1945: The Savage Peace(2015)

Night Will Fall(en)

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

The Last Days(en)

Five Jewish Hungarians, now US citizens, tell their stories: before March 1944, when Nazis began to exterminate Hungarian Jews, months in concentration camps, and visiting childhood homes more than 50 years later. An historian, a Sonderkommando, a doctor who experimented on Auschwitz prisoners, and US soldiers who were part of the liberation in April 1945.

Anthropoid(en)

In December 1941, Czech soldiers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into their occupied homeland to assassinate Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich.

Nazi Concentration Camps(en)

Produced and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi leaders, this film consists primarily of dead and surviving prisoners and of facilities used to kill and torture during the World War II.

Operation: Daybreak(en)

Czechoslovakia, 1942. Three brave Czech patriots risk everything to rid their country of its brutal Nazi leader, SS-General Reinhard Heydrich.

The Green Book: Guide to Freedom(en)

In 1936, Victor H. Green (1892-1960) published The Negro Motorist Green Book, a book that was both a travel guide and a survival manual, to help African-Americans navigate safe those regions of the United States where segregation and Jim Crow laws were disgracefully applied.

The Passage(en)

During WW 2, a Basque shepherd is approached by the underground, who wants him to lead a scientist and his family across the Pyrenees. While being pursued by a sadistic German.

We Go In at Dawn(en)

When a high-ranking war planner is captured and held in a German prisoner of war camp, a team of specialists take on the dangerous mission of trying to break him out. Trouble is, he doesn't want to be rescued.

The Man with the Iron Heart(en)

With the Third Reich at its peak in 1942, the Czech resistance in London plans the most ambitious military operation of WWII – Anthropoid. Two young recruits are sent to Prague to assassinate the most ruthless Nazi leader – Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, the Gestapo and the architect of the Final Solution.

Red Scorpion(en)

A Soviet commando is sent to eliminate a rebel leader in Africa. Soon he finds himself doubting his mission.

The Odessa File(en)

Following the suicide of an elderly Jewish man, investigative journalist Peter Miller sets out to hunt down an SS Captain and former concentration camp commander. In doing so he discovers that, despite allegations of war crimes, the former commander has become a man of importance in industry in post-war Germany, protected from prosecution by a powerful organisation of former SS members called Odessa.

Torn Curtain(en)

During the Cold War, an American scientist appears to defect to East Germany as part of a cloak and dagger mission to find the formula for a resin solution—but the plan goes awry when his fiancee, unaware of his motivation, follows him across the border.

Fuck(en)

A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.

Monkey Man(en)

Kid is an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.

Red Army(en)

A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.

Marwencol(en)

After a vicious attack leaves him brain-damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in "Marwencol", a 1/6th scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard.

20 Days in Mariupol(en)

As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities.

Louis Theroux: Louis and the Nazis(en)

Louis Theroux travels to California to meet the man dubbed "the most dangerous racist in America"; Tom Metzger. Louis meets him, his family and his publicity manager as well as following him to skinhead rallies and on a visit to Mexico.

Cornered(en)

A World War II veteran hunts down the Nazi collaborators who killed his wife.

Five Came Back(en)

The extraordinary story of how Hollywood changed World War II – and how World War II changed Hollywood, through the interwoven experiences of five legendary filmmakers who went to war to serve their country and bring the truth to the American people: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens. Based on Mark Harris’ best-selling book, “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.”

Akiko's Piano: Chords Played by the Surviving Piano(ja)

1940, Kawamoto Akiko lives in Hiroshima with her father and mother, Genkichi and Shizuko, as well as her two younger brothers. Akiko loves playing her favourite piano. As the war situation worsens, she is busy helping out the war efforts. On the morning of August 6, 1945, she disobeys her father and heads into the centre of town for work. In Hiroshima 75 years later, her favourite piano remains, restored and playable following its survival of the atomic bombing

Memoirs of a Geisha(en)

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

Woman of...(pl)

Aniela has lived the first half of her life as a man: with an office job, a wife, and two children. But neither her family's opposition nor repression by the government in Poland can stop her from finally becoming the person she's always been.

Hitler's Evil Science(fr)

In 1935, German scientists dug for bones; in 1943, they murdered to get them. How the German scientific community supported Nazism, distorted history to legitimize a hideous system and was an accomplice to its unspeakable crimes. The story of the Ahnenerbe, a sinister organization created to rewrite the obscure origins of a nation.

Prisoner of War(en)

British RAF Wing Commander James Wright is captured by the Japanese during WWII and forced to fight in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The Japanese soldiers get more than they bargained for when Wright’s years of martial arts training in Hong Kong prove him to be a formidable opponent.

Earth(hi)

It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.

The Godmother(fr)

Marzena Sowa is a quintessential contemporary European: independent, aware of how the world works—or should work—and single. After her mother’s death, she is consumed by longing and sets off for her distant homeland, a Polish village where her beloved aunt Niuszka—an embodiment of joie de vivre and peace with herself—lived her entire life under the heavy weight of patriarchy. The film becomes a collision of social models, resolved with an open ending.

The Partisan(en)

A Polish spy working for the British during World War II is betrayed and compromised in Warsaw, leaving her no other choice but to descend into a dangerous world of treachery and deception in order to survive.

Female Agents(fr)

May 1944, a group of French servicewomen and resistance fighters are enlisted into the British Special Operations Executive commando group under the command of Louise Desfontaines and her brother Pierre. Their mission, to rescue a British army geologist caught reconnoitering the beaches at Normandy.

Enemy at the Gates(en)

A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.

Saving Private Ryan(en)

As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.

Mirror(ru)

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.

God Does Not Believe in Us Anymore(de)

After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.

The Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone(es)

An attempt to create a bridge between the different political positions that coexist, sometimes violently, in the Basque Country, in northern Spain.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days(de)

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.

Tiananmen: The People Versus the Party(en)

The true story of the seven weeks that changed China forever. On June 4, 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations were violently and bloodily repressed. Thousands of people died, but the basis for China's future was definitely planted.

Gena Rowlands: A Life on Film(de)

An intimate portrait of the superb actress Gena Rowlands, icon of independent cinema. Together with her husband, legendary director John Cassavetes (1929-89), she lived an unusual life beyond the dream factory, a life in which reality and fiction were so perfectly intertwined that it made possible films that still today seem incredibly real.

The Old Gun(fr)

In Montauban in 1944, Julien Dandieu is a surgeon in the local hospital. Frightened by the German army entering Montauban, he asks his friend Francois to drive his wife and his daughter in the back country village where Julien has an old castle. One week later, Julien decides to meet them for the week end, but the Germans are already occupying the village.

Czechoslovakia on Parade(en)

This FitzPatrick Traveltalk series short looks at Czechoslovakia before World War II, including images of bridges, churches, and castles in Prague, also a non-military parade through the city.

Auschwitz, la machine de mort nazie(fr)