Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.
July, 1941. After the beginning of the German invasion, an Italian soldier, a veteran of the colonial wars, is sent to the Soviet front. As he remembers the fairy tales his Russian mother used to tell him, the train he is travelling in crosses Europe on its way to the vast Ukrainian plains, where the enemy and a cruel winter await him… (Based on the experiences of several Italian soldiers.)
A distinguished military leader whose reign was touched by great scandal, shocking betrayals and rousing victories. A simple shepherd boy chosen to be king, under the watchful eyes of prophet Samuel.
The enigma of the personality cult is revealed in the grand spectacle of Stalin’s funeral. The film is based on unique archive footage, shot in the USSR on March 5 - 9, 1953, when the country mourned and buried Joseph Stalin.
The story of the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of shooting President Kennedy. Via flashbacks, the story traces the woman's life from her days in Russia, the turmoil following the assassination, raising her family, and coming to grips with the fact that she too may have been a pawn in a grand conspiracy.
This is a film with music. Or about the music and texts that accompany, in a poetic way, a decisive battle between Unitarian and Federalists. The vicissitudes of the birth of a nation based on the play written by Mariano Llinás and Gabriel Chwojnik, whose images achieve some hypnotic strength.
The story of Salvador Puig Antich, one of the last political prisoners to be executed under Franco's Fascist State in 1974.
United Kingdom, March 24, 1954. Ten years before the decriminalization of homosexuality, journalist Peter Wildeblood and his friends Lord Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers are convicted and imprisoned for indecency and sodomy.
The film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, Features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner.
While studying the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, a historian decides to restore the good name of one of the revolutionaries, who was accused of betrayal by his comrades-in-arms and committed suicide.
A history of the French Revolution beginning from the decision of the king to convene the Etats-Generaux in 1789 in order to deal with France's debt problem. Part one spans the event until August 10, 1792 (when the King Louis XVI lost all authority and was imprisoned). Part two carries the story through the end of the terror in 1794.
Laxman Singh Bisht is nicknamed tube light by his neighbours because he is feeble-minded. Despite being special, Laxman lives by one life-lesson; keep your faith alive and you can do almost anything, even stop a war.
Second attempt to create a feature film out of the 200,000-plus feet of film which Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein shot during 1931-32 in Mexico for American socialist author Upton Sinclair, his wife and a small company of investors. The projected film, to be called "Que Viva Mexico", was never completed due to exhaustion of funds and Stalin's demand that Eisenstein return to the USSR (he had been absent since 1929). The first attempt at editing the footage, in the USA, resulted in "Thunder Over Mexico", released in 1934. In 1940, Marie Seton, from the UK, acquired some of the footage from the Sinclairs in an attempt to make a better cutting according to Eisenstein's skeletal outline for the proposed film. This film has apparently been lost.
The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.
Amanda is a divorced woman who makes a living as a photographer. During the Fall of the year Amanda begins to see the world in new and different ways when she begins to question her role in life, her relationships with her career and men and what it all means. As the layers to her everyday experiences fall away insertions in the story with scientists, and philosophers and religious leaders impart information directly to an off-screen interviewer about academic issues, and Amanda begins to understand the basis to the quantum world beneath. During her epiphany as she considers the Great Questions raised by the host of inserted thinkers, she slowly comprehends the various inspirations and begins to see the world in a new way.
Dr Janina Ramirez travels across glaciers and through the lava fields of Iceland to find out about one of the most compelling of the great Viking stories - the Laxdaela Saga. This hour-long film explores how the unique literary achievements of the Saga writers were possible at a time of such immense cultural, political and religious upheaval.
They are frozen in place, stagnating without any direction. Around them, things change rapidly.
A documentary-style capturing of the life of Ab, a young struggling artist trying to find her way, all while dealing with unwanted company.
The story of Yeshe Dolma, and her turbulent marriage to a proud warrior, Jiacuo, across half a century.
In this remarkable journey, Planet Food travels the world to see how control of the spice trails, over the last five millennia, has made great cities and destroyed ancient civilizations. Our guides travel from the Molucca Islands of Indonesia, the original home of cloves and nutmeg, to the Indian province of Kerala, with its native pepper and cardamom. Additional stops include Venice, Beirut, Cairo and other significant places in the spice trade that created and toppled empires.