Social & External
Voice
Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian filmmaker, gains unprecedented access to follow a Russian Army battalion in Ukraine. Without any official clearance or permits, she earns the trust of foot soldiers and embeds herself over the span of a year with one battalion as it makes its way across Eastern Ukraine. What she discovers is far from the propaganda and labels pushed by the East or West: an army in disarray, soldiers disillusioned and often struggling to understand what they are fighting for.
Archival film maestro Göran Hugo Olsson has assembled—from a vast catalogue of footage in the vaults of Sweden’s national television service SVT—accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as witnessed and represented by Swedish journalists. Stories of the beginning of the Israeli state interwoven with the Palestinian struggle for independence. News coverage with Yasser Arafat and interviews with Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban during a visit to Sweden unseen since first broadcast. From the tenth anniversary of Israel’s founding to the First Intifada, perspectives and encounters with statesmen, civilians, revolutionaries, and intellectuals tell the story from myriad angles of an evolving media landscape, revivifying a history of the ongoing conflict.
After World War II, 4,000 Polish families came to Australia. They were Jews, Fascists, anti-Communists, and others dispossessed. In a large hostel, where even married men and women were housed in separate barracks, the adults lived for two years while they worked off the government's payment of their passage. Even though he is married to Anna and has a son, Julian falls in love with Nina and she with him. As they and others face the new situations and prejudices that await immigrants and as they take on aspects of Australian culture, old-country values reassert themselves. Julian decides what to do about love and family, and Nina must find a way to move on.
1938. Austria has been annexed by Nazi Germany, and Switzerland has closed its borders for Jewish refugees - a death sentence for thousands. But not all Swiss officials observe this inhuman order.
Set during World War II, Rosario, a school teacher, enters a forbidden relationship with a Japanese soldier, Masugi.
Delves into the world of makeshift oil refineries and the stark realities of life in war-torn northern Syria,. Mahmood is a prominent figure in these operations, navigating complex working conditions and local dynamics.
Whether famous or anonymous, stars or prisoners, models or sex workers, women have always been at the center of Bettina Rheims' photographic work since her debut in 1978. Both subversive and glamorous, trashy and sophisticated, her photographs mark and bear witness to the upheavals of the era, which this leading photographer both anticipated and accompanied.
In May 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the Reich Central Security Office, gave Hitler a report describing in detail the organization of the French Resistance. Indeed, during the Second World War, most of the Resistance networks had been infiltrated by traitors, the "V Man" (trusted men) in the service of the occupier. The Germans had established treason as a system and recruiting Frenchmen ready to inform on them was one of their priorities. It was these Frenchmen, whose number is estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000, who dealt terrible blows to the Resistance.
On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team – which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock – to complete the film from hours of shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).
Directed by Patrick Gramm, 'The Pigeon People' (2023) takes you deep into Arizona's underground pigeon racing scene as racing rivals prepare for and compete in the Grand Canyon Classic - a 350-mile pigeon race from Utah to Arizona that crosses over the Grand Canyon.
In Israel, a joint French-Israeli scientific mission is set to unearth the secrets of the hill of Kiryath-Jearim (or Kiryat Ya’arim), converted to the site of a Catholic convent, where, according to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was kept for at least twenty years before being brought to Jerusalem by King David, father of King Solomon, who would eventually build the Holy of Holies inside the First Temple to house it.
A documentary that details the process of restoring 270 of the 520 lost films of pioneering director Georges Méliès, all orchestrated by a Franco-American collaboration between Lobster Films, the National Film Center, and the Library of Congress.
The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Bill Moyers takes a piercing look at how global economic changes are destroying the lives and livelihoods of hardworking Americans. The documentary follows several individuals and their families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as they fight to make ends meet in the “new economy.” In sheer numbers, more jobs were created than lost in America during the last decade, but a look behind those numbers reveals a shortage of jobs that pay enough to support a family. The program intimately portrays the lives of workers and their families as they struggle to make it in today’s job market.
In the aftermath of WWII, German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly has to undergo facial reconstructive surgery following her survival from Auschwitz. Without recognising Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. To see if he's betrayed her, she agrees, becoming her own doppelgänger.
On the Puerto Rican diaspora, which includes renowned artists who have converted New York, Florida, Chicago, Hawaii, Santa Cruz and Dominican Republic into their second home, but with Puerto Rico in their hearts.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
They were going to become heroes, but they didn't know it. Most of them were not yet twenty years old in June 1940, when France found itself on the ground. They were starting careers, studies, had families, friends. None had heard General de Gaulle's call on June 18, but all listened to Marshal Pétain's speech on the 17th, asking to stop fighting. They immediately rebelled and joined London or the Resistance. Through the testimonies of seven of the last Companions of the Liberation (made in 2013), this film tells us about their unwavering commitment and takes us in their footsteps until the Liberation.
A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Produced and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi leaders, this film consists primarily of dead and surviving prisoners and of facilities used to kill and torture during the World War II.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
A faithful retelling of the 1942 "Vel' d'Hiv Roundup" and the events surrounding it.
What happened after Einstein fled Nazi Germany? Using archival footage and his own words, this docudrama dives into the mind of a tortured genius.
Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.
With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
In WWII Western Germany, Private David Manning reluctantly leaves behind a mortally wounded fellow soldier and searches for survivors from his platoon, only to learn from commanding officer Captain Pritchett that they have all been killed in action. Despite requesting a discharge on the grounds of mental disability, Manning is promoted to sergeant and assigned to lead a new platoon of young inductees.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
A Romanian peasant fights to get back to his family after he's imprisoned by the Nazis.The picture is based on real events. It includes Hungary's government in collaboration with the Nazis, the encroachment of Romania by Stalin's troopers, and other happenings.
In a small town in WWII France, a German officer is billeted in the house of an elderly man and his niece who resist the occupation by refusing to interact with him, even as he speaks to them candidly about his life and hopes for the future of France and Germany.
The documentary recounts the world's first nuclear attack and examines the alarming repercussions. Covering a three-week period from the Trinity test to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the program chronicles America's political gamble and the planning for the momentous event. Archival film, dramatizations, and special effects feature what occurred aboard the Enola Gay (the aircraft that dropped the bomb) and inside the exploding bomb.
A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.
In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler's right-hand man.
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?
The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.
In the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, Jews rise against the Nazis.
When loyalty to country becomes loyalty to a lie, one teen risks everything to expose the truth. With the Gestapo closing in, he must decide what it really means to be a good German.
The story of mime Marcel Marceau as he works with a group of Jewish boy scouts and the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II.
