How we built the Moscow metro (2014)

Words for an End of the World

Spain, April 14, 1931. The Second Republic is born. From the beginning, the writer Miguel de Unamuno is considered one of the ethical pillars of the new regime. Five years later, on December 31, 1936, a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Unamuno dies at his home in Salamanca, capital of the rebel side, led by General Francisco Franco, and main center of dissemination of its propaganda apparatus.

Land Without Bread

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

Hitler's Evil Science

In 1935, German scientists dug for bones; in 1943, they murdered to get them. How the German scientific community supported Nazism, distorted history to legitimize a hideous system and was an accomplice to its unspeakable crimes. The story of the Ahnenerbe, a sinister organization created to rewrite the obscure origins of a nation.

1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year

This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special.

Queendom

In defiance of Russia’s anti-LGBTQ laws, a queer, 21-year-old artist risks her life performing in surreal costumes throughout Moscow. Jenna Marvin’s radical public performances blend artistry and activism in this SXSW documentary.

Revolution: New Art for a New World

Drawing on the collections of major Russian institutions, contributions from contemporary artists, curators and performers and personal testimony from the descendants of those involved, the film brings the artists of the Russian Avant-Garde to life. It tells the stories of artists like Chagall, Kandinsky and Malevich - pioneers who flourished in response to the challenge of building a new art for a new world, only to be broken by implacable authority after 15 short years and silenced by Stalin's Socialist Realism.

Blood Money: Inside the Nazi Economy

How did Nazi Germany, from limited natural resources, mass unemployment, little money and a damaged industry, manage to unfurl the cataclysm of World War Two and come to occupy a large part of the European continent? Based on recent historical works of and interviews with Adam Tooze, Richard Overy, Frank Bajohr and Marie-Bénédicte Vincent, and drawing on rare archival material.

Bugatti: A Thirst for Speed

The story of the Bugattis of Milan and Molsheim, the eccentric family behind the brand: Carlo, the patriarch and furniture designer; Rembrandt, the troubled sculptor; Ettore, the gifted engineer; Jean, the unfortunate heir. Art and design. Beauty and luxury. The fastest cars. Races. The need for speed.

Man with a Movie Camera

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer

An account of the life and work of Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (1932-86) in his own words: his memories, his vision of art and his reflections on the fate of the artist and the meaning of human existence; through extremely rare audio recordings that allow a complete understanding of his inner life and the mysterious world existing behind his complex cinematic imagery.

Chernobyl 30 Years On: Nuclear Heritage

Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes and consequences are examined. In addition, a report on efforts to strengthen the structures covering the core of the nuclear plant in order to better protect the population and the environment is offered.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

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

Soviet Union: The Rise and Fall - Part 2

Historic Russian battles to repel invaders serve as prelude to the story of events that redrew the map of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the 20th century. Following the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Communist Russia faces the venom of Nazi aggression. 1940's film footage reveals the harsh reality of total war, as the Red Army and Soviet civilians alike confront a brutal and tenacious enemy. The following decades are darkened by tensions between the USSR and foreign powers, and violent measures taken to silence voices of dissent. Finally, the Soviet people's yearning for a freer society leads to accelerating reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the USSR.

Nanking

The story of the rape of Nanking, one of the most tragic events in history. In 1937, the invading Japanese army murdered over 200,000 and raped tens of thousands of Chinese. In the midst of this horror, a small group of Western expatriates banded together to save 250,000. Nanking shows the tremendous impact individuals can make on the course of history.

Cinecittà Babilonia: Sex, Drugs and Black Shirts

The story of Italian cinema under Fascism, a sophisticated film industry built around the founding of the Cinecittà studios and the successful birth of a domestic star system, populated by very peculiar artists among whom stood out several beautiful, magnetic, special actresses; a dark story of war, drugs, sex, censorship and tragedy.

Disco and Atomic War

A different history of the Cold War: how Estonians under Soviet tyranny began to feel the breeze of freedom when a group of anonymous dreamers successfully used improbable methods to capture the Finnish television signal, a window into Western popular culture, brave but harmless warriors who helped change the fate of an entire nation.

Gulag

Documentary examining Stalin's Gulag. Between the October Revolution and Stalin's death in 1953, millions of people died in the camps. The film explores the Gulag legacy, hearing from victims and perpetrators of the system.

I Betrayed Hitler

During the worst days of World War II, the British government asks the mathematician Alan Turing to unravel the mysteries of the German Enigma encryption machine, an impossible task to accomplish without the invaluable information that Hans-Thilo Schmidt, a disenchanted but greedy German citizen, had been handing over to the French secret services since 1931.

Swastika

Comprised of video shot during the Nazi regime, including propaganda, newsreels, broadcasts and even some of Eva Braun's colorized personal home movies, we explore the way in which the Third Reich infiltrated the lives of the German population, from 1933 to 1945.

Le Baron et l'Empereur : Japon, la voie de la guerre

Plot unavailable

Khrushchev Does America

The story of the unconditional, no-holds-barred tour of America by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, leader of World Communism and America's arch nemesis, during 13 sun-filled days in the fall of 1959.

Soviet Bus Stops

“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.

The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story

There's not a person in the world who wouldn't recognize Mickey Mouse. But until now, not many knew the man who originally gave shape, movement and personality to the world's most beloved icon. "The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story" takes you behind the scenes to meet Walt Disney's best friend and chief animator.

Chernobyl: The Last Battle of the USSR

Three decades after the nuclear explosion, almost everything has been said about this ecological and sanitary disaster that made Pripiat a part of History. How did the greatest industrial disaster change the course of History, disrupt global geopolitics and, directly or indirectly, redistribute the balances and power relations of the twentieth century? The world will never be the same again. By retracing the incredible battle waged by the Soviet Union against radiation, this film proposes to retrace and enlighten an extraordinary story, while exploring the historical stakes in the medium and long-term…

Hitler: A Career

A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.

Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.

Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals

September 1st, 1939. Nazi Germany invades Poland. The campaign is fast, cruel and ruthless. In these circumstances, how is it that ordinary German soldiers suddenly became vicious killers, terrorizing the local population? Did everyone turn into something worse than wild animals? The true story of the first World War II offensive that marks in the history of infamy the beginning of a carnage and a historical tragedy.

Atatürk, père de la Turquie moderne

Plot unavailable

Stalin's Last Plot

January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.

Mário Eloy - A Runaway Painter

Documentary about the life and work of Mário Eloy, one of the greatest painters of the second generation of modernism in Portugal.

Genocide

The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust could happen again. The history of European Jewish culture and events before and during the Holocaust are seen in newsreels, photographs, and animated segments. The words of the victims of the era are read, and footage from the liberation os a concentration camp is shown.

A War in Hollywood

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused a great impression on the lives of most of the American artists of that era, so many movies were made in Hollywood about it. The final defeat of the Spanish Republic left an open wound in the hearts of those who sympathized with its cause. The eventful life of screenwriter Alvah Bessie (1904-1985), one of the Hollywood Ten, serves to analyze this sadness, the tragedy of Spain and its consequences.

Lise Meitner: The Mother of the Atom Bomb

To historians, physicist Lise Meitner deserves to be placed on a par with Einstein, Heisenberg and Otto Hahn. In the 1930s on the verge of World War II, she led a small group of scientists who discovered that splitting the atomic nucleus of uranium releases enormous energy. This extraordinary film tells the story of a woman who was far ahead of her time as a scientist and a pioneer of feminism.

Propaganda: Engineering Consent

How can the masses be controlled? Apparently, the American publicist Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995), a pioneer in the field of propaganda and public relations, knew the answer to such a key question. The amazing story of the master of manipulation and the creation of the engineering of consent; a frightening true story about advertising, lies and charlatans.

The Eagle and the Lion: Hitler vs Churchill

Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.

Dans les coulisses du métro de Paris

Plot unavailable

To Die in Madrid

Morir en Madrid brings together several papers on the Spanish Civil War and integrates capturing different points of view, intended to represent the continuity of the suffering of the Spanish during the Franco regime. The death of Federico Garcia Lorca, Guernica, the defense of Madrid, the International Brigades, are some of the items comprised in this document.

The Gulag Archipelago: The Book That Changed Russian History

The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.

The Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files

On Nov. 22, 1963 the world was shocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The mystery surrounding this history-changing event has led to many unanswered questions.

The Paper Brigade

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

Camp Century: The Hidden City Beneath the Ice

How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.

Scars Of Nanking

During the brutal invasion of China in 1937 by Imperial Japanese forces, tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are murdered and women raped in what is known simply as "The Rape of Nanking." This docudrama is a stirring account of a small band of courageous American missionaries who choose to stay in Nanking to try and protect a quarter million vulnerable Chinese civilians who are trapped in a city ruled by a savage, out of control army. Their stories are brought vividly to life through actual real-time letters and diaries as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.

Tsar to Lenin

A documentary film account of the Russian Revolution, based on archival footage.

The Hitler–Stalin Pact

How could Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, come to a secret pact in 1939? The captivating and detailed story of the diplomatic fiasco that led to the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact and its devastating consequences.

Island Ablazed

Documentary recounting the story of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the young people of Cuba.

Dawn of the Nazis

How Germany was when its people entered the nightmare of World War II? Despair and fear lead a hungry population to follow the chilling call of just one man to world domination. A real-life horror story, an ominous tale of violence and deception, which takes place from 1919 to 1934. (Entirely made up of restored, colorized archival footage.)

50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus

In the spring of 1939, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus embarked on a risky and unlikely mission. Traveling into the heart of Nazi Germany, they rescued 50 Jewish children from Vienna and brought them to the United States.

Kino Eye

This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers on the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing hand bills, exhorting all to "buy from the cooperative" as opposed to the Public Sector, promoting temperance, and helping poor widows. Experimental portions of the film, projected in reverse, feature the un-slaughtering of a bull and the un-baking of bread.

Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes

Thirty-six years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in Soviet Ukraine, newly uncovered archival footage and recorded interviews with those who were present paint an emotional and gripping portrait of the extent and gravity of the disaster and the lengths to which the Soviet government went to cover up the incident, including the soldiers sent in to “liquidate” the damage. Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is the full, unvarnished true story of what happened in one of the least understood tragedies of the twentieth century.

The Spy Who Went Into the Cold

A documentary about Kim Philby, a British member of MI6 who was in reality a spy and defected to the U.S.S.R.

Mallorca

A journey through different places in 1930s Mallorca, the coast, the countryside, the city, in the company of the evocative music of Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909), to whom homage is paid.

Women of the Gulag

Through unique and candid interviews the film tells the compelling and tragic stories of the six women – last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression and terror that devastated the Soviet population during the regime of Stalin.

Closing Gambit: 1978 Korchnoi versus Karpov and the Kremlin

The story of the 1978 World Chess Championship between the Soviet Communist Party's protege, Anatoly Karpov and the traitor and Soviet defector, Viktor Korchnoi. One of those instances in life where truth is stranger than fiction.

My Favorite War

Ilze Burkovska, a little girl who is obsessed with stories of World War II and will be a filmmaker in a distant future, lives in Latvia under the totalitarian boot of the Soviets and the ominous shadow of the many menaces and horrors of the Cold War.

National Geographic: The Volga

Film cameras cruise the Soviet Union's mighty Volga River, providing a view of the Russian people along its 2300-mile length, including looks at the fishing industry, a rural village, a manufacturing town and the wedding of two factory workers.

Anniversary of the Revolution

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.