Like Stone Lions in the Gateway into Night

In 2016, DEFA celebrates its 70th anniversary: the film embarks on a journey into the exciting film history of the GDR. In a comprehensive kaleidoscope, the importance of DEFA productions is illuminated, the relevance of the films as propaganda productions for the GDR, which socio-political themes were in the foreground, but also which heroes DEFA brought to the screen and celebrated as people from the people.

Atypical dive into the world of a particularly talented artist of today: Alexandre Tharaud. Born of parents who were themselves familiar with the stage, Alexandre combines his passion for the piano and his fertile intranquillity under the eye of an intimate camera. A film conducted in the form of an exploration of intimate moments where the artist is much more in front of himself than the public, a confrontation at once gentle and brutal to his passion, to his unattainable star. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This chilling, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The film contains unedited, previously unavailable film footage of Auschwitz shot by the Soviet military forces between January 27 and February 28, 1945 and includes an interview with Alexander Voronsov, the cameraman who shot the footage. The horrifying images include: survivors; camp visit by Soviet investigation commission; criminal experiments; forced laborers; evacuation of ill and weak prisoners with the aid of Russian and Polish volunteers; aerial photos of the IG Farben Works in Monowitz; and pictures of local people cleaning up the camp under Soviet supervision. - Written by National Center for Jewish Film

Olympiacos: The Legend is the epic story of a season that defied all expectations and rewrote European football history. In 2023/24, Olympiacos shattered barriers by becoming the first Greek club to win a European trophy-and didn't stop there. In a feat never before accomplished, they claimed not one but two major continental titles: the UEFA Europa Conference League and the UEFA Youth League.

Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

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.

An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.

Performed by Constance Smith, Pauline Cushman-Fryer tells us how she became a Union Spy, was almost hanged, was granted the rank of Major by Abraham Lincoln, and died lonely in San Francisco from an overdose of opium.

Unknown short stories from the past, the present and the future of fascism and its relation to the economic interests of each era. We will travel from Mussolini’s Italy to Greece under the Nazi occupation, the civil war and the dictatorship; and from Hitler’s Germany to the modern European and Greek fascism.

George Stevens's remarkable film is acclaimed by historians as the most important colour footage taken during the war. Milestones covered include the liberation of Paris, the link-up between the Russian and American armies on the River Elbe and the Allied capture of the Dachau concentration camp.

In 1831 African American slave, and preacher, Nat Turner lead a bloody slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia. It was a fight against the enslavement of African and American people of color who longed for freedom from tyranny. This one-hour doc follows Roger Guenveur Smith as he travels to Southampton County, Virginia to take viewers on a physical journey through the town, fields and farms where Turner lived, fought, and died; along the way meeting with academics, locals, and descendants to peel back the layers of one of the most misunderstood Americans in history. In addition to candid discussions on historical and contemporary racial tensions, Roger asks us to consider why Turner is not lofted up across America as an early black revolutionary figure who helped to shape the nation.

The extraordinary destiny of two people. After the Second World War, Lois is an actress in Broadway theatre, television and Hollywood films. Her husband, Edgar Snow, is world famous. A pioneer fascinated by China, he is the first journalist to film and interview Mao Tse-tung. Suspected by the American authorities of Communist sympathies, Ed and Lois are blacklisted. Together with their two small children, they go to Switzerland, mid-way between China and America, where they find a new home. A story of revolution, utopia, disillusionment, and hope.

Caroline Sturdy Colls, a world leader in the forensic investigation of Nazi crime scenes, is chasing clues to an unsolved case: a concentration camp that existed on the British island of Alderney. Witnesses and survivors claimed that thousands died there, but only 389 bodies have ever been found. Under heavy restrictions imposed by the local government, which may not want its buried secrets revealed, Colls must uncover the truth using revolutionary techniques and technologies.

A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.