Tsar to Lenin

Comrade, Where Are You Today?

August 2016 •German

In 1988, 20-year-old Kirsi Marie Liimatainen travels from Finland to the GDR, to study Marxism-Leninism at the International Youth Academy. In summer of´89 the course ends and the students spread out over the world. Afew months later, the Berlin Wall falls. 24 years later Kirsi, sets out on a cinematic journey to Nicaragua, South Africa, Chile, Bolivia, Lebanon, Germany and Finland to meet up once more with her former fellow students. What remains of their dream of the liberation of the oppressed?

Balaton retró

December 2007 •Hungarian

Scenes from holiday life at Lake Balaton in Hungary during the communism.

The Red Elvis

February 2007 •German

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

The First Years

January 1950 •Czech

Do Útero Ao Túmulo

December 2022 •Portuguese

Fahrenheit 9/11

June 2004 •English

Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Cars We Drove into Capitalism

October 2021 •Bulgarian

A cinematic, character-driven insight to what it meant to produce and to own a car in communist times: the Socialist propaganda dreams and the hard reality of living that dream. The freedom that these slow and clumsy vehicles were giving to their owners; the cars as an instrument in the Cold War battle; legends and homemade tune-ups as an attempt to stand at least a little bit off the crowd.

Moscow 1996, Vote or Lose!

November 2021 •French

Moscow, January 1996. Boris Yeltsin gets ready to run for a second mandate of the presidency of the young Russian Federation. Polls are in the single digits. A painful economic transition, war in Chechnya, and the rise of criminal groups have left the majority of Russians dissatisfied with Yeltsin… and willing to vote for the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. Yet six months later, Yeltsin won the election with nearly 54% of the vote. How did that happen?

Putin's Games

December 2013 •English

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia will be the first ever to be held in a subtropical resort. The most expensive games ever break all records when it comes to corruption and megalomania. Putin's administration has everyone at its beck and call, from oligarchs down to the ordinary people who have to pay the Olympic bill. Both the powerful and the weak speak out in this investigative documentary, which unveils the hidden story behind Putin's games. Government critic Garry Kasparov says that Putin's Olympic propaganda is really all about speeding up the privatization of land in Sochi. Many inhabitants have had to make way for hotels, ski jumps and a large harbor, which were subsequently swept away by storms and landslides – the Olympic village was built on a swamp in the hottest region of Russia. To a large extent, the story of these environmentally unfriendly Olympic Games is one of threats and enormous misappropriations of money.

Rock

January 1988 •Russian

Documentary — featuring both interviews and live footage — about underground rock music in Russia, during the last years of the Perestroika.

How the Holocaust Began

January 2023 •English

Historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution.

The Hitler–Stalin Pact

January 2019 •French

How could Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, come to a secret pact in 1939? The captivating and detailed story of the diplomatic fiasco that led to the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact and its devastating consequences.

Kino-Pravda No. 6

July 1922 •

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Streetcar collision / Arms manufacturing plant resumes operation / Assembling an automobile / Bicycle and motorcycle races / A parade of Red Army armored units and an attack exercise.

Like Stone Lions in the Gateway into Night

April 2012 •French

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

The Message of the XIII Party Congress (on Cooperation)

January 1925 •Russian

1925 (Soviet Union)

PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster

January 2014 •English

Jeremy Clarkson tells the dramatic story of the Arctic convoys of the Second World War, from Russia to the freezing Arctic Ocean.

Wanda Gosciminska – A Textile Worker

June 1975 •Polish

The life of a female weaver is thrown onto the socio-political canvas of pre-war and post-war communist Poland through the use of expressive allegorical and symbolic imagery in this imaginative take on the documentary form.

Cuban Serenade

January 1997 •English

Finnish documentary about Cuba.

People of Russia

December 1942 •English

This FitzPatrick Miniature visits the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the largest geographically unbroken political unit in the world, covering one-sixth of the world's land mass.

The Condemned

June 2013 •English

With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners. In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life. A startling insight into inscrutable minds and the forbidding world they have been condemned to. (Storyville)