Cartas

Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.

Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, the last two survivors of the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, recount the horrors they experienced during the war and talk about their lives after their escape in a prisoner uprising in 1943. Willenberg would go on to become a hero of the 1944 Warsaw uprising while Taigman would be called as a witness during the infamous trial of Adolf Eichmann.

L'Exode

Katiana talks about her experiences as a woman in Haiti. As a woman, she faces many limitations and abuses from men who are more privileged than she is. Despite the difficulties of her condition, she has found the courage to achieve greater personal and financial independence.

The stories of four Iranian families who emigrate to Canada and the city they leave behind. As departure time approaches, social spaces become places of memory, fading into the distance.

Silent archival footage of Jewish children during the Holocaust, accompanied by music and poetic narration. A haunting portrait of a future generation lost to cruelty and genocide.

Ways of Being Home explores the immigrant experience from the perspective of the Mexican community living in Northfield, a college town in southern Minnesota. Most members of this immigrant community, about 70% or more, trace their roots back to Maltrata, a small agricultural municipality nestled in the mountains of the state of Veracruz.

Can you imagine what it means to grow up as the child of a mass murderer? Hans Frank and Otto von Wächter were indicted as war criminals for their roles in WWII. Nazi Governors and consultants to Hitler himself, the two are collectively responsible for thousands of deaths. But what stood out to Philippe Sands were the impressions they left on their sons. While researching the Nuremberg trials, the human rights lawyer came across two men who re-focused his studies: Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter. The men hold polar opposite views on the men who raised them.

MY ITALIAN SECRET tells a heroic story that was all but lost to history, until now. The film recounts how WWII bicycling idol Gino Bartali, physician Giovanni Borromeo and other Italians worked with Jewish leaders and high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church, risking their lives by defying the Nazis to save thousands of Italy’s Jews.

Among images of a utopian everyday life, the Paranaíba river tries to understand why Anair is so afraid of its depths.

During the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944, thousands of American GIs were captured by German forces. Berga: Soldiers of Another War, the final work in the distinguished career of four-time Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, is the untold story of 350 American POWs caught in the tragedy of the Holocaust. In blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, the Jewish American soldiers in the 106th Infantry Division, together with those who had "Jewish-sounding" names or who "looked" Jewish, were shipped off to the slave-labor camp at Berga am Elster, a satellite camp of the infamous Buchenwald.

A story about the life and turbulent times of Lisa Meitner and Otto Hahn, two exceptional scientists whose remarkable collaboration culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission, the division of the atom that changed the future. The show traces the development of nuclear science in the first half of the twentieth century, Meitner's early struggle for education and her quest to gain a foothold in the world of male-dominated physics, Hahn's initial research and independent discoveries, the collaborative discovery of the two scientists, as co-discoverers and the award of the Nobel Prize only to Hahn.

Shâd Bâsh

For over a hundred years, Mărculești was a vibrant Jewish agricultural and mercantile community in Bessarabia (now present-day Moldova). In July 1941, the village was the site of an unimaginable atrocity. Seventy-three years later, few speak honestly or completely about what happened. ABSENT is a cinematic portrait of the ghost village of Mărculești, its current inhabitants, and their very complex relationship to their own history. Filmed entirely on location, the film documents one of Europe's poorest, most remote, and least-visited places.

Auschwitz Projekt

It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.

Seventy-five days before the U.S. Army captured Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi-Canadian filmmaker tries to re-enter his homeland after 27 years of forced exile. In Jordan, he meets other Iraqis who are no longer able to cross the border: workers without jobs, truckers, cab drivers and anxious refugees. Worn down by years of war, sanctions, arbitrary arrests, torture and fear of execution, the men angrily recall the darkest years of the fallen regime. Still stunned by the course of events and uncertain about the future, they have no faith in the Americans, whom they believe are out for their oil. "Are we another Palestine?" asks one of them. Shot in the thick of the action amid the ongoing chaos, the film reveals Iraqi opinions and their versions of the unfolding story.

Reila

Cheikh El-Hasnaoui is an Algerian singer who left his country in 1937 without ever setting foot there again. Between 1939 and 1968 he composed most of his repertoire in France. For many years the Algerian cafes of Paris were the stages of his shows. With a handful of artists of his generation, he laid the foundations of modern Algerian song. A fervent defender of women's rights, he claims, as a pioneer, the fight for identity for a plural Algeria. At the end of the Sixties, he ended his artistic career. On July 6, 2002 he died in Saint-Pierre de la Réunion, where he is buried to this day. This 80-minute documentary follows in the footsteps of this extraordinary character. From Kabylia to Saint-Pierre de a Réunion via the Casbah of Algiers and the belly of Paris.

The Neiger family was living a peaceful life in the Jewish community in Krakow when the arrival of World War II changed their lives forever. When Nazi soldiers forced the family from their home into the harsh life of the Ghetto, they made a vow to escape as a family. But when circumstances forced the family to separate from older brother Ben, their will to survive was put to the test. They Survived Together" is the incredible, true story of one family as they desperately tried to stay alive... and together as a family with four small children, attempted to escape certain death at the hands of the Nazis. They are believed to be one of the only families to escape and survive as a family.