Anna

Talks with TGM(cs)

On 26 September 1928, Karel Capek and President T.G. Masaryk meet in the gardens of Topolcianky castle to decide about the fate of their joint literary work. Their fiction film dialogue is based on quotes from a future book and their mutual correspondence, considerably freeing the original format of literary conversation from binding conventions. Capek and Masaryk reproach and offend each other, but they also ask key personal questions and questions about the social functions of a writer and politician respectively. "It's a film about two extraordinary men; it's about the fact that emotions can be sometimes more powerful than ideas even in such exceptional people.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him(de)

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Hangmen Also Die!(en)

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.

It's Better to Be Healthy and Wealthy than Poor and Sick(sk)

A satiric tragi-comedy about two women and their lover Robert who is an emigrant that keeps coming back. This film shows chaotic post-communist Europe after the fall of totalitarianism. Two opposite characters, women, meet during the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. Intellectual dissident Nona and a Communist secret police boss’ mistress Ester. They meet at an anti-regime demonstration and become friends. They don’t want anything to do with politics, both want to get married and have kids, but also get rich. Crazy plans and risky attempts to realize their shared dreams land them in many sticky situations in the post-revolution chaos. Too much money gets in the way of the power of friendship.

One Life(en)

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.

Fair Play(cs)

In the 1980s, Anna, a Czech sprinter, starts training for the Olympics. After she collapses during training, she learns she is being given steroids and decides to stop using them until her mother helps the coaches give them to her.

Broken Promise(sk)

Slovakia, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. The family of the young Jewish Martin Friedmann gathers to celebrate his bar mitzvah and make a solemn promise that they will all meet again a year later around the same table; but the storms of war and anti-Semitic fanaticism will lead each of them down very different paths.

The Fourth War(en)

Cold War adversaries Col. Jack Knowles and his Russian counterpart, Col. Valachev, are stationed on opposite sides of the German-Czech border. Both men are responsible for a group of troops in their remote settings, and both have been shaped by their combat experiences and a shared aversion to their superiors' ways of doing things. After a defector is killed, things escalate into a full-fledged battle with serious geopolitical ramifications.

Akce Rys(cs)

Forbidden Dreams(cs)

Leo Popper is a happy family man living in rural Bohemia in the years preceding the Nazi invasion. Out of economic necessity he moves with his family to the big city and becomes an enterprising vacuum cleaner salesman. There he embarks on a series of adulterous adventures, has encounters with boxing pros and famous portrait artists, and schemes to purchase the perfect pond to fulfill his passion for fishing. When the Nazis gain control, the comedy turns sour - he loses his lake, his job, and finally, his family.

Man on a Tightrope(en)

The owner of an impoverished circus in Communist-ruled Czechoslovokia plots to flee across the border to freedom, taking his entire troupe of performers and wild animals with him.

Hitler's Madman(en)

In 1942, a young paratrooper in the RAF returns to Czechoslovakia to encourage his fellow countrymen to sabotage the German war effort.

The Butcher of Prague(cs)

Czechoslovakia, 1941. As the war continues, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich arrives in Nazi-occupied Prague and establishes a regime of terror that will force freedom fighters to act. But the price to pay will be too high.

Někdo schází u stolu(cs)

A young widow with two children, a member of the spa orchestra, with the help of the devoted friends and the understanding of her children, she manages, quite well, with her demanding "double". The problems arise when he succeeds in a prestigious audition for the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and then he will go on a long foreign tour.

Adelheid(cs)

In the aftermath of World War II, a soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family and falls in love with the daughter, now a maid. Their relationship forces him to confront the tension between his love and his conscience.

Alois Nebel(cs)

A train dispatcher encounters a mute stranger who appears out of nowhere, and finds himself mysteriously involved with a murder in Poland. The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dis­patcher at the small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village on the Czech–Polish border. He's a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Eu­rope. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in sanatorium. In the sanatorium, he gets to know The Mute, a man carrying an old photograph who was arrested by the police after crossing the border. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey…

Men Without Wings(cs)

After an attack against the guard of the Third Reich, Nazi repression intensifies, and the Czechoslovakian resistance's organized sabotage in an aircraft factory leads to Gestapo shootings.

An Earthly Paradise for the Eyes(cs)

Adolescence is always a difficult time; it is doubly so for Gábina. For one thing, she is growing up in the normalization years of the 1970s, and then she also has to face the reality that her father is a well-known actor disavowed by the regime. Although he abandoned the family years before, his existence casts an ominous shadow over the lives of not only Gábina, but also her older sister and mother, who are trying to find a civilized way through the social mire of the times.

Invasion(en)

Docu-drama surrounding the events leading to the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Toman(cs)

This fascinating historical drama looks at the life of "the Czech Schindler," Zdenek Toman, a controversial figure who was an unsavory politician and dubious entrepreneur, but also the savior of hundreds of Eastern European Jews.

Notturno(it)

A portrait of those trying to survive in the war-torn Middle East.

Chou Deneiban SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors(ja)

A Romance of the Three Kingdoms retelling using SD Gundams. (Source: Myanimelist.net)

The Wedding Veil Inspiration(en)

Emma's plans get thrown off course when Paolo returns to Italy to take care of his father and she discovers a new passion for making art accessible to all.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening(en)

Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.

Who's That Knocking at My Door(en)

A Catholic New Yorker falls in love with a girl and wants to marry her, but he struggles to accept her past and what it means for their future.

Projota - AMADMOL (A Milenar Arte de Meter o Louco)(pt)

Mala Noche(en)

Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in taboo trysts and a tangled love triangle.

Spring(ru)

This is a story about a city guy Nikolai, who will have to go instead of his friend on a rural business trip. A series of funny events, meetings and the beauty of the Yakut village encourage Nikolai to make an important decision in his life…

Dschugaswili from Georgia(de)

Forced collectivism, famines, errors and mistakes mark Stalin´s ruthless rise to dictorial power and only increase his madness until he even declares a chicken to be an English spy that should be liquidated.

Shoot the Piano Player(fr)

Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.

A Madonna in Laleli(tr)

Pimps want to expand and conquer the world, by abiding the greats and oppressing the losers, but they lose their prostitute to some sailors.

My Night at Maud's(fr)

The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to.

Absurd Encounter with Fear(en)

A man approaches a woman in a field.

Laura(en)

A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

The Purple Rose of Cairo(en)

Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey, living a dreary life during the Great Depression. Her only escape from her mundane reality is the movie theatre. After losing her job, Cecilia goes to see 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' in hopes of raising her spirits, where she watches dashing archaeologist Tom Baxter time and again.

The Damned(it)

In the early days of Nazi Germany, a powerful noble family must adjust to life under the new dictatorship regime.

Inland Empire(en)

An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

Dolemite(en)

Dolemite is a pimp who was set up by Willie Greene and the cops, who have planted drugs, stolen furs, and guns in his trunk and got him sentenced to 20 years in jail. One day, Queen B and a warden planned to get him out of Jail and get Willie Green and Mitchell busted for what they did to him.

Crossing Iceland(en)

Jerome Josserand is a professional snow kiter. In 2007 he set the world record for the highest kite flight. It was 450 m above the ground. Jerome is in love with wind and its power to use it to mount high mountains. His home is a place called Col du Lautaret which is also his playground. On his way he found Iceland. He noticed that there is snow and wind all the time. And he thought:” What if I would cross Iceland from southern to northern Iceland in just one day, with just power of wind?” And so he did. Crossing Iceland in such winter conditions was extremely tough and demanding. He needed to be in great physical and psychical preparation. There was wind exceeding 80km/h, there was equipment failure at -25C while shooting the movie, there was snow and freezing Icelandic nature everywhere. Even though Jerome prepared himself well for this journey, in the end everything depends of the power of wind… The question is – did he succeed? Did he make his wish come true?

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty(en)

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.