Lise Meitner: The Mother of the Atom Bomb

Leningrad. Stimmen einer belagerten Stadt

January 2024 •German

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

La SS : L'État barbare

July 2019 •French

Agente Sicre, el amigo americano

June 2014 •Spanish

Ein weites Herz

April 2013 •German

Truth & Conviction: The Helmuth Hübener story

November 2002 •English

By 1941, Hitler’s Nazi regime had seized unbelievable control over the German people, dictating what they read, what they said-even what they believed. A whispered criticism of the Nazi Party could lead to a Gestapo interrogation and prison. In this environment, a young man, sixteen years old, took action that some considered foolhardy, and others viewed as treacherous and morally wrong. What he did was certainly dangerous. Today many consider his actions heroic. This is the story of Helmuth Hubener. Helmuth Hubener led a resistance group composed of himself and two of his childhood friends from his LDS Church branch. The three of them carefully distributed flyers throughout Hamburg that denounced Hitler and his propaganda machine. This documentary chronicles what happened to these young men, and the ultimate price paid by those who dared to stand up for the truth.

Israel's Secret Weapon

March 2003 •English

"The United States and Britain are preparing to wage war on Iraq, for its undisclosed weapons of mass destruction. Israel's nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities have remained un-inspected. Meanwhile Mordechai Vanunu has been imprisoned for 16 years for exposing Israel's secret nuclear bomb factory to the world. Vanunu is seen as a traitor in his own country. He has been abandoned by most of his family and has spent 11 years in solitary confinement. Today only an American couple, who have legally adopted him, are among the few visitors he is permitted. This film is the story of the bomb, Vanunu and Israel's wall of silence."

Father of the Kamikaze

September 1974 •Japanese

Vice Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi could see that Japan's defeat in WWII was inevitable. He came to realize that the only way to force a negotiated solution was to convince the Americans that invading Japan would cause massive casualties on both sides. The cold logic of suicide attacks, where one man and one plane could kill hundreds, seemed the only solution. In one of the cruel ironies of fate, Ohnishi actually succeeded; he convinced the Americans that invading Japan would be too costly in lives. But what he could not foresee was that America had another way of ending the war.

Lusitanian Illusion

April 2010 •Portuguese

Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.

A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

December 2008 •English

The Good Maharaja

Invalid date •Hindi

In 1942, Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, established the Polish Children's Camp in Jamnagar-Balachadi for refugee Polish children brought out of the USSR during WWII.

A Propos of the Truce with Finland

October 1944 •Russian

A rare documentary that shows how Soviet war propaganda presented the events of the Finnish front in 1941–1944. The main emphasis is on the resolution of the war. The film contains plenty of unique footage of the final stages of the Continuation War.

Salinger

September 2013 •English

An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.

Ein Lied für Argyris

November 2006 •German

Land Without Bread

December 1933 •Spanish

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

The Untouchables

June 1987 •English

Elliot Ness, an ambitious prohibition agent, is determined to take down Al Capone. In order to achieve this goal, he forms a group given the nickname “The Untouchables”.

38

September 2006 •Turkish

Documentary on the massacres commited in the Dersim region in Turkey in 1937/38.

The House in the Middle of the Sea

August 2022 •English

After the Germans flooded large parts of The Netherlands towards the end of WWII, the Brouwer family find themselves trapped in their attic surrounded by water. With their rations dwindling, tensions arise within the household.

The Other Way

January 2023 •Italian

Russian front, January, 1943. It's hell: the flurries of sleet take the breath away and Sergeant Bisi can make out nothing in the landscape in front of him.

Nazi Town, USA

January 2024 •English

In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.

Ukraine on Fire

June 2016 •English

Ukraine in Flames is a documentary produced by Oliver Stone that reveals American and NATO participation in the 2014 coup d'état in Ukraine and its aftermath. The renowned American director, who in recent years has made several productions within the genre of political cinema, investigates the origins of the current conflict that currently keeps the entire European continent and the entire planet in suspense. In the film, Stone interviews, among others, the former president of Ukraine, Víktor Yanukovych; Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Ukrainian Interior Minister Vitali Zajarchenko.