In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.
Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.
An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.
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.
Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.
After their father dies, a family of five children are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq.
In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgling performer has far bigger ambitions and soon sets her sights on a higher-profile role.
The Killers is a 1956 student film by the Soviet and Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky and his fellow students Marika Beiku and Aleksandr Gordon. The film is based on the short story "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway, written in 1927. It was Tarkovsky's first film, produced when he was a student at the State Institute of Cinematography.
In 1918 a young and simple Mongol herdsman and trapper is cheated out of a valuable fox fur by a European capitalist fur trader. Ostracized from the trading post, he escapes to the hills after brawling with the trader who cheated him. In 1920 he becomes a Soviet partisan, and helps the partisans fight for the Soviets against the occupying British army. However he is captured by the British when they try to requisition cattle from the herdsmen at the same time as the commandant meets with a reincarnated Grand Lama. After the trapper is shot, the army discovers an amulet that suggests he is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. They find him still alive, so the army restores his health and plans to use him as the head of a puppet regime. The trapper is thus thrust into prominence as he is placed in charge of the puppet government. By the end, however, the "puppet" turns against his masters in an outburst of fury.
Over the course of one foggy day in August 1912, a retired Irish theater actor grapples with the morphine addiction of his unbalanced wife, debauchery of his older son, and sickness of the youngest son as past guilts, repressed anger, and deep-seated regrets slowly come boiling out, threatening to destroy the family.
A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.
The world's got a lot of problems, but Vir Das has a lot of answers as he discusses travel, religion, his childhood and more in this stand-up special.
A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.
A collage of two-dimensional images of vegetation, each appearing only for a moment, sometimes as a single image, more often with other bits of stem, leaf, bud, or petal. Often we see only the outline of objects against a black background. Black and green are occasionally joined by fragments of orange or of white and blue. The objects in the frame don't move but they are quickly replaced by another collage, giving the feel of rapid motion. Each collage is crisp, its lines etched against the background of black and later of white. Whitman anyone, or Hieronymus Bosch? Although there is no soundtrack, the rapidity of changing images and colors suggests a riot.
Closely based on Franz Kafka's book "Das Schloß", the movie shares the same action on a land surveyor who is called to a village to do a job that no one seems to have ordered. Once there, he takes up the struggle against bureaucracy emanating from the castle.
The heroes in The Black Godfather are members of an African-American criminal organization. Like Brando in The Godfather, they're not averse to robbery and murder, but they do draw the line at narcotics. When the Mafia infiltrates the 'hood with dangerous drugs, the Black Godfather (Rod Perry) orders his minions to put an end to this perfidy.
Ric Burns unearths rarely seen footage and offers keen observations on the life and artistic influence of Andy Warhol. [Made for and aired on PBS's American Masters series.]
An out-of-work architect meets a married woman who has a business proposition for him. The architect begins to suspect the woman's interest in him is not just financial and may actually be deadly.
A savage look at food and sex, helms this black comedy about Japan's sizable and often beleaguered Korean-Japanese community. Motomi Hayashi (Eri Yu), a producer who is thoroughly dedicated to her career, returns to her abode to discover that her porn star sister (Ichio Matsuda) is going to make a film about her family's first reunion in 20 years. Motomi is less than thrilled with the prospect, seeing as all is not well at the Hayashi household. Motomi's father recently got canned from his longtime job at a Pachinko parlor, while her mother secretly plans to mortgage the house to finance her affair with a younger lover. Motomi grows more uneasy when she learns that the porn director in charge of the undertaking is known for mixing fact with fantasy.
Europe, 1940. For thousands of Jews, a Japanese diplomat and his wife defy Tokyo and the Nazis, and offer visas, for life.
A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Held in an L.A. interrogation room, Verbal Kint attempts to convince the feds that a mythic crime lord, Keyser Soze, not only exists, but was also responsible for drawing him and his four partners into a multi-million dollar heist that ended with an explosion in San Pedro harbor – leaving few survivors. Verbal lures his interrogators with an incredible story of the crime lord's almost supernatural prowess.
It's a dreary Christmas 1944 for the American POWs in Stalag 17 and the men in Barracks 4, all sergeants, have to deal with a grave problem—there seems to be a security leak.
The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.
After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.
When cocky military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee and his co-counsel, Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway, are assigned to a murder case, they uncover a hazing ritual that could implicate high-ranking officials such as shady Col. Nathan Jessep.
It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day's leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre "Skala" sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends' flat, he accompanies her home and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front. There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris.
During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnny Gray's beloved locomotive, 'The General'—with Johnnie's lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.
Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow detainee and makes his way to Llaso, Tibet, where he meets the 14-year-old Dalai Lama, whose friendship ultimately transforms his outlook on life.
Trisha, a Filipino transgender woman, suddenly dies while being crowned in a beauty pageant. Her last wish was to be presented as a different celebrity on each night of her wake, but her conservative father wants to bury her as a man.
British stockbroker Nicholas Winton visits Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and forms plans to assist in the rescue of Jewish children before the onset of World War II, in an operation that came to be known as the Kindertransport.
A neo-nazi sentenced to community service at a church clashes with the blindly devotional priest.
Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally upright young man who values honor and discretion, qualities that help him to be recruited for a career in the newly founded OSS. His dedication to his work does not come without a price though, leading him to sacrifice his ideals and eventually his family.