Ilze Burkovska, a little girl who is obsessed with stories of World War II and will be a filmmaker in a distant future, lives in Latvia under the totalitarian boot of the Soviets and the ominous shadow of the many menaces and horrors of the Cold War.
Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation,...
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...
“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime...
A portrait of Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017), a witness of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), a dissident, a woodpecker who tirelessly pecked the putrid brain of the Communist regime for decades, demanding democracy loudly and fearlessly. Silenced, arrested, convicted, imprisoned, dead....
Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without...
Urban sprawl, extinct species, depletion of natural resources and global warming are all causes of deep anxiety. Here to stay takes an uncompromising look at Planet Earth today, in all its beauty but also its scars and contradictions. Illustrating the intricate relationship and contrasts between...
Archive footage of bomb detonations during the Second World War combined with abstract graphic elements which show the destructive potential of modern nuclear missiles. Together the images are a silent warning of armament and war.
Erich Honecker ruled the GDR for 18 years. His fall in 1989 heralded the downfall of the state that had called itself "the better Germany" for 40 years. Nazi victim and autocrat, bourgeois and power-conscious: Honecker was an ideological hardliner who coordinated the construction of the Wall in...
When the Wall Came Tumbling Down: 50 Hours That Changed the World
01999HD
A detailed reconstruction of the events from Nov. 9th to 11th, 1989, which led to the Berlin wall tumbling down, on a local, national and international level.
The film tells a story about the latest musical revolution in recent history – the early days of the rave scene and the golden age of techno culture. International political changes in the mid-80s and early 90s, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a...
The Cold War was an ideological battle between Communism and Capitalism, the East vs the West and the resulting struggle for ideological influence and power. At the end of WW2, the World would lay divided between two great superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Both sides would...
"The Art of Dissent" celebrates the resilience and power of artistic engagement in Czechoslovakia before and after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. The documentary's main protagonists - Václav Havel, banned singer Marta Kubisová, and the underground rock group the Plastic People of the Universe...
1960. The USSR starts humanitarian aid programs based on Marxist ideology in several newly independent African countries. For more than 35 years the Soviets expand their influence in Africa. Soviet filmmakers are sent along to document the glorious advance of socialism on the entire continent....