To Be Destroyed

Mexico, March 2015. Carmen Aristegui, incorruptible journalist, has been fired from the radio station where she has worked for years. Supported by more than 18 million listeners, Carmen continues her fight. Her goal: raising awareness and fighting against misinformation. The film tells the story of this quest: difficult and dangerous, but essential to the health of democracy. A story in which resistance becomes a form of survival.

In "Diana: The Mourning After" Christopher Hitchens sets out to examine the bogusness of "a nation's grief", tries to uncover the few voices of sanity that cut against the grain of contrived hysteria. His findings suggested that the collective hordes of emotive Dianaphiles sobbing in the streets were not only encouraged but emulated by the media. In the aftermath of Diana's death a three-line whip was enforced on newspapers and on TV, selling the sainthood line wholesale. The suspicion was that journalists, like the public, greeted the death as a chance to wax emotional in print, as a change from the customary knowing cynicism, to wheel out all those portentous phrases they'd been saving up for the big occasion. Sadly, they just seemed to be showboating; the eulogies, laments and tear-soaked platitudes ringing risibly hollow.

The city of Madrid as it appears in the Spanish films of the 1950s. A small tribute to all those who filmed and portrayed Madrid despite the dictatorship, censorship and the critical situation of industry and society.

The history of Bruguera, the most important comic publisher in Spain between the 1940s and the 1980s. How the characters created by great writers and pencilers became Spanish archetypes and how their strips persist nowadays as a portrait of Spain and its people. The daily life of the creators and the founding family, the Brugueras. The world in which hundreds of vivid colorful paper beings lived and still live, in the memory of millions, in the smile of everyone.

Casimê Celîl was born into a Yezidi Kurdish family in 1908, in a village called Kızılkule, located in Digor, Kars. The village and family life, which he longed to remember throughout his life, ends with the massacre they endured in 1918. During his long road to Erivan, Armenia, he lost all his family members. Left all alone, Casim was placed into an orphanage and was forced to change his name. To remember who he was and where he came from, every morning he repeated the mantra “Navê min Casim e, Ez kurê Celîlim, Ez ji gundê Qizilquleyê Dîgorê me, Ez Kurdim, Kurdê Êzîdî me”, which translates to: “My name is Casim, I am the son of Celîl, I come from the village of Kızılkule in Digor, I am a Kurd, and I am Yezidi”. He clings to every piece of his culture he can find, reads, and saves whatever Kurdish literature or art he comes across. As the year’s pass, Casim finds himself with an impressive collection of Kurdish culture and history.

The story of the sexual memoirs of a Victorian gentleman who revealed himself as Walter. He documented his liaisons in a frank series of journals which ran to eleven volumes and 1.5 million words, titled 'My Secret Life'. Within the journals he documented details of his liaisons, the names of the women, their social standing, and their conversation. For a century, this material was considered obscene, its publication illegal. Today, however, it's seen as a unique insight into Victorian social and sexual mores, providing valuable information on class, gender, marriage, fidelity and morality. This film looks at the dark life of 'Walter', and examines the way his journals have shaped contemporary understanding of Victorian society. The film also examines the mystery that has surrounded this story - who exactly was 'Walter'? The film asks whether he could have been Henry Ashbee, a wealthy London gentleman who was obsessed with sex and attained a pornographic library of over 15,000 volumes.

Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.

In Germán Araujo, director Aldo Novick revives the memory of a journalist who defied censorship during one of Uruguay's darkest periods. Through previously unseen archival footage, testimonies, and music, the film honors the courage of those who reported the truth when it was risky. This powerful documentary is shaping up to be one of the most important Uruguayan film releases of the year.

OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.

Though commissioned by Trinity College Dublin as a fundraiser for the Berkeley Library and with extensive discussion of the history, architecture and collections of the Old Library, this film also provides a rare insight into student life in Dublin in the 1950s – at work and at play – and lauds the arrival of women and students from many lands.

"Do you think I have a cute bottom?" From Brigitte Bardot's cult line in "Le Mépris" (Contempt), to Mireille Darc's iconic lower back, bottoms have long been the subject of every fantasy. And have often been represented in art! A story of eroticism, but also of censure

Documentary film that follows Silvana Castro, a woman who works at the National Congress Library in Argentina where the books that were forbidden during the military dictatorship are kept. After the exhibition of the books is suspended, she'll try to open it again.

One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, which continue to move audiences around the world today. He also made headlines for being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy Era and entering into a tumultuous marriage with Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. Told from the unique perspective of his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, Arthur Miller: Writer is an illuminating portrait that combines interviews spanning decades and a wealth of personal archival material, and provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and exploring his character in all its complexity.

Bashar al-Assad's regime fell on december 8, 2024. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals the mistreatment endured by journalists under his bloodthirsty regime. According to the NGO, 181 journalists were killed under his rule.

A documentary about the cultural effect of film censorship, focusing on the tumultuous times of the teens and early 1920s in America.

Released in 1796 posthumously, The Nun, a novel that Diderot did not dream of publishing during his lifetime, as he knew it to be revolutionary, caused the same explosion in the 19th century France as in that of the 1960s, when Jacques Rivette decided to adapt it, with Anna Karina in the title role. “This film is banned and it will remain so!” said the General de Gaulle. Exploration of an indictment of incredible modernity which, through the tragedy of the young Suzanne, locked up in the convent against her will, denounces the inequity of a society denying women all moral, political and sexual freedom.

The race is on - for the Viceroy's Cup.

In Maija Blåfield’s documentary, eight former North Koreans talk about what it was like to watch illegal films in a closed society. In addition to the 'waste videos', South Korean films were also smuggled into the country via China.

Between 1933 and 1945 roughly 1200 films were made in Germany, of which 300 were banned by the Allied forces. Today, around 40 films, called "Vorbehaltsfilme", are locked away from the public with an uncertain future. Should they be re-released, destroyed, or continue to be neglected? Verbotene Filme takes a closer look at some of these forbidden films.

A documentary analyzing the furore which so-called "video nasties" caused in Britain during the 1980s.