100 Years (2021)

1900

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

The Killing Fields

New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.

Großes Kino made in DDR

In 2016, DEFA celebrates its 70th anniversary: the film embarks on a journey into the exciting film history of the GDR. In a comprehensive kaleidoscope, the importance of DEFA productions is illuminated, the relevance of the films as propaganda productions for the GDR, which socio-political themes were in the foreground, but also which heroes DEFA brought to the screen and celebrated as people from the people.

Long Dark Night

"Long Dark Night" follows the life of the fictional character Iva Kolar: his experiences as a Croatian University student, his role as a Partisan fighting Hitler's troops during W.W. II, his involvement in his nation's post-war government, and his eventual downfall.

Prêtres interdits

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The Man Who Defied Beijing

A portrait of Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017), a witness of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), a dissident, a woodpecker who tirelessly pecked the putrid brain of the Communist regime for decades, demanding democracy loudly and fearlessly. Silenced, arrested, convicted, imprisoned, dead. Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2010, alive forever. These are his last words.

Shanghai Express

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

Lenin and the Other Story of the Russian Revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, is remembered as the instigator of the October Revolution of 1917 and, therefore, as one of the men who changed the shape of the world at that time and forever, but perhaps the actual events happened in a way different from that narrated in the history books…

1970

Poland, 1970. When popular protests erupt in the streets due to rising prices, the communist government organizes a crisis team. Soon after, the police use their truncheons and then their firearms. The story of a rebellion from the point of view of the oppressors.

Castro: The World's Most Watched Man

Fidel Castro employed a vast spy network that helped him remain in power.

Assembly

Follows a soldier trying to gain recognition for comrades who died in 1948, at a turning point in the civil war between the communists and the nationalist forces of the Kuomintang.

The Last Emperor

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

1987: When the Day Comes

In 1987 Korea, under an oppressive military regime, a college student gets killed during a police interrogation involving torture. Government of officials are quick to cover up the death and order the body to be cremated. A prosecutor who is supposed to sign the cremation release, raises questions about a 21-year-old kid dying of a heart attack, and he begins looking into the case for truth. Despite a systematic attempt to silence everyone involved in the case, the truth gets out, causing an eruption of public outrage.

My Brother Is an Only Child

Accio and Manrico are siblings from a working-class family in 1960s Italy: older Manrico is handsome, charismatic, and loved by all, while younger Accio is sulky, hot-headed, and treats life as a battleground — much to his parents' chagrin. After the former is drawn into left-wing politics, Accio joins the fascists out of spite, but his flimsy beliefs are put to test when he falls for Manrico's like-minded girlfriend.

In Memory of Rock

The rock-wild youth of the 1960s during the apparitions of their idols.

The Sailor’s Song

A film about the historical uprising of the seamen in Kiel: During the Russian October Revolution of 1917, German and Russian soldiers start to solidarize with each other. By disarming the officers, machinist Henne Lonke and stoker Jens Kasten prevent the attack on a Russian freighter. When German admiralty gives out orders for operation "Nibelungen", which would lead the German fleet into a suicidal attack against England and quell the revolutionary spirit, seamen and soldiers from different political backgrounds unite in protest.

Cuba and the Cameraman

This revealing portrait of Cuba follows the lives of Fidel Castro and three Cuban families affected by his policies over the last four decades.

The Russian Revolution

Starting in 1881 this film shows the personal battle between Lenin's Ulyanov family and the royal Romanovs that eventually led to the Russian revolution.

The Way Back

At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.

The Matrix: Generation

After the 1999 premiere of the first Matrix movie, it became a pop culture phenomenon. A special documentary about the Matrix saga and its prophetic aspects.

Funan

Cambodia, once the ancient kingdom of Funan, April 17th, 1975. The entire country falls under the tyranny of Angkar, the communist party of the Khmer Rouge. The cities are abandoned, the population is thrown to the roads and forced to walk towards an uncertain future…

Stasi, un État contre son peuple

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.

Platform

China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

Karl Marx – Der deutsche Prophet

On the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth, the docu-drama paints a multifaceted portrait of the most influential German thinker of modern times. The world-famous actor Mario Adorf embodies the equally contradictory and contradictory world spirit, in the dichotomy of prophetic confidence and fear of failure. An exciting cinematic journey through his life and work.

30 Years of Democracy

Two journalists born in the mid '80s decide to take a look back at how their country changed in the last 30 years since the fall of communism. The end product is a documentary containing footage of political events and historical milestones significant to Romania accompanied by a narrator's voice walking the viewer through the events, and also interviews with Romanian politicians and other influential public figures sharing their thoughts and their different views on those events.

Chuck Norris vs Communism

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician

Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives his last days with painful detachment.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace

The Gate of Heavenly Peace is a feature-length documentary about the 1989 protest movement, reflecting the drama, tension, humor, absurdity, heroism, and many tragedies of the six weeks from April to June in 1989. The film reveals how the hard-liners within the government marginalized moderates among the protesters (including students, workers and intellectuals), while the actions of radical protesters undermined moderates in the government. Moderate voices were gradually cowed and then silenced by extremism and emotionalism on both sides.

Rosa Luxemburg

Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg works tirelessly in the service of revolution in early 20th century Poland and Germany. While Luxemburg campaigns for her beliefs, she is repeatedly imprisoned as she forms the Spartacist League offering a new vision for Germany.

Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party

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Chine : Opérations secrètes

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Yellow Earth

A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust…

Nadezhda

The film tells about the childhood and youth of the wife, friend and military ally of the founder of the country of the Soviets Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. The main attention in the film is paid to the participation of a young revolutionary in the organization of the struggle of the workers of St. Petersburg for their rights, against the autocracy.

The Red Arrow

The Red Arrow is the special train No.1 between Leningrad and Moscow. The film is set in the 1980s during perestroika in the Soviet Union. Kropotov (Lavrov) is communist CEO of a big industrial company in Leningrad. He is crafty and successful in getting a major order from the Soviet Government; building an automated assembly line. But his style of management clashes with his subordinates, talented engineers. Their potential is strangled by Kropotov's manipulative control. The government order is not accomplished and Kropotov gets fired. He is rethinking his outdated business style while on the train No.1 to Moscow.

Heidi in China

In 1946, Heidi is entrusted to a Swiss family by her father. He will never come back for her. Today, François Yang questions his mother about her past. What follows is a journey to China, a quest to reconstruct memory. Through contact with her brothers and sister, Heidi measures the extent of the drama experienced by her family that remained in China, persecuted by the Communist Party.

How the Beatles Changed the World

The fascinating story of the cultural, social, spiritual, and musical revolution ignited by the coming of the Beatles. Tracing the impact that these four band members had, first in their native Britain and soon after worldwide, it reappraises the band and follows their path from young subversives to countercultural heroes. Featuring fresh, revealing interviews with key collaborators as well as a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, this is a bold new take on the most significant band in the history of music and their enduring impact on popular culture.

The Birth of New China

In the spring and summer of 1949, the People's Liberation Army launched an offensive under the orders of Mao Zedong and Zhu De, they crossed the Yangtze River and Nanjing was liberated on April 23 which signaled the fall of the KMT regime, Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan; on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong standing on the rostrum of Tiananmen, solemnly declared the foundation of the People's Republic of China.

Oppenheimer

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

Morning Sun

The film Morning Sun attempts in the space of a two-hour documentary film to create an inner history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). It provides a multi-perspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected in the hearts and minds—of members of the high-school generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them in creating in the film’s conversation about the period and the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China, as well as the enduring legacy of that period.

Portugal: Carnations Against Dictatorship

In Portugal, during the night of April 24-25, 1974, a peaceful uprising put an end to the last government of the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime established in 1933 by dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), paving the way for full democracy: a chronicle of the Carnation Revolution.

Tiananmen: The People Versus the Party

The true story of the seven weeks that changed China forever. On June 4, 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations were violently and bloodily repressed. Thousands of people died, but the basis for China's future was definitely planted.

Lenin in October

Commissioned by Josef Stalin to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Revolution, Lenin in October was the first of Russian director Mikhail Romm's tributes to the Marxist visionary who helped orchestrate the insurrection of October, 1917.

Turning Point 1977

At the close of the Cultural Revolution, a group of young idealists battle for the right to return home and restart their lives after years of toil on a state run re-education farm in China.

The Lovers and the Despot

Hong Kong, 1978. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee is kidnapped by North Korean operatives following orders from dictator Kim Jong-il.

Ernst Thälmann – Son of the Working Class

This film is the first of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. In early November 1918, Ernst Thälmann is an unwilling soldier serving on the western front. As the revolutionary movement at home is threatened by the betrayal of the Social Democrats and fissures in the working class, Thälmann calls on his fellow soldiers to put down their weapons and unite with the workers in the communist struggle at home. Thälmann’s qualms about which side he is fighting on continue, but when the local police attempt to prevent a shipment of provisions and supplies from reaching the people in Petrograd, he intervenes and the ship is unloaded. With this moment of clarity, Thälmann continues to follow his political convictions and joins the workers at the Hamburg uprising in October 1923.

Ernst Thälmann – Leader of the Working Class

This film is the second of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. Autumn, 1918: Somewhere on Germany’s western front, Ernst Thälmann, age twenty-four, is calling on his fellow soldiers to put down their guns and join him in the communist struggle at home. When Hamburg’s Police Commissioner blocks a much-needed food shipment to the workers of Petrograd, Ernst battles to see it allowed through. Until his murder on August 18, 1944, Ernst remained true to his political convictions in the face of many setbacks.

Miss Marx

In her public persona, Eleanor “Tussy” Marx was a translator, actress, a children’s rights activist and a persuasive labour organizer, a tireless powerhouse determined to carry on her father’s work. She held her own with twentieth century gods, including both her father and his colleague Engels. In her privately life, however, she was vulnerable and her attraction to the self-indulgent and self-important Edward Aveling led her into misery and ultimately proved fatal.

The Revolutionary

Documentary about the life of Sidney Rittenberg, an American who spent over 30 years in China and was an active participant in the Chinese communist revolution.

Stalin In Color

March 9th, 1953, 5 million people attend Stalin’s funeral. A revolutionary lacking in both charisma and stature, Stalin came to power almost by chance, and his 30-year reign saw him become the most Machiavellian and bloodthirsty of dictators. The man who insisted on being called “The Father of the People” massacred his own countrymen, and was responsible for the death of some 20 million people. Soon forgetting his former ideological stance, he mercilessly crushed anyone who opposed him, in both word and deed. His camps for reform through hard labor – known as “gulags” – turned 18 million Russians into slaves. He not only murdered his opponents but his best friends too, and even sometimes members of his own family. His cruelty knew no bounds. Through colorized archive material rich in previously unseen footage, and many accounts from the period including some from Stalin himself, this documentary tells the story of a man who turned a dream into a nightmare.