Final Account

This is a rare look at one of the worst horror stories in the long infamous history of warfare. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before. For decades the Cold War prevented us from looking closely at what really happened between the Russians and the Germans on the Eastern Front during World War II. More than a struggle between nations, it pitted maniacal tyrant against maniacal tyrant, evil ideology against evil ideology. The lives of tens of millions of human beings were consumed by its raging hatreds and appalling indignities. One in every ten Russians died. One in every four Poles died. Whole divisions of Italians, Romanians, Hungarians disappeared with barely a trace. An average of 17,800 people died on every single day and this, the war on the Russian German Front, lasted for 1,400 days. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before.

Near the end of World War II, the survivors of a torpedoed hospital ship cling to life aboard a crowded lifeboat. With no food, water, or shelter, all seems lost – until an eerily silent German minesweeper drifts ominously towards them, giving them one last chance at survival. As our motley crew explores the ship, it becomes all too clear that some diabolical fate has befallen its German crew. The mystery only deepens when they encounter a young Romanian girl, apparently the sole survivor, who leads them to a locked room in the bowels of the vessel.

This black-and-white archival film outlines the importance of Canada's forests in the national war effort during the Second World War.

France, June 1944. On the eve of D-Day, some American paratroopers fall behind enemy lines after their aircraft crashes while on a mission to destroy a radio tower in a small village near the beaches of Normandy. After reaching their target, the surviving paratroopers realise that, in addition to fighting the Nazi troops that patrol the village, they also must fight against something else.

A portrait of Pope Pius XII (1876-1958), head of the Catholic Church from 1939 until his death, who, during World War II, and while European Jews were being exterminated by the Nazis, was accused of keeping a disconcerting and shameful silence.

In a candid, first-time interview with Rachel Lee, the so-called teenage mastermind behind a string of high-profile celebrity robberies in 2008 and 2009, the film examines the motivations of Lee and a group of her friends who broke into celebrity homes in Hollywood to ransack and steal, exploring the possible reasons behind her actions including mental health issues and addictions, as well as the climate of celebrity excess that fueled the teens, recontextualizing the events behind the sensational headlines.

Documentary about Japan's Unit 731 of World War II.

During the Nuremberg Trials, the victors of the Second World War judge those responsible for the Third Reich.

The film focuses on the icon of Hollywood’s golden age, Humphrey Bogart, and is framed around his relationships with the five formidable women in his life – his mother and his four wives, including Lauren Bacall. Featuring unprecedented access to rare footage from the estate, and narrated exclusively in his own words, ‘Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes’ explores his journey to become the of star of timeless classics ‘Casablanca,’ ‘Maltese Falcon’’ and ‘The Big Sleep.’ Each relationship offers a deep and intimate understanding of a man for whom stardom was hard won and much deserved.

A personal documentary that tracks the construction of America's collective memory (or lack of one) of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It follows the obscure histories of specific photos and photographers, both Japanese and American, who visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bombings, counterposing this visual legacy with the stories of survivors, whose practice of speaking to small groups of students offers a modest but powerful counter-history to the official record.

Après la guerre, les restitutions

Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.

When a folk high school is turned into an internment camp for German refugees, the headmaster couple Jakob and Lis and their children are thrust into an impossible situation. Should the family help the refugees — or stand firm in the Danish resistance against the Germans?

The 50th anniversary of the Barrandov studios was celebrated with a spectacular show: many directors and other important people gathered in the expensive decorations of the Variety Theatre auditorium (built for the Circus Humberto series). They smiled and showed well-deserved relaxation after a job well done in managing socialist cinema. Vladimir Sís interspersed this with excerpts from films, mainly his own and also a little of others who had worked on the "Hill of Dreams".

A look at the parallel lives of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler and how they crossed with the creation of the film “The Great Dictator,” released in 1940.

Carefully chronicling in great detail the early years of Hitler's political life until his fall as the leader of Germany, this archive-footage documentary offers a sharply critical insight into the stealthy rise of the Nazi party and how it's racist vision of the world slowly took hold in a disillusioned Germany.

Le IIIe Reich n'aura pas la bombe

War correspondent Lopatin takes a 20-day-leave from his hard work at the front in 1942. He travels to faraway Tashkent to meet the family of the killed soldier and visit the film set of the screen adaptation of his war-time stories. Lopatin also manages to walk the streets of Tashkent, take part in a factory workers' meeting and have a short-lived love affair. Although with no bombings and fighting, the city dwellers breathe the atmosphere of the ongoing war.

Yugoslav farmer-turned-partisan Slavko Babić starts an uprising against the fascist Germans and their allies.

Cesta k barikádám