U-571 is a 2000 film directed by Jonathan Mostow, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Thomas Kretschmann, Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Noseworthy, Will Estes, and Tom Guiry. In the film, a World War II German submarine is boarded in 1942 by disguised United States Navy submariners, seeking to capture her Enigma cipher machine.

The film was financially successful and generally well received by critics in the USA and won an Academy Award.

The real U-571 was never involved in any such events, was not captured, and was in fact sunk in January 1944, off Ireland, by a Short Sunderland flying boat from No. 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. The real U-570 was captured almost intact by the Royal Navy in 1941, although not before her crew had destroyed almost all the secret materials on board.

U-571 was filmed in the Mediterranean Sea, near Rome and Malta.

The film begins with a summary on how the Allies are struggling to stop U-boats from sinking their freighters. The scene transfers to U-571, which torpedoes and sinks a freighter. The crew is happy with the kill but seconds later the sonar man reports to have detected high speed screws. The Captain sights a destroyer forcing U-571 to dive. The destroyer drops depth charges snapping a fuel line, which catches fire and kills the entire engineering crew. Because of sustained damage, U-571 is forced to resurface. The Captain learns that the batteries are almost flat, both diesel engines are inoperable, and the engineering crew is dead. An Enigma-encoded SOS is sent to Berlin for aid.