The Shadow of Heaven

Between 1944 and 1953, 170,000 Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians put up fierce resistance to the Soviet invasion, hiding deep in the vast Baltic forests. Driven by a dream of freedom, they defied a ruthless empire with few resources but unwavering determination. Through previously unseen archives and the poignant accounts of the last survivors, this documentary reveals their clandestine struggle, their heroic sacrifices, and their legacy, timeless symbols of a desperate fight to escape the Soviet stranglehold and preserve the flame of independence.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

The film evokes all the aspects of bullfighting - its history, the bulls, the toreros, the arena, the audience - and involves numerous matadors from the era.

Half blind and half deaf, ostraziced Cuban writer Rafael Alcides tries to finish his unpublished novels to discover that after several decades, the home made ink from the typewriter he used to write them has faded. The Cuban revolution as a love story and eventual deception is seen through the eyes of a man who is living an inner exile.

Scene from a Trilby-themed stage play. Lost.

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace. Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, over 60 books on some of the most pressing social issues of our time, some of which are excerpted here. Merton offers an engaging profile of a man whose presence in the world touched millions of people and whose words and thoughts continue to have a profound impact and relevance today.

Biography and in-depth look of Beckett and his work.

Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time.

Documentary about filmmaker Jean Grémillon.

Viktor, who was born deaf, worships the figure of the samurai warrior. When bombs start falling on his countryside home in Kharkiv, his quasi-romantic obsession with war is put to the test.

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

Voices from the past echo through the deserted, snow-covered stone houses in a village in the Caucasus Mountains.

Cinéastes de notre temps : Erich von Stroheim

Cinéastes de notre temps : Jean Vigo

Filmmakers of Our Time: François Truffaut or the Critical Spirit

The T.N.P., the Théâtre National Populaire, an important experimental theater directed by Jean Vilar. Franju combines sequences from theatrical performances with documentary images, creating links and confrontations between theater and the real world.

The elusive author of Waiting for Godot cooperated in the production of this portrait, which traces Beckett’s artistic life through his prose, plays, and poetry. Billie Whitelaw, Jack McGowran, and Patrick Magee—Beckett’s great dramatic interpreters—appear in selected extracts from the plays; Beckett specialist David Warrilow narrates a variety of texts.

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

50 años de... Canciones

A dramatised documentary about the life of Rumi, a Persian mystical poet whose images of universal love and divine mystery continue to be celebrated more than 700 years after his death.