Back Towards Light

The fascinating story of the rise to power of dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy in 1922 and how fascism marked the fate of the entire world in the dark years to come.

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

The life and work of stage designer ADOLPHE APPIA, originator of the most profound agitations in contemporary theatre. Through the dynamic alternation of animated drawings and choreographies specially conceived for the film, we discover the steps of his artistic evolution.

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.

What happened after Einstein fled Nazi Germany? Using archival footage and his own words, this docudrama dives into the mind of a tortured genius.

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.

October 7, 2023: Hamas terrorists attack Israel, murder and take hostages. Israel reacts with severity. The goal: the destruction of Hamas. But with the war in Gaza, Israel is awakening the great trauma of the Palestinians: the expulsion of 1948. How can the lack of empathy on both sides be explained?

The story, told by the survivors, of a group of young men, members of a Uruguayan rugby team, who managed to survive for 72 days, at an altitude of almost 4,000 meters, in the heart of the Andes Mountains, after their plane, en route to Chile, crashed there on October 13, 1972.

After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.

In the first century, after the death of Herod the Great, Judea goes through a long period of turbulence due to the actions of the corrupt Roman governors and the internal struggles, both religious and political, between Jewish factions, events that soon lead to the uprising of the population and a cruel war that lasts several years and causes thousands of deaths, a catastrophe described in detail by the Romanized Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus.

An account of the reign of Herod the Great, king of Judea under the rule of the Roman Empire, remembered for having ordered, according to the Gospel of Matthew, the murder of all male infants born in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, an unproven event that is not mentioned by Titus Flavius Josephus, the main historian of that period.

An account of the life and work of the charismatic Spanish writer Terenci Moix (1942-2003).

They gave in. Or capitulated. They didn't want to have sex. They couldn't push back, to make them understand that no, they didn't want to. Some consider it part of the unpleasant yet inevitable experiences of youth. Others don't. For the first time, a film addresses this "gray" area of sexuality without consent.

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.

They are frozen in place, stagnating without any direction. Around them, things change rapidly.

In 2019, the multi-awarded filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani (My Stolen Revolution, Prostitution Behind the Veil) filmed the Iranian journalist based in France Roholla Zam, who exposed the Iranian regime money laundering. Months later, Rohollah was lured by moles to Iraq and kidnapped to Iran. After 14 months in prison, he was executed.

In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.

After selling herself at fourteen to a brothel inside her home town of Svay Pak, Mien takes an undesired path all over Cambodia for the remainder of her teenage life. At twenty, her path crosses with a group of people fighting to make a difference, bringing her long and onerous journey back to face where it all began. The Pink Room is an intertwined story of the heart-rending, epic battle to end sex slavery, from rescue to prevention, and experiencing first hand, the need to change not just individuals, but the communities they come from. Most documentaries on trafficking only bring awareness to the problem. This film bring awareness to the solutions.

Follows the story of "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in his attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.