Survivors tell the story of the Babyn Yar massacre from WWII, where some 100,000 people were massacred by German forces.
As a doctor, Zhiyuan Wang spent 30 years studying how to save lives. He never imagined that he would spend another 10 years investigating how Chinese doctors take innocent lives. 95% of his evidence comes directly from China. His sources are Chinese doctors, judges, legislators, military officials, government officials, the media, and hospital websites. His research reveals an inconceivable truth – China’s hospitals, judiciary, and military worked together under the authority of the previous Chinese president Jiang Zemin to mercilessly slaughter a large number of Falun Gong practitioners through the harvesting of their organs. Today in a time of peace, it is difficult for people to believe that such a large-scale massacre has been silently taking place in China. But the truth shows that this frenzied killing machine, driven by huge profits, is still running rampant in society.
An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.
On April 12th, 1864, at an insignificant little fort, several hundred black Union soldiers fought a hopeless battle against a Confederate general who was destined to become the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. This battle had a domino effect, trickling down the long road of history. Today, it is just a footnote in most history books; however, no other event of the Civil War has had such a profound impact on the twentieth century, especially on American culture.
An exploration of the perils of nationalism and art’s role as a weapon of resistance and activism throughout the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Explore how art and music sustained hope, thanks in part to humanitarians and the band U2.
Documentary on the massacres commited in the Dersim region in Turkey in 1937/38.
Interviews with five former American soldiers who were present at the March 16, 1968 attack on the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War; they discuss the orders that were issued leading up to the attack, their expectations of what they would find there, and the subsequent massacre of the inhabitants and destruction of the village, as well as possible motivations for the killings and rapes which took place. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2002.
An Iranian diplomat who miraculously survived Taliban's raid on the Iranian consulate in Mazar E Sharif (Afghanistan) narrates his 19 days of hide and escape to reach Iran's borders meanwhile on the other side, the Iranian troops are preparing for retaliation.
"The reason why they kill people is because they do not have any education," a Sudanese boy says about the bloody conflict in his fatherland. Shortly before, we see images of a bombed school. In this film, the youngest and most innocent generation of Sudanese explains how it deals with the war that is tearing the country apart. Will the orphaned children avenge their murdered parents, or will they forgive the killers and start working on a new life? At any rate, these children's dreams for the future are anything but violent. One of them wants to learn English to be able to liberate his country, another wants to study to "be something," a third wants to become president to bring total peace, and yet another simply wants to be like her grandmother. Despite all the atrocities they have witnessed, the children mainly want to rebuild things, to put an end to the destruction.
A tale of victory of humanism over revenge motif. Amir Reko (nicknamed "Macedonian", but actually Bosnian Muslim by ethnicity), the ex-captain of Yugoslav People's Army, saved lives of 44 Serb civilians during the siege of Gorazde in 1992. He went through personal and professional temptation during the war, while plenty of other officers ended up in Hague or other international criminal courts across Europe.
During the brutal invasion of China in 1937 by Imperial Japanese forces, tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are murdered and women raped in what is known simply as "The Rape of Nanking." This docudrama is a stirring account of a small band of courageous American missionaries who choose to stay in Nanking to try and protect a quarter million vulnerable Chinese civilians who are trapped in a city ruled by a savage, out of control army. Their stories are brought vividly to life through actual real-time letters and diaries as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.
Bilja was seriously wounded in the 1992 shelling of Sarajevo. A French photographer took pictures of her while she lay bleeding and desperately begging for help; pictures of Bilja's wounds made him famous. Zbanic searches for Bilja and reconstructs the moment when news became more important than her life.
Totally Personal creates a historical document both droll and touching out of Begovic and his family's memories, meditations, and observations. The history begins in the communist era, continues through the war that ravaged the former Yugoslavia and into today's post-war period.
Sarajevo was under siege already 9 months when Radovan Tadic flew there with a UNO machine to take pictures of misery and destruction in a city, in which dread is part of everyday life. He lets people talk about their desperate situation and repeatedly the dismay about the hatred between former neighbors. We see pictures of a wedding, interrupted by gun fire, an emergency operation on a soldier is interrupted by a woman's delivery, children disassemble a theater to get firewood. -- A dramatic appeal against carelessness and forgetting.
The Film revisits the event, when 1800 Bengali Muslims were killed in Nellie and surrounding villages in Assam. It is an exploration of how the survivors remember the violence, over three decades later, and how the spaces that witnessed this violence continue to mark people’s relationship to history and memory.
Summer 1994, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Two civil wars in only three years has torn the city apart and destroyed it. The town is split into a Croatian majority in the west and a Muslim majority locked in the east. An invisible wall divides the two areas. The EU appoints German social democrat Hans Koschnick as municipal administrator of the town in the hope of rekindling a sense of community there.
On December 13 of 1943 the Nazi occupation army in Greece executed all the male population of the town of Kalavryta while burning it to the ground. Three men who witnessed these events as kids remember.
At the end of WWI, the treaty of Versailles established the conditions for peace in Europe. The aim for the victorious powers was to make Germany pay reparations, and to guarantee a future without war. Yet a decade later, the denunciation of 'Versailles' became a powerful lever for the nazis to obtain power as these reparations would mark the beginning of the humiliation of the German people, and nurture a feeling of having been bestowed a hopeless future. In the 20 years that follow the end of WWI, the issue of reparations and responsibility will effectively poison international relationship. The treaty negative impact goes well beyond WWII as the new European borders it implemented led to many conflicts during the twentieth century. This documentary shines a light on the causality between the decisions taken with the treaty of Versailles, and the ensuing events of the century.
In El Salvador, Chelino tells about the indigenous massacre of 1932, of which he survived, while he teaches the melodies of traditional Salvadoran dances.
The carnage in Sarajevo provides the focus of this French documentary which seeks to call attention to the terrible conflict in the hopes of finally ending it. The film is divided into five parts. Each part covers a time frame ranging from April 4, 1992, the beginning of the war, to the present. The major issues that occur are three-fold. It depicts the systematic genocide of Bosnians, the silence of Western countries, and the determination of the Bosnians to resist. They refuse to be seen as victims, even though the filmmakers portray them so. Also included are the origins and political aspects of the war. It offers interviews with participants. It also reveals how the U.S. State Department censored reports about Serbian death camps.