The greatest secret of the Second World War has remained a mystery for the last 80 years: a Jewish Communist, Sandor Rado, led a spy network that proved essential to the victory of Allied Forces. Rado received details of strictly confidential strategies from the highest echelons of the Nazi State through Rudolf Roessler, a dedicated anti-Nazi he'd only known as code name "Lucy." Aided by key German industry leaders, Roessler transmitted timely information from high-ranking collaborators within the German army headquarters. Despite their achievement, Rado, Roessler and their sources remained unacknowledged heroes until today. Thanks to the recent declassification of secret archives, we are now able to step behind the scenes of this incredible story.
A documentary focusing on American conscientious objectors during WWII.
A pig farm in Lety, South Bohemia would make an ideal monument to collaboration and indifference, says writer and journalist Markus Pape. Most of those appearing in this documentary filmed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Croatia have personal experience of the indifference to the genocide of the Roma. Many of them experienced the Holocaust as children, and their distorted memories have earned them distrust and ridicule. Continuing racism and anti-Roma sentiment is illustrated among other matters by how contemporary society looks after the locations where the murders occurred. However, this documentary film essay focuses mainly on the survivors, who share with viewers their indelible traumas, their "hole in the head".
A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.
A documentary covering the actions of the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa during WWII.
Libere
It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.
A tribute to the cameramen of the newsreel companies and the service film units, in the form of a compilation of film of the cameramen themselves, their training and some of their most dramatic film.
The destruction of the city and its architectural heritage during the Allied bombing of the Second World War.
See Kenneth W. Rendell's collection of over 6,000 artifacts that range from the end of World War I and the rise of Nazism to the start of World War II and the fight in Europe and the Pacific.
French Resistance's documentary during the liberation of Paris in August 1944.
Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) provides trained agents, arms and other assistance to the European resistance groups fighting against Hitler. British agents, Captain Harry Rée DSO, OBE, Croix De Guerre, Médaille de la Résistance, aka "Felix", and Jacqueline Nearne, MBE, aka "Cat", recreate some of their adventures in France.
Easy Company, the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, fought their way through Europe, liberated concentration camps, and drank a victory toast in April 1945 at Hitler's hideout. Veterans from Easy Company, along with the families of three deceased others, recount their horrors and victories, bonds they made and the friends they lost.
Elizebeth Friedman contre la mafia et les nazis
Marking the 75th Anniversary of the end of WWII, the documentary features the first-hand accounts of the Canadians who fought in the worst war in human history. Raw and personal experiences of the terror, pride, horror, excitement, friendship and loss – told through the eyes of the people who fought it.
The riveting biography of 102-year-old CIA spymaster Peter Sichel, who unpacks the obscured roots of conflicts that plague today’s world and the toll espionage took on his personal life.
Miany, 84, is increasingly losing her words. In front of her granddaughter's camera, she recounts a childhood memory from 1939. Between memory and forgetting, a story on the edge of time.
Après la guerre, la guerre continue 1945-1950
In the Zeeland coastal village of Cadzand, tourism provides year-round employment and vibrancy. At the same time, permanent residents are disappearing, and housing is becoming unaffordable. Clubs are shrinking, amenities are under pressure, and the fire department is facing a shortage of volunteers. The coast is being filled with expensive apartment complexes for tourists, while young people are struggling to find affordable housing. Economic growth is clashing with social cohesion and nature. How do residents of a Zeeland coastal village combat the financial pressures when their village is overrun by tourists and white facades with red roofs dominate nature reserves?
A documentary focused on right wing populist Geert Wilders, called The Dutch Donald Trump, as he runs for Prime Minister of the Netherlands.