Balaton retró

Taking stock of the extraordinary adventure of "Pif Gadget", a French publishing phenomenon of the 1970s-80s and even of the whole history of children's press. For the comic-strip magazine with the iconic dog, created in 1969 by the French Communist Party, often reached a million copies. With editions available for all of Europe (including Germany, under the title Yps), and on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

A disturbing chapter in Russian history is explored in this documentary. In 1933, Joseph Stalin sent 6000 "unwanted" citizens of Moscow and Leningrad to a desolate Siberian island - with no food or clothes to speak of. Decades later this documentary returns to the island.

The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.

The Angelmakers is a 2005 documentary that provides insight into the epidemic of arsenic murders by women, known as The Angel Makers of Nagyrév, in 1929. The film is shot on location in the rural Hungarian village of Nagyrév, alternating between portraits of the surrounding landscape and first-hand narrations by the elderly inhabitants.

Alexej Čepička – Z vojína generálem

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

A portrait of Maggie, through Swedish everyday life. Maggie always co-ordinates high heels with a beret, and she loves gold. She lives on the 15th floor in one of Malmö’s suburbs. Her balcony is littered with reminders of her previous life. Under a golf bag, next to a racing ticket from 1999, are the remains of a pigeon that she killed when she couldn’t sleep.

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.

L'Europe des Fronts Populaires

Internacionála

Short biographical documentary about the life of Alfred Florstedt and his life as a progressive communist from the Weimar Republic to his death in 1985.

An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.

Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.

Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society. Constructed as a montage of various disconnected political acts (in line with Godard's then appropriation of Soviet director Dziga Vertov's agitprop techniques), it combines a diverse range of footage, from students discussing The Beatles to the production line at the MG factory in Oxfordshire, burnished with onscreen political sloganeering.

Four lucid grandmothers tell their story forgotten by history: the militancy and resistance of the young women of the leftist youth against the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

The film gives the history of Venezuela from 1989 to 2004 and then explores some of the projects sponsored by the Bolivarian government, including the financing of cooperatives as a way of building the Socialism of the 21st century.

Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.

A documentary that investigates the complexity of a nation, Albania, through the narration of the convoluted history of its monuments. What happens to the statues when they are destroyed, what are they replaced with and where do their marble shreds end up? What happens to their expensive bronze? And again: what do the sculptors who made these statues think of these destructions, what is their opinion. And today? Which statues are being destroyed in Albania today?