93 - which was adored by critics but struggled to attract audiences.

Almost 18 years ago, Brian De Palma made Casualties of War,one of the most harrowing films about atrocities in Vietnam. Now he has trained his camera on Iraq, where he believes history is repeating itself. At the Venice Film Festival, where his new film, Redacted, is receiving its premiere, he said: “Once again a senseless war has produced a senseless tragedy. I told this story years ago but the lessons from Vietnam have gone unheeded.”

De Palma, 62, is concerned that modern audiences have become disengaged from the conflicts. “All the images we have of our war are completely constructed - whitewashed, redacted,” he said. “Unlike Vietnam, when we saw the destruction and sorrow of the people we were maiming and killing, and soldiers coming home in body bags, we see none of that in this war. It’s all out there on the internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it’s not in the mainstream media.”

He added: “I remember picking up Life magazine and seeing pictures that would horrify me about the Vietnam War. We don’t have those pictures in America now. The pictures are what will stop the war.” He hopes the film will make audiences “incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war”.

Like Casualties of War, Redacted is based on a true story of US forces raping and murdering a local woman in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, last year. They reportedly raped a 14-year-old girl, killed her family, shot her in the face and set her body on fire.

“How could these boys have gone so wrong?” De Palma asked. “If we are going to cause such disorder, then we must face the horrendous images that are the consequences of these events.” He said he based Redactedon the internet testimonials, blogs, YouTube clips and video journals of serving soldiers.

Line of fire

Lions for Lambs Directed by and starring Robert Redford as an antiwar professor whose students end up fighting in Afghanistan. Also stars Tom Cruise as a pro-Iraq war senator

Grace Is Gone With John Cusack as a father who must tell his children that their mother died in the line of duty in Iraq

Charlie Wilson’s War Mike Nichols’s adaptation of George Crile’s book about a congressman’s covert dealings with rebels in Afghanistan. Stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts

The Fall of the Warrior King A Tom Cruise film about an officer who resigned after a scandal in which men under his command drowned an Iraqi civilian

Imperial Life in the Emerald City About life in the Green Zone in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion,

Stop Loss Ryan Phillippe is a soldier who refuses to return to Iraq

The Return Neil Burger’s film about three US servicemen who return from Iraq to find a country divided over the war

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