Which 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean is set in a Japanese POW camp in Burma?

The 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and centered on Allied prisoners building a bridge is The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The film adapts Pierre Boulle’s 1952 novel and uses the Japanese construction of the Burma Railway during World War II as its historical backdrop. Alec Guinness plays Colonel Nicholson, while William Holden portrays Commander Shears and Sessue Hayakawa plays Colonel Saito.

A common geography mix-up is that the main POW camp and bridge in the story are in Thailand, not Burma. The railway connected Thailand with Burma, and the real bridge near Kanchanaburi crossed the Mae Klong River, later renamed the Khwae Yai partly because of the film’s fame.

The movie is also much more fictionalized than many viewers realize. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry in 1997.