An Optimistic Tragedy

The Wars of the Roses: A Bloody Crown(en)

Using historically-accurate, battle-filled re-enactments and interviews with expert historians and noted authors, this two-part documentary series brings to vivid life the captivating true stories behind Britain's bloody civil wars.

A Loyal Deserter(en)

Paul Worthington, a Federal private, receives a letter from their family physician apprising him of the dangerous illness of his mother. He takes the letter to the commanding officer with a request for a "leave of absence," but Col. Colfax refuses emphatically. Paul determines to visit his mother at any cost, however, realizing the gravity of his offense at the time of war. He leaves the camp, does his filial duty, and while at home General Buchner and his aides from the Confederate side use the lower part of the house for a consultation as it is in the war zone. Paul manages to overhear an important plan to trap General Grant. He memorizes, gets through the lines, warns the great Commander in time, and is pardoned for his loyal desertion.

Carla's Song(en)

A Glasgow man visits war-torn Nicaragua with a refugee tormented by her memories.

The Leopard(it)

As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley(en)

In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.

Lenin in Paris(ru)

Cows(es)

A film set in the Basque region, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.

Shooting Dogs(en)

Two westerners, a priest and a teacher find themselves in the middle of the Rwandan genocide and face a moral dilemna. Do they place themselves in danger and protect the refugees, or escape the country with their lives? Based on a true story.

Johnny Mad Dog(en)

A cast of unknown performers are used in this drama about child soldiers fighting a war in an unnamed African country.

Sahara(en)

Seasoned adventurer and treasure hunter Dirk Pitt, a former Navy SEAL, sets out for the African desert with his wisecracking buddy Al in search of a confederate ironclad battleship rumored to have vanished long ago, the main draw being the treasure supposedly hidden within the lost vessel. When the daring duo come across Dr. Eva Rojas, a beautiful scientist who is juggling an escape from a warlord and a mission to stop the spread of a powerful plague, their desert expedition begins to heat up.

Tears of the Sun(en)

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.

Earth and Ashes(ps)

Elderly Dastaguir and his newly deaf 5-year-old grandson Yassin hitchhike and walk, but mostly walk, as they make their way to the coal mine where Dastaguir's son Murad works. Dastaguir must tell Murad that the rest of their family were all killed in a recent bomb attack.

Indochine(fr)

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

Gettysburg(en)

In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee leads the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the goal of marching through to Washington, D.C. The Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, forms a defensive position to confront the rebel forces in what will prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.

Death on a Full Moon Day(si)

Drama about a father who refuses to believe in his son's death at war.

The Warlords(zh)

A heroic tale of three blood brothers and their struggle in the midst of war and political upheaval. It is based on "The Assassination of Ma," a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) story about the killing of general Ma Xinyi.

Under False Colors(en)

A young Russian woman escapes persecution in her country and makes her way to the United States. Shortly after her arrival she meets an American millionaire, John Colton.

Nagrody i odznaczenia(pl)

1944. Three wounded officers from both sides of political conflict meet in the hospital where the staff is politically divided too.

The White Sun of the Desert(ru)

The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America(en)

Through the eyes of a British "documentary", this film takes a satirically humorous, and sometimes frightening, look at the history of an America where the South won the Civil War.

The Fighter(fr)

Jacques Darnay has served 8 years for robbing a jeweller. Now he is out of prison and looking for his loot worth 6 million francs.

Japon : Histoire du Shooting Game(fr)

A 2006 French documentary on Shooting games (STG).

WWE Survivor Series 2009(en)

Survivor Series (2009) was a PPV which took place on November 22, 2009 at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.. It was the 23rd annual Survivor Series event. There were two matches that were deemed the main events of the program. The first was the triple threat match featuring The Undertaker defending the World Heavyweight Championship against the Unified WWE Tag Team Champions Chris Jericho and The Big Show. This was also followed by the another triple threat main event match with John Cena defending the WWE Championship against Triple H and Shawn Michaels. Four matches comprised the undercard of the event. The first was the team of WWE US Champion The Miz, Sheamus, Drew McIntyre, Jack Swagger, and Dolph Ziggler versus WWE IC Champion John Morrison, Matt Hardy, Shelton Benjamin, Finlay, and Evan Bourne. This was later followed by Kofi Kingston leading the team of Christian, MVP, Mark Henry, and R-Truth versus Randy Orton, CM Punk, William Regal, Cody Rhodes, and Ted DiBiase.

Big Sur Gay Porn(en)

Cult filmmaker Tom DeSimone (Reform School Girls; Erotikus: A History of the Gay Movie) revisits the production of a lost gay film and resurrects youthful adventures on the California coast. From the creators of Raw! Uncut! Video!.

Juventud rebelde(es)

Film Studies Project(en)

A strange student encounters surreal horrors over the course of one day.

Girls Like Magic(en)

Explores the blurring lines of the friendship between Magic, a naive people-pleasing Brit, and Jamie, a hard-edged, self-sabotaging lesbian, as they fall for each other in more ways than one.

Fridge(en)

Two Neds are harassing a drunken 'jaikie' and an inebriated resident confronts them. A stand off takes place until one of the Neds shuts a young boy in an abandoned fridge. They leave but threaten to return and burn down the tenement. The residents try to open the fridge but are unsuccessful. Panic initially sets in as they fear the young boy will die.

Gunpowder(ru)

At the end of September 1941, Soviet artillery troops in besieged Leningrad realize that pretty soon they will fire their last shot, and after that the defense of the city will be doomed. The film is based on a true event: a small group of fearless soldiers transported a large supply of gunpowder through enemy lines to Leningrad.

Epilogue(en)

By way of a pure Visual Music experience, the Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian Institution) commissioned a major new work from abstract film artist Jordan Belson, who distilled 60 years of visionary sound and images into a twelve minute videofilm.

Plantados(es)

The film narrates the most horrible tortures that political prisoners "Plantados" received from the Castro regime.

Espinas(es)

Magdalena is fifteen, but unlike many girls her age, her life is apathetic and somber, due to the abuse she receives from her father, a hopeless alcoholic, and her strange passion for Carlos, a neighborhood thug. A series of complex characters parade through Magdalena's life looking for themselves, such as Gabriel, the homosexual brother, and Huker, a violent judicial policeman who has an important secret. A portrait of the emotional depths of the strange and terrible Mexico City.

My First Romance(en)

The first episode is entitled One Love. Jackie is the campus queen, rich, beautiful and liked by everyone except Che, who thinks that Jackie is just a shallow brat. After being forced to work together for school activities, Jackie made it a personal goal for Che to like her. Two Hearts is the second episode. Enzo is a star soccer player at school who loves the attention that he gets. However, he takes many things for granted, this changes when he gets a heart problem and doctors say that only a transplant can save his life.

Chabuca(es)

The story of Ernesto Pimentel’s life, raised humbly after losing his mother, inspires him to create the iconic character La Chola Chabuca, an Andean figure who captivates all of Peru with her colourful skirts and high spirits.

My Brother, the Alien(ja)

The Price of Freedom(en)

The NRA has become an increasing force of political influence, challenging gun control legislation as a direct attack on personal freedom. This deep dive into American gun culture is a passionate call to action.

Bombs Over Burma(en)

The film tells the story of Chinese guerrillas fighting for the Allied cause in Burma during Early in World War II, Chungking schoolteacher Lin Yang is recruited to help with the dangerous mission of protecting the Allied supply line from Burma into China. In spite of the danger involved, her determination to help is strengthened when one of her young students is killed in a Japanese air raid. Some time later, she is part of a group of Allied representatives departing from Lashio, on a bus traveling the Burma Road back to China. A bridge outage forces them to spend the night in a monastery along the way, and during the night they watch in horror as a supply convoy of trucks is bombed by Japanese planes. The timing and accuracy of the raid brings them to realize that either one of their group, or perhaps the priest in the monastery, is really an enemy agent

Donizetti: L'Elisir d'Amore(it)

Rolando Villazon's Baden Baden version of the Donizetti's opera set as an early Hollywood shoot of a western.

Aco Kabadaya(mk)

"Kabadaya" is a Turkish term, which is made up of the words "kaba" and "dahija" (daja), and most generally means a big boaster, bigot. Starting from this characteristic of the city Bitola, the authors of the film made in 2005 cross-section several generations of cultural and social life in the city.