London Recruits (2024)

The American Dream: Europeans in the New World

The history of Europeans in North America, from the arrival of Columbus in 1492 to the business success of German immigrants such as Heinz, Strauss or Friedrich Trumpf, Donald Trump's grandfather. During the 19th century, thirty million people — Germans, Irish, Scots, Russians, Hungarians, Italians and many others — left the old continent, fleeing poverty, racism or political repression, hoping to make a fortune and realize the American dream.

Gandhi

In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.

Catch a Fire

The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.

Topaz

Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.

The Atlantis Puzzle

Fascinating new translations and fresh research are transforming the myth of Atlantis from the realm of fantasy into an incredible reality. Travel across continents and centuries to unlock the secrets of Plato's final legacy - a true story of Ancient Greece, Africa, and climate change across deep time.

Born on the Fourth of July

Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, Ron Kovic becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for.

Hairspray

Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad auditions to be on Baltimore's most popular dance show - The Corny Collins Show - and lands a prime spot. Through her newfound fame, she becomes determined to help her friends and end the racial segregation that has been a staple of the show.

The Legend of Boggy Creek

A documentary-style drama based on true accounts of the Fouke Monster in Arkansas.

Goodbye Bafana

The true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.

Zodiac

The Zodiac murders cause the lives of Paul Avery, David Toschi and Robert Graysmith to intersect.

Midnight Cowboy

Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.

Aurora's Sunrise

The story of how Aurora Mardiganian (1901-94), a survivor of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire (1915-17), became a Hollywood silent film star.

Brubaker

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

Mr. Holland's Opus

In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.

Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln

An examination of the intimate life of America's most consequential president, Abraham Lincoln. As told by preeminent Lincoln scholars and never before seen photographs and letters, Lincoln's romantic relationships with men is detailed. The lens is widened into the history of human sexual fluidity and focuses on the profound differences between sexual mores of the 19th century and those we hold today.

The Wikipedia Promise

In 2001, Jimmy Wales published the first article on Wikipedia, a collaborative effort that began with a promise: to democratize the spreading of knowledge, monopolized by the elites for centuries. But is Wikipedia really a utopia come true?

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

M. Butterfly

In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.

Auto Focus

A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.

In the Intense Now

A personal essay which analyses and compares images of the political upheavals of the 1960s. From the military coup in Brazil to China's Cultural Revolution, from the student uprisings in Paris to the end of the Prague Spring.

June Zero

Israel, 1961. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, responsible for organizing the extermination of European Jews, is sentenced to death.

Explorer: Lost in the Arctic

Sir John Franklin set off from England in 1845 with two ships and 129 men to be the first to navigate the Northwest Passage, a new trade route over the top of the world, when Franklin’s ships vanished without a trace. Now, a team of explorers attempts to solve the mystery by retracing Franklin’s route in search of his long-lost tomb.

Peacock

A minor train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town's reclusive bank clerk.

Disgrace

Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.

Thirteen Days

The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962—the nuclear standoff with the USSR sparked by the discovery by the Americans of missile bases established on the Soviet-allied island of Cuba.

Swimming Upstream

A young man aspiring for recognition of his talents battles against his estranged father's sentiment towards him as the father deals with his own demons.

Endgame

The time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.

Flirting

Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.

The Great Santini

As he approaches manhood, Ben Meechum struggles to win the approval of his demanding alpha male father, an aggressively competitive, but frustrated marine pilot.

The Rum Diary

Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals.  It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.

Burn, Baby, Burn! - Wie Aerobic die Welt zum Schwitzen brachte

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Titanic's Fatal Fire

The sinking of the Titanic sent shockwaves around the world and started debates that continue to this day. But new, explosive evidence from the most unlikely of sources may finally lay all arguments to rest and reveal, for the first time, the full story of what possibly doomed the "unsinkable" liner. Join us as we unveil recently discovered and never-before-seen photographs of the super ship that exposes shocking clues that investigators and historians once dismissed but can no longer ignore.

Coup 53

Tehran, Iran, August 19, 1953. A group of Iranian conspirators who, with the approval of the deposed tyrant Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, have conspired with agents of the British MI6 and the US CIA, manage to put an end to the democratic government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh, a dramatic event that will begin the tragic era of coups d'état that, orchestrated by the CIA, will take place, over the following decades, in dozens of countries around the world.

The First Emperor of China

This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China’s vast territory and declared himself emperor in 221 B.C. During his reign, he introduced sweeping reforms, built a vast network of roads and connected the Great Wall of China. From the grandiose inner sanctum of Emperor Qin's royal palace, to fierce battles with feudal kings, this film re-creates the glory and the terror of the Qin Dynasty, including footage of Qin's life-sized terra cotta army, constructed 2,200 years ago for his tomb.

Son of the Mullah

In 2019, the multi-awarded filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani (My Stolen Revolution, Prostitution Behind the Veil) filmed the Iranian journalist based in France Roholla Zam, who exposed the Iranian regime money laundering. Months later, Rohollah was lured by moles to Iraq and kidnapped to Iran. After 14 months in prison, he was executed.

Taking Woodstock

The story of Elliot Tiber and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was. When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for his parents' run-down motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor’s farm in White Lake, New York, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life–and American culture–forever.

Infamous

While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.

Jean-Pierre Léaud: The Child of Cinema

A portrait of the legendary actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, icon of the French New Wave and closely linked to the work of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard.

The War Is Over

Diego is one of the chiefs of the Spanish Communist Party. On his way from Madrid to Paris, he is arrested at the border for an ID check but manages to get free. When he arrives in Paris, he starts searching for one of his comrades to prevent him from going to Madrid where he could be arrested.

The Power of One

PK, an English orphan terrorized for his family's political beliefs in Africa, turns to his only friend, a kindly world-wise prisoner, Geel Piet. Geel teaches him how to box with the motto “fight with your fists and lead with your heart”. As he grows to manhood, PK uses these words to take on the system and the injustices he sees around him - and finds that one person really can make a difference.

Generation Sputnik

From 1957 —the year in which the Soviets put the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit— to 1969 —when American astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon—, the beginnings of the space conquest were depicted in popular culture: cinema, television, comics and literature of the time contain numerous references to an imagined future.

The Sound of Identity

In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.

The Wanderers

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

Driving Miss Daisy

The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters, in a time when those types of relationships were shunned.

Monsieur Ibrahim

Paris, 1960s. Momo, a resolute and independent Jewish teenager who lives with his father, a sullen and depressed man, in a working-class neighborhood, develops a close friendship with Monsieur Ibrahim, an elderly Muslim who owns a small grocery store.

Capote

A biopic of writer Truman Capote and his assignment for The New Yorker to write the non-fiction book "In Cold Blood".

JFK

Follows the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.

Chicago 10

Archival footage, animation and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

A Walk on the Moon

The world of a young housewife is turned upside down when she has an affair with a free-spirited blouse salesman.

If These Walls Could Talk 2

The stories of three lesbian couples -- who live in the same house at different periods of time -- who are at a crossroads in their lives. In 1961, Edith loses her lover, Abby, to a stroke. Linda and Amy struggle with feminist issues in 1972. And, in 2000, Kal and Fran try to have a baby with the help of sperm donor.

The Five Heartbeats

In the early 1960s, a quintet of hopeful, young African-American men form an amateur vocal group called The Five Heartbeats. After an initially rocky start, the group improves, turns pro, and rises to become a top flight music sensation. Along the way, however, the guys learn many hard lessons about the reality of the music industry.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

Nixon

A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.

Tin Men

A minor car accident drives two rival aluminum-siding salesmen to the ridiculous extremes of man versus man in 1963 Baltimore.

Remember the Titans

After leading his football team to 15 winning seasons, coach Bill Yoast is demoted and replaced by Herman Boone – tough, opinionated and as different from the beloved Yoast as he could be. The two men learn to overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.

Hair

Upon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.

An American Crime

The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.

Miranda's Victim

The true story of Trish Weir who in 1963 was kidnapped and brutally raped by Ernesto Miranda. Committed to putting her assailant in prison, Trish’s life is destroyed by America’s legal system as she triggers a law that transforms the nation.

The Spacewalker

March 1965. In the heat of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR are competing for supremacy in space. What both superpowers aim for in this race, is to be the first to have a man walk in outer space. To accomplish that, no price is too high and no risk is too great. Now it’s up to the unlikely duo of a seasoned war veteran and a hot-headed test-pilot to fulfill this mission. Two men in a tiny spaceship, without proper testing, facing the complete unknown. They were supposed to do what no man has done before—and no man imagined what would happen next.