50 Years of Cyprus: War and Peace (1999)

The Travelling Players

This expansive Greek drama follows a troupe of theater actors as they perform around their country during World War II. While the production that they put on is entitled "Golfo the Shepherdess," the thespians end up echoing scenes from classic Greek tales in their own lives, as Elektra plots revenge on her mother for the death of her father, and seeks help from her brother, Orestes, a young anti-fascist rebel.

Kampf auf der Bosporus-Brücke - Die Türkei und der gescheiterte Putschversuch

The night of July 15, 2016 changed the history of Turkey. On that day there were coordinated attacks by parts of the Turkish army, among others in Istanbul. The aim of the military: a coup against the government. The decisive confrontation occurred on the Bosporus Bridge. While President Erdogan was still on vacation, live at TV he called on the people who were devoted to him to stand against the military. As an enemy for the masses, he presented his adversary Fethullah Gülen, whom he branded as the coup leader. He also urged the imams of the country's mosques to condition the population to resist. And so it happens that at night thousands of agitated people take to the streets to oppose the armed insurgents. The death toll was high. 352 people died across Turkey during the attempted coup. The consequences are even more serious: Erdogan used this gift, as he called it himself, to undermine democracy, to arrange mass arrests of dissidents and to transform Turkey into a dictatorship.

Cleopatra

Determined to hold on to the throne, Cleopatra seduces the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. When Caesar is murdered, she redirects her attentions to his general, Marc Antony, who vows to take power—but Caesar’s successor has other plans.

120

During the Sarikamis Battle, the Ottoman army runs out of ammunition and appeals to the people of Van for help, who happen to have supplies. However, the First World War is on and all men are fighting at four corners of the empire and therefore can not respond to to the appeal. The young children of Van want to do something...

Years with Özal: January 24

While we were wandering through the pages of our democracy history, we saw right-left fights and experienced revolutions. Blood was shed, scaffolds were set up, but they could never change the country's path. When we came to the 1980s, a person came out and shook the system to its roots and changed the world of people. According to some, this was a great revolution, according to others, it was the wear and tear of some values. Regardless, this person left his mark on a period of Turkey.

The 300 Spartans

Essentially true story of how Spartan king Leonidas led an extremely small army of Greek Soldiers (300 of his personal body guards from Sparta) to hold off an invading Persian army now thought to have numbered 250,000.

Ararat

Interrogated by a customs officer, a young man recounts how his life was changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.

Blue

A thorough look at the 90's Turkish rock scene, one legendary stage band and its two members: Kerim Capli and Yavuz Cetin... An inquiry of their existential battles with the society, the industry and their own minds.

Gallipoli

As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.

The Breath

A small task force of the Turkish army have to defend a relay station in the middle of nowhere against a possible terrorist raid.

Escape to Athena

During the World War II, the prisoners of a German camp in a Greek island are trying to escape. They not only want their freedom, but also seek an ineffable treasure hidden in a monastery at the summit of the island's mountain.

Last Stand of the 300

This is the true and astounding saga of the Spartans at Thermopylae. It is among the greatest tales of war ever recounted. All the glory and grit of these warriors' last stand is captured in this exceptional documentary. It is almost impossible to understand how 300 Spartans managed to hold off the million-man Persian army for even a moment, much less seven days. To a man they paid with their lives but their stunning Last Stand assured that their sacrifice would resonate throughout history. Transporting dramatizations and incisive graphics put you in the heat of the battle and show the lay of the land. The complications and strategies of the conflict are revealed through careful analysis, and critical moments are reconstructed to show exactly what happened. Discover what the Spartans were fighting for, what made them capable of such heroics and what drove them to such sacrifice.

From Atatürk to Erdoğan: Building a Nation

Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.

Architects of Denial

Though both the historical and modern-day persecution of Armenians and other Christians is relatively uncovered in the mainstream media and not on the radar of many average Americans, it is a subject that has gotten far more attention in recent years.

Background to Danger

An American gets caught up in wartime action in Turkey.

Karaoğlan: The Man whose Name Was Written on the Mountains

A political amateur who was kneaded with art in the first half of the 1950s and was enthused with the idealism of politics in the second half, was now a person who was dealing with politics and state affairs 24 hours a day, gradually getting hotter and broadening his goals and horizons. In this section, you will follow the milestones of the poet's hopeful arrival in the 1970s, not a dream that the poet remembers with longing, but is no longer left behind. Contrary to the poem, you will recognize the struggle of a stubborn, belligerent missionary who is incompatible with the world. You will witness how it changed in that struggle and how this change affected a country...

Keşif

Esma, Berk and Hasan are three people who try to escape the troubles of life with the help of a video game called Discovery. These three young people is sucked into the game in a mystical way. They find themselves in the battle of Gallipoli.

The Lark Farm

The Lark Farm is set in a small Turkish town in 1915. It deals with the genocide of Armenians, looking closely at the fortunes, or rather, misfortunes of one wealthy Armenian family.

Alexander

Alexander, the King of Macedonia, leads his legions against the giant Persian Empire. After defeating the Persians, he leads his army across the then known world, venturing farther than any westerner had ever gone, all the way to India.

50 Years of Cyprus

We have a topic that has always been on the agenda of Turkey and the world, which we have been discussing for nearly 40 years: Cyprus. To foreigners, Cyprus is known as an innocent little island under Turkish invasion. Everyone forgot the bloody events of the past. What about us? Do we know? No. Especially the younger generations, who have come to the point of governing the country today, do not know where this country has gone through regarding Cyprus. However, we are now approaching a road junction in Cyprus. I will tell you the story of Cyprus in this documentary. This is a very bloody and sometimes very sad story...

Arada

The story of three Turkish men. They all grew up in Switzerland and all got deported after various criminal offenses.

Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema

Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the biggest producers of film in the world. In order to keep up with the demand, screenwriters and directors were copying scripts and remaking movies from all over the world. This documentary visits the fastest working directors, the most practical cameramen and the most hardheaded actors to have a closer look into the country's tumultuous history of movie making.

İHA'nın Arşivinden 17 Ağustos 1999 Depremi

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The Battle of Canakkale

Pilot Captain Salih Ekrem is a young air officer and one of the first Ottoman pilots.

The Armenian Genocide

Explores the Ottoman Empire killings of more than one million Armenians during World War I. The film describes not only what happened before, during and since World War I, but also takes a direct look at the genocide denial maintained by Turkey to the present day.

Lesvia

Since the 1970s, lesbians from around the world have been drawn to the island of Lesvos, the birthplace of the ancient Greek poet Sappho. When they find paradise in a local village and carve out their own queer lesbian community, tensions simmer with the local residents. With both groups claiming ownership of lesbian identity, filmmaker Tzeli Hadjidimitriou—a native and lesbian herself—is caught in the middle and chronicles 40+ years of love, community, conflict, and what it means to feel accepted.

Athens 2004: Olympic Opening Ceremony (Games of the XXVIII Olympiad)

With the Olympics returning to Greece, the opening ceremony of Athens 2004 sought to show the entire development of the Olympics over the centuries, until arriving at the modern Olympics.

Naked Cinema

In the early 70s Greek cinema entered in a period of crisis. One of its aspects was said "crisis of issues" and one of the exits heard in the name "erotic cinema". The genre was already acquaintance from the abundance of foreigner films, that was distributed in the grindhouses under the "adults only" motto and its Greek version had a lot of variants.

Signs of Life

During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.

The Armenian Genocide

More than one million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1916 in massacres or brutal deportation programs. Turkey still denies it ever happened. Laurence Jourdan examines massacres of Armenians in the decades leading up to the mass murder, and the geopolitical situation both before and after the genocide. Contemporaneous reports and documents written by Western diplomats stationed in the Ottoman Empire describe the methods used and the deportation routes. These accounts are mixed with personal stories from the living survivors and archive footage from Ottoman authorities.

Greece: Secrets of the Past

GREECE: SECRETS OF THE PAST, directed by two-time Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Greg MacGillivray, is the stirring story of how a Greek archeologist of the 21st century is uncovering the secret history of his ancient ancestors who forged a society that continues to astound the world today with its ideas, inventions and achievements. Set against the breathtaking, azure vistas of the Greek Isles, the film merges a contemporary archeological “detective story” with some of the most advanced and painstaking digital re-creations ever undertaken for an IMAX® theatre film, with scenes that restore such centuries-old spectacles as the original Parthenon and the volcanic eruption that buried Santorini in 1646 BC.

The Last Apostle: Journies in the Holy Land

Dr. Mark Fairchild, world-renowned archaeologist, traces the hidden years of Saint Paul's life in the mountainous Turkish countryside of Rough Cilicia.

Golden Dawn Girls

The key male members of the far-right political party Golden Dawn are imprisoned accused of carrying out organized criminal activity. To maintain Golden Dawn's position as the fifth largest political party in Greece, their daughters, wives and mothers step up to the task of leading the party through the upcoming elections.

Eleni

Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.

Köy

KÖY (Turkish for village) is about the longing for home, for belonging and the freedom of the self. Three women from three generations are united by their Kurdish roots.

Trojan Horse: The New Evidence

For centuries Troy was believed to be a mythical city. Now, a leading team of American archaeologists have discovered an ancient thriving city, and evidence of a real Trojan War.

Léthé

On the island of Amorgos, during summer. Small monuments were erected at the scene of a fatal accident: a photograph, a few words, flowers, religious or pagan objects. The deceased "stayed there": dead in transit, on a road, frozen forever.

Girls' War

As the forces of ISIS and Assad tear through villages and society in Syria and Northern Iraq, a group of brave and idealistic women are taking up arms against them—and winning inspiring victories. Members of “The Free Women’s Party” come from Paris, Turkish Kurdistan, and other parts of the world. Their dream: To create a Democratic Syria, and a society based on gender equality. Guns in hand, these women are carrying on a movement with roots that run 40 years deep in the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. GIRL’S WAR honors the legacy of Sakine Cansiz, co-founder of the PKK who was assassinated in Paris in 2013, and reflects on the sacrifices made by all of the women in the movement, who have endured jail, rape, war, and persecution in their quest to liberate their lives and sisters from male dominance. With scenes of solidarity, strength, and love amongst these brave women soldiers, GIRL'S WAR is a surprising story of Middle Eastern feminism on the front lines.

Cefalonia

Cefalonia tells the real story about what happened in September 1943 on the Greek island of Kefalonia (Cefalonia in Italian), when the 12,000 men in the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division, following Italy's surrender to the Allied, refused to put themselves under German command and also refused to surrender their weapons. The local German force, supported by Stuka dive-bombers and additional troops, attacked the Italians and after several days of combat the Italians surrendered, having lost 1,300 men. As punishment, the German High Command ordered that all surviving Italians should be executed. Some 5,000 were executed during a week of killings. A handful were rescued by locals and the Greek guerrilla, while the rest were shipped off as prisoners, whereof 3,000 drowned when their ships hit mines. The film "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is based on a novel about the Italian occupation of Cefalonia, but the massacre was much toned down in the Hollywood version.

Khadjibey Fortress

Son Kale Hacibey is a historical action film that tells the story of a battle between the Turkish Ottoman Empire and the Ukrainian Hetmanate Empire on the one hand, and the Russian Empire on the other hand. The forces are fighting to gain control of the Hacibey Castle, an impenetrable fortress located on the Black Sea coast in the heart of Ukrainian Hetmanate Empire. And just when the Russians thought they were winning the battle against Ukrainians and Turks, a mysterious hero - a brave Ukrainian cossack warrior Andriy - arrives in Istambul to deliver a secret message from from Ukrainian Hetmanate Empire's leadership. A message that can forever change the course of this battle.

Days of '36

The assassin of a prominent trade unionist takes a conservative MP hostage, throwing the government into a state of disarray.

North

Bakur (North) is a documentary that invites its audience to reflect on a war that has been continuing for decades and gives an insightful look on its main subject, the PKK. The film follows the lives of the guerilla in three different camps on the Kurdish region (north) that lies within Turkish borders.

Atatürk: Father of Modern Turkey

Docudrama examining the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Republic of Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Monuments to him can be found in every city; the anniversary of his death is commemorated every year; derogatory words about him are punishable by law. Rarely has a politician changed a society so radically in such a short time as Atatürk did Turkey.

What Did You Do in the War, Thanassi?

A wild tale of mistaken identity set during the Nazi occupation of Greece and starring the great Thanasis Vengos. Thanasis is called upon, during the Occupation, to testify at the trial of a tavern owner accused of serving cat meat to his customers. He too is accused of perjury and imprisoned with some resistance fighters. The resistance fighters escape, but Thanasis remains in his cell. He is accused of being Ivan, the notorious ringleader of certain revolutionaries.

Man of God

Exiled unjustly, convicted without trial, slandered without cause. Man of God depicts the trials and tribulations of Saint Nektarios of Aegina, as he bears the unjust hatred of his enemies while preaching the Word of God.

Boy on the Bridge

In a seemingly idyllic Cypriot village, twelve-year-old Socrates finds himself in the centre of a murder investigation that exposes a dark family secret and changes his life forever.

Barking Island

Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1910. There are too many stray dogs on the streets, so the government decides to deport thousands of them on a desert island, off the coast of the city.

Last Words

Early short by Werner Herzog shot while being on location in Greece shooting "Lebenszeichen".