Dabaru

Pawn Sacrifice

September 2015 •English

American chess champion Bobby Fischer prepares for a legendary match-up against Russian Boris Spassky.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

August 1993 •English

A seven-year-old chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.

The World Champion

December 2021 •Russian

Some sporting victories are about more than just claiming a title. Some of them go down in history. The film follows the most dramatic and legendary showdown in the history of chess – the match between Anatoly Karpov, then world champion, and Viktor Korchnoi, a recent emigrant from the USSR. In this battle between two outstanding chess players, a duel of personalities under immense psychological pressure, the stakes are incomprehensibly high.

Bobby Fischer Against the World

June 2011 •English

The first documentary feature to explore the tragic and bizarre life of the late chess master Bobby Fischer.

Once Upon a Spy

September 1980 •English

Computer genius and chess champion Ted Danson is lured into service by secret agent Eleanor Parker and becomes a reluctant hero thanks to a number of exploits with villainous Christopher Lee and his army of lethal blue-eyed blonde women.

Evan's Gambit

January 2019 •English

Two brothers, raised by a chess master, must battle head to head in the world's most competitive chess tournament.

Knight Moves

January 1992 •English

A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect. After he gets a call from the killer urging him to try and figure out the game, he cooperates with police and a psychologist to try and catch the killer, but doubts linger about the grandmaster's innocence as the string of grisly murders continues.

Rey Ardid: La gran partida

January 2013 •Spanish

Closing Gambit: 1978 Korchnoi versus Karpov and the Kremlin

October 2018 •English

The story of the 1978 World Chess Championship between the Soviet Communist Party's protege, Anatoly Karpov and the traitor and Soviet defector, Viktor Korchnoi. One of those instances in life where truth is stranger than fiction.

Mikhail Tal. From a Far

March 2016 •Russian

Mikhail Tal. From a Far is a documentary exploring the unpredictable and tragic life of the genius world chess champion Mikhail Tal, Riga's native son. Mikhail Tal becomes the youngest world chess champion at 23. The same year, he was diagnosed with incurable kidney disease and given only one year to live. Through sheer will and reckless abandon he managed to live another 40 years, filling them with a string of remarkable chess successes, unexplainable failures, amorous conquests and a life-threatening game of cat and mouse with the KGB.

Glory to the Queen

March 2020 •English

Against the backdrop of Cold War, Glory to the Queen reveals stories of four legendary female chess players from Georgia who revolutionized women’s chess across the globe and became Soviet icons of female emancipation.

Hennessy: Maurice Ashley, the Grandmaster

September 2020 •English

The film follows the rise of the chess player Maurice Ashley, the first black person to attain the title of Grandmaster.

Kasparov: Chess Rebel

August 2024 •French

The extraordinary life and career of the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, a brilliant and charismatic, but also rebellious, favorite son of the Soviet Union.

Make Your Move

May 2018 •English

Two chess champions have a secret match to decide once and for all which of them is the better player.

Brooklyn Castle

October 2012 •English

Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about I.S. 318 – an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. (If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he’d only rank fifth best.) Chess has transformed the school from one cited in 2003 as a “school in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. But a series of recession-driven public school budget cuts now threaten to undermine those hard-won successes.

Magnus

September 2016 •Norwegian

From a young age Magnus Carlsen had aspirations of becoming a champion chess player. While many players seek out an intensely rigid environment to hone their skills, Magnus’ brilliance shines brightest when surrounded by his loving and supportive family. Through an extensive amount of archival footage and home movies, director Benjamin Ree reveals this young man’s unusual and rapid trajectory to the pinnacle of the chess world. This film allows the audience to not only peek inside this isolated community but also witness the maturation of a modern genius.

Antes de las once

August 2008 •Spanish

A story about three adolescents as they address the universal challenges of growing up in a time where drugs, sexual promiscuity, delinquency, and suicide seem to run rampant.

Window Horses

March 2017 •English

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry. Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

Bringing Up Cruelty in Women and Dogs

July 1992 •Russian

A single woman's and her dog's personalities are affected by tough life circumstances.

Fuego en el alma

January 2002 •Spanish

Reflecting the closeness of Puerto Ricans in New York with those on the island, three stories among couples are combined to cast emotions of passion, jealousy, doubt and infidelity. The couples are burned by sudden and unexpected feelings and are pushed to make the decision that will change their lives forever influenced by the events of September 11th.