In 2016, DEFA celebrates its 70th anniversary: the film embarks on a journey into the exciting film history of the GDR. In a comprehensive kaleidoscope, the importance of DEFA productions is illuminated, the relevance of the films as propaganda productions for the GDR, which socio-political themes were in the foreground, but also which heroes DEFA brought to the screen and celebrated as people from the people.
A chronicle on the days without Jorge Julio López, key witness and complainant on the first trial on genocide in Argentina, dated in 2006. López, who had survived through concentration camps on the late seventies argentinian dictatorship, disappeared for the second time the day the court decision meant to condemn his kidnappers was about to be read.
Jesus Was a Commie presents modern society with questions and leads the audience on a dialectical journey. The film challenges the viewer to seek their own answers and personal truths.
A staged cinematic parable, it presents in symbolic images a painful diagnosis of Poles' sense of identity in the 1970s.
Poland, 1970. When popular protests erupt in the streets due to rising prices, the communist government organizes a crisis team. Soon after, the police use their truncheons and then their firearms. The story of a rebellion from the point of view of the oppressors.
A priest secretly leads rebels in their struggle against the corrupt military dictatorship of the Central American country of Puerto Santo.
Young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan decides it's time for an adventure after he finishes his formal education, so he decides to try his luck in Uganda, and arrives during the downfall of President Obote. General Idi Amin comes to power and asks Garrigan to become his personal doctor.
A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.
Yuri Orlov is a globetrotting arms dealer and, through some of the deadliest war zones, he struggles to stay one step ahead of a relentless Interpol agent, his business rivals and even some of his customers who include many of the world's most notorious dictators. Finally, he must also face his own conscience.
A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.
Based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he and best friend Alberto Granado had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.
Biographical portrait of the labor movement and left wing movement in Uruguay, "Conversations with Turiansky" combines two stories. The first portrays the son of immigrants, the engineer passionate about the mystery of electricity, the man in love, the movie buff. The other places the protagonist in his time: union struggles, the advance of authoritarianism, prison and the challenges of the present. In both are present the lucidity, commitment, discreet tenderness and humor of Wladimir Turiansky.
A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.
In 1987 Korea, under an oppressive military regime, a college student gets killed during a police interrogation involving torture. Government of officials are quick to cover up the death and order the body to be cremated. A prosecutor who is supposed to sign the cremation release, raises questions about a 21-year-old kid dying of a heart attack, and he begins looking into the case for truth. Despite a systematic attempt to silence everyone involved in the case, the truth gets out, causing an eruption of public outrage.
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.
Accio and Manrico are siblings from a working-class family in 1960s Italy: older Manrico is handsome, charismatic, and loved by all, while younger Accio is sulky, hot-headed, and treats life as a battleground — much to his parents' chagrin. After the former is drawn into left-wing politics, Accio joins the fascists out of spite, but his flimsy beliefs are put to test when he falls for Manrico's like-minded girlfriend.
Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.
Mihajlo, an introvert piano teacher starts romance with a pretty careerist who teaches modeling at the university in Belgrade where they both work. His feelings are awakened after a long period, but this relationship makes him see the flashbacks, as well as yet unseen images that remind him of his troubled childhood - as if he experienced this already. When their university wins a contest to hold public TV performance, Mihailo fails to play the piano on the decisive night and she dumps him. The boiling point is about to come.
Vixen lives in a Canadian mountain resort with her naive pilot husband. While he's away flying in tourists, she gets it on with practically everybody including a husband and his wife, and even her biker brother. She is openly racist, and she makes it clear that she won't do the wild thing with her brother's biker friend, who is black.
Brazil, 2030. The sisters Alayr and Sabrina are hearing on the cell radio the judgment that could change the course of a country "without energy". They are surprised by Fátima, the sister who returns from the dead to fraternize on this historic night.