Gallipoli (1981 film) Gallipoli (1981 film) Gallipoli is a 1981 Australian war drama film directed by Peter Weir and produced by Patricia Lovell and Robert Stigwood, starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee, about several rural Western Australian young men who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War. They are sent to the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire (in modern-day Turkey), where they take part in the Gallipoli Campaign. During the course of the movie, the young men slowly lose their innocence about the purpose of war. The climax of the movie occurs on the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli
Gallipoli Campaign Armistice of Mudros ended hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre on 31 October. The Allies subsequently occupied Gallipoli and Istanbul and partitioned the Ottoman Empire. The occupation ended in 1923. The significance of the Gallipoli Campaign is felt strongly in both Australia and New Zealand, despite their being only a portion of the Allied forces; the campaign is regarded in both nations as a "baptism of fire" and had been linked to their emergence as independent states. Approximately 50,000 Australians served at Gallipoli and from 14,000 to 17,000 New Zealanders. It has been argued that the campaign proved significant in