Historic Russian battles to repel invaders serve as prelude to the story of events that redrew the map of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the 20th century. Following the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Communist Russia faces the venom of Nazi aggression. 1940's film footage reveals the harsh reality of total war, as the Red Army and Soviet civilians alike confront a brutal and tenacious enemy. The following decades are darkened by tensions between the USSR and foreign powers, and violent measures taken to silence voices of dissent. Finally, the Soviet people's yearning for a freer society leads to accelerating reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the USSR.
A director of a television series on the history of cinema, who has been grappling with the screenplay of his first feature film, receives an assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in a remote region of Zahedan province. He has already hired Turkmen tribespeople for his film and selected his filming location. Meanwhile his wife, who is working on her Ph.D. dissertation about the Mongol invasion of Iran, attempts to dissuade him from accepting the assignment. One night, while working on his history of the cinema series, the director fantasizes a diegetic world that consists of clever juxtapositions of his different worlds: the history of cinema, the history of the mongol invasion, his own film idea and his imminent assignment to the desert.
Stephen Poliakoff's parody of the spy-thriller genre. A Russian diplomat becomes convinced that he is at the centre of a Foreign Office plot.
Raimonds Pauls is almost 85 years old, rehearses almost every day and performs at least once a week. What drives him? Not only he is the most popular composer in Latvia: his songs are sung all over the world. "Dāvāja Māriņa" is so popular in Japan that Paul received the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun. In concerts, he collaborates with world stars of Latvian origin - soprano Elīna Garanča, organist Iveta Apkalna, conductor Mariss Jansons. The Latvian Television film crew follows him during the pandemic, realizing that the restrictions and threats of Covid-19 hardly stop the Maestro in the course of his eternal engine. How does he cope with the challenges that time imposes on a person's physical form and the loneliness when most friends have passed away? What is the source of his inexhaustible lifestyle and creative spirit?
In the 1930s a trio of unlikely adventurers set off to find a heretofore uncharted land. It has existed in stories and myths for centuries and is believed to be somewhere around the North Pole. Hounded by an overambitious agent of the USSR, the explorers end up finding much more than they ever expected.
The long lasting Palestinian-Israeli conflict has created appaling phenomenons that have horrified the Israeli society. the "politically conscience-refusals" or those individual soldiers refusing to fight in the occupied territories, are one of those phenomenons. In opposition to them stand a thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union, ex-military men from the Red Army, who yearn to be recruited into the IDF and fight for Israel, but who are denied the right to serve in the army. Through the stories of Oleg and Alex, immigrants and the battalion's charismatic commanders, the story of the Russkii Battalion is told. It is a story of contrasts between the hardships of the daily struggles they face as new immigrants against the pride and the sense of belonging they find in the battalion. The Russkii Battalion is a film about a militaristic social bubble, in a country that is in constant war.
Experience the broadcasting of the Olympic Games from behind-the-scenes.
Boston's V66 music video station came and went in the mid-1980s but in the 18 months on the air, it was one of the only over-the-air music video channels ever created. But even popular success didn't mean it was going to last...
Tells the story of the tragic events in Ukraine in 1932-33, the genocidal Great Famine or the Holodomor, and one Welshman's attempts to tell the world what was happening.
Thundering across the sky on elegant white wings, the Concorde was an instant legend. But behind the glamour of jet setting at Mach 2 were stunning scientific innovations and political intrigue. Fifteen years after Concorde's final flight, this documentary takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner. Hear stories from those inside the choreographed effort to design and build Concorde in two countries at once - and the crew members who flew her.
Once upon a time, a King had eleven sons and one daughter. When his wife, the Queen, died, the King remarried. The new wife and the children's stepmother looks beautiful on the outside, but actually she's an evil witch. She sends the young princess Eliise to live in the village as an ordinary peasant girl and turns all the princes into wild swans. The princes are stuck being swans all day long and only at night can they regain their true form. When Eliise is 15 years old, she learns about the fate of her brothers and now she must overcome the obstacles put in her way by her stepmother in order to release her brothers from the spell.
The film tells a story about the extraordinary journey of the modest little girl Gerda. She is looking for her friend Kai, who was kidnapped and taken to her kingdom by the powerful evil Snow Queen. In search of her beloved friend, Gerda ends up in the castle to the cunning, insidious and at the same time funny king, meets forest robbers. On the way, the girl will have many obstacles before the decisive battle with the Snow Queen. But Gerda’s faithful heart will overcome all adversity...
A story based on the tales "The Marble Heart" and "The Spessart Inn" by Wilhelm Hauff.
Soviet Lithuania in 1972. A young theatre actress is trying to make a difference and tell the forbidden story of repression in a play.
A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.
Mothers and doctors speak out about the grim reality of life in the five years following the Chernobyl disaster. In children, doctors witnessed a massive increase of recurrent infections, baldness, as well as leukaemia and other cancers.
This documentary follows the election campaigns of a journalist, a local crime boss, a formerly exiled oligarch, and a local access TV host as they compete for a spot in the Moscow Central Constituency, in Russia's first free elections since 1917
Comedy in five acts by Beaumarchais, filmed by Marcel Bluwal in studio and on location. The cast, in accordance with Marcel Bluwal's wishes, is in keeping with the age and character of the characters, to give it rhythm. At once "a comic baroque play, a bourgeois drama, a chansonnier's number, a social satire, a farce and a very pretty love story" according to Marcel Bluwal, it can also be summed up, according to Beaumarchais, as "the most bantering of intrigues".
Understanding The Georgian Republic