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.
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 Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their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.
Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.
A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.
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.
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 central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the 'little brother number' or 'brother trick', involving advanced role-play and gang rhetoric rather than physical violence.
On a trip across Western Europe to promote her newest release, filmmaker Anna encounters several individuals—familiar and otherwise—and attends to their discontents.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Desperate to put the traumatic loss of their infant child behind them, newlywed couple Khalid and Salama return to their home in the United Arab Emirates. Unknown to the couple, their new luxury apartment block, Al Hamra, was built on the site of an old abandoned fishing village of the same name. Legend has it the village was abandoned after malevolent beings haunted its inhabitants. Unsettled by her new surroundings and the eerie hallways of Al Hamra, Khalid worries his wife is failing to battle her personal demons – but could it be something far more sinister?
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.
In one tragic night, Quantum Physics Professor Jacob Matthews loses his wife...his everything. What he does to get her back will bring him to the edge of madness.
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.]
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.
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.
A lyrical fourfold perspective on WWII through the eyes of a young partisan couple, a town photographer and a German officer.
Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.
After being abducted as children, and suffering years of abuse, a teenage boy and girl find themselves living on the street.
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
The life of a woman is transformed after she is diagnosed with a terminal disease, fired from her job and abandoned by her boyfriend. Given two months to live, she throws caution to the wind to pursue her dreams.
Biographical account of America's President for the latter part of WWII. Shows Truman's rise from small-town nobody to leader of the USA, his decision to use the Atomic Bomb against Japan, and subsequent election as the US' post-war President.
At the start of World War II, Cmdr. Ericson is assigned to convoy escort HMS Compass Rose with inexperienced officers and men just out of training. The winter seas make life miserable enough, but the men must also harden themselves to rescuing survivors of U-Boat attacks, while seldom able to strike back. Traumatic events afloat and ashore create a warm bond between the skipper and his first officer
It is 1940 in Norway, a neutral, peace-loving country that is invaded by Nazi Germany. A gang of Norwegian children do what Norwegian children like best - ski. They are actually rescuing Norwegian gold from the nazi invaders. The Nazis search all adults but don't suspect children playing. The children carry the gold, one bar at a time, across the mountains to a fishing boat. It is a race against time, it is spring and the snow is melting. So they ski from dawn to dusk every day.
The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their country's cause.
Liu Xing a brilliant Chinese student, arrives at University and makes the transition into American life with the help of Joanna Silver. Xing joins a cosmology group working to create a model of the origins of the universe. He is obsessed with the study of dark matter and a theory that conflicts with the group's model. When he begins to make breakthroughs of his own, he encounters obstructions.
Using never-before-seen footage, Japan's War In Colour tells a previously untold story. It recounts the history of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective, combining original colour film with letters and diaries written by Japanese people. It tells the story of a nation at war from the diverse perspectives of those who lived through it: the leaders and the ordinary people, the oppressors and the victims, the guilty and the innocent. Until recently, it was believed that no colour film of Japan existed prior to 1945. But specialist research has now unearthed a remarkable colour record from as early as the 1930s. For eight years the Japanese fought what they believed was a Holy War that became a fight to the death. Japan's War In Colour shows how militarism took hold of the Japanese people; describes why Japan felt compelled to attack the West; explains what drove the Japanese to resist the Allies for so long; and, finally, reveals how they dealt with the shame of defeat.
This film chronicles the life of Lane Frost, 1987 PRCA Bull Riding World Champion, his marriage and his friendships with Tuff Hedeman (three-time World Champion) and Cody Lambert.
A small band of misfit American commandos are assigned to head across the North African desert to blow up a huge German fuel depot.
Two beautiful and different girls, Alice and Lisette are 17 years old, when forcibly removed from their Alsatian family to cooperate in the war effort in Germany. After spending six months in a indoctrination camp, they are both sent to a munitions factory where they are tasked to perform inhuman works. An explosion erupts, they are suspected of sabotage and threatened with being sent to a boot camp. Alice and Lisette believe they saved when transferred to a maternity where they continue living the hell of war.
The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.
Lieutenant Braden discovers that Sally, the woman he's been falling in love with, has actually been checking out his qualifications to be a U.S. Navy frogman. He must put his personal life behind him after being assigned to be smuggled into a Japanese-held island via submarine to photograph radio codes.
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Three pre-adolescents with virginal and eager-of-signals naivety, hit headlong against monstrous and inhospitable loneliness, in the incandescent fire among the ashes of their own inocence.
A three-paneled look at the worldwide AIDS crisis: in Montreal, a porn actor schemes to pass his mandatory blood test; a young nun makes a personal sacrifice for the benefit of a South African village; in rural China, a black market operative posing as a government-sanctioned blood drawer jeopardizes an entire village's safety