Better Off Dead? (2024)

The Train to Moscow

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, three Italian communists engage in a trip to the Soviet Union to challenge their utopia with an 8mm camera. In 1957, Sauro, Luigi and Enzo all live in Alfonsine, a small town in Italy ruled like a miniature Soviet Union by the Italian Communist Party. As many communists in the West, they dream of the Soviet Union, and hope for the great Revolution. But with the wind of reform and self-criticism blowing through the Eastern Bloc after the death of Stalin the image of the Soviet Union as the workers’ paradise begins to crumble. They therefore decide to travel to the USSR to find out what is true and what is false in this supposed land of milk and honey. They film their entire journey with their 8mm camera. Through this invaluable personal archive, our film tells the hopes, disappointments and challenges of three young men faced with the reality of what seemed to be a utopia come true.

Una festa per la città - Venezia 1973

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Clinton Cash

An investigation into how the Clintons have amassed millions in personal wealth through foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, a supposed charity, in exchange for political favors while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State.

13th

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

Roberto Benigni: Tuttobenigni

A young Roberto Benigni in one of his first public show in Florence at Parco delle Cascine.

The New West and the Politics of the Environment

This film explores how iconic Nevada Senator Harry Reid set the foundations for a green new deal.

USA: danger from the right. Demoniac from Wisconsin

Professor Valentin Zorin, political observer of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting, talks about Joseph McCarthy, an American politician, a senator from Wisconsin, who held an extremely anti-communist position, who advocated an intensification of the Cold War with the USSR. The name of McCarthy is associated with a reactionary trend in the political life of the United States of the early 1950s, dubbed "McCarthyism" and consisted in the persecution of people only suspected of sympathizing with communism and not committing any crimes.

Chine : Opérations secrètes

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The Negotiators – How to Make Peace

“Negotiators, how to make peace” is a documentary that takes a penetrating look at the identity and evolution of people who seek solutions to armed conflicts in places such as Colombia, Mexico, South Sudan and the Balkans.

Contradictory America. Faith, hope, love and hate. Film 2

In the second film, the author tells about the struggle of blacks for the right to feel equal with all US citizens. Commentary of the mayor of Cairo, one of the cities in the American South, about the suppression of the rebels, about the most brutal methods of fighting African American protesters. Jesse Jackson's speech. Jesse Jackson's commentary on the Black Rights Organization. Comments by female residents of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, on the degree of mental development of whites and blacks. A story about the Ku Klux Klan, about Robert Shelton - the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Speech by American singer and dramatic actor Paul Robson, his commentary. Shots of the Olympics, victories in the competition of black athletes. About reprisals against Negro organizations. The widow of the American writer Ernest Hemingway Mary and the American scientist Henry Winston speak out about support for African Americans and the fight against racism.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

An Inconvenient Truth

A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

Troubled Times

Filomena Lopes recalls the first moments of Angola's independence. A story fictionalised through photographic archives. A personal investigation into the director's own family history.

Am Abgrund

Gerd Meineke is a committed member of the Bundestag and member of the Parliamentary Assembly in the Council of Europe. And he has a problem: Leyla, the daughter of his partner Alina, was taken into custody as an opposition figure in her country of origin, Azerbaijan. The blogger fights there for democracy and against environmental destruction. Gerd travels to Baku as an election observer for the Council of Europe, where he wants to campaign for the release of Leyla and other political prisoners. Only on site does he realize that the government and the lobbyists of influential companies are using politicians like him to gain credibility for the ruthless, environmentally destructive extraction of critical raw materials. Leyla and her friend Valentina open his eyes to the extent of corruption that does not stop at Western European politicians. Will Gerd, together with Leyla and the help of her friend, be able to make the corruption of politics public?

Food for Profit

The film exposes the links between Agrifood and politics. With a pool of international experts it analyses the many problems related to factory farming: water pollution, migrants exploitation, biodiversity loss and antibiotic resistance.

The Borneo Case

The Borneo Case is a unique story filmed over 25 years and tells the epic tale of how the rainforest, home of the last nomads was stripped of its natural resources. It reveals how billions of dollars of illegal profits solicited by the Chief Minister of Sarawak State in Malaysia were money laundered with the assistance of the largest global banks into offshore accounts and property portfolios all over the world. The case was labelled as the largest environmental crime of the century.

The Blues: Another Story of France

This documentary charts 20 years of the French national soccer team, Les Bleus, whose ups and downs have mirrored those of French society.

People You May Know

People You May Know follows Charles Kriel, specialist advisor to UK Parliament on disinformation, when he discovers Cambridge Analytica collaborating with a software company creating a microtargeting platform for US churches, targeting vulnerable people - the poor, the grieving, the addicted - to radicalise them for far-right politics. With US 2020 elections coming, Kriel gathers a team of whistleblowers and journalists, and journeys across America with his young family, where he discovers a powerful organisation with ties to the heart of the White House. The man who commissioned CA is a member of the most powerful secret political organisation in the United States, with an agenda to rewrite the Constitution according to Christian law. Going undercover, he risks everything to gain access where no outsider has ever set foot.

My Way to Olympia

The film director Niko von Glasow undertakes a journey to athletes, who compete at the Paralympic Games in London 2012. He himself is a short-armed avowed hater of sport who cannot understand how anyone could take on such an odeal voluntarily. Even more since everyday life for people with a disability is most often challenging enough. He meets U.S.archer Matt Stutzman, Norwegian table tennis player Aida Dahlen, German swimmer Christiane Reppe, Greek boccia player Greg Polychronidis and a Sitting Volleyball team. Niko neither spares the athletes nor himself asking questions about life, sport and fears. With an ever growing appreciation for sport Niko attends the Paralympic Games and travels back to the ancient city of Olympia, where everything began and where boccia playing is prohibited.

The Gimp Monkeys

What has four legs, five arms and three heads? The Gimp Monkeys. Craig DeMartino lost his leg after a 100-foot climbing fall. Pete Davis with born without an arm. Bone cancer claimed Jarem Frye's left leg at the age of 14. While the three are linked by what they are missing, it is their shared passion for climbing that pushed them towards an improbable goal - the first all-disabled ascent of Yosemite's iconic El Capitan.

One Nation Under Trump

One Nation Under Trump is the first comprehensive feature documentary to delve into the zeitgeist of the unstoppable Donald Trump revolution, from the ground floor all the way to the pinnacle of the 2016 American political landscape.

Orgesticulanismus

Animator Mathieu Labaye's tribute to his father, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair.

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

Tongpan

Tongpan is a 1977 Thai 16 mm black-and-white docudrama that re-creates a seminar that took place in Northeast Thailand in 1975 to discuss the proposed Pa-Mong Dam on the Mekong. Interwoven are sequences depicting a poor farmer, Tongpan, who had lost his land to another dam some years before, and his struggles to make ends meet.

Dans la peau de Kim Jong-Un

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A Doonesbury Special

Garry Trudeau's classic characters (Mike Doonesbury, Zonker, etc.) examine how their lifestyles, priorities, and concerns have changed since the end of their idealistic college days in the 1960s. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes

What started as a drama about a Russian police plot to steal a billion dollars from a US financier and to murder his faithful tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, has become a real life investigation of contradicting versions of the crime.