The Ruler

Stalin’s statue in the garden of a nunnery provokes discussion – plenty of it – in a small Georgian village. Some of the locals used to know Stalin personally because he visited the village several times when he was young, and they continue to see him as a benign ruler from the good old days rather than the brutal dictator he was. Whenever an episode of purge shook the Soviet Union’s republics, they hid the statue in the woods. The church also plays an important role in people’s lives. All in all, the film reveals a fundamental conflict in Georgian society.

Cannibal Island

A disturbing chapter in Russian history is explored in this documentary. In 1933, Joseph Stalin sent 6000 "unwanted" citizens of Moscow and Leningrad to a desolate Siberian island - with no food or clothes to speak of. Decades later this documentary returns to the island.

Barbarossa: Hitler Turns East

Hitler's invasion of Russia was one of the landmark events of World War II. This documentary reveals the lead-up to the offensive, its impact on the war and the brinksmanship that resulted from the battle for Moscow. Rare footage from both German and Russian archives and detailed maps illustrate the conflict, while award-winning historian and author John Erickson provides insight into the pivotal maneuvers on the eastern front.

People of Russia

This FitzPatrick Miniature visits the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the largest geographically unbroken political unit in the world, covering one-sixth of the world's land mass.

Stalin: Inside the Terror

This program is an overview of the life and career of Joseph Stalin. It concentrates on describing and attempting to explain the origins of the policy of “terror” instigated by Stalin as leader of the USSR. There are interviews with surviving family members and experts all of whom attempt some sort of personality “analysis” of the dictator to explain his behaviour and policies. Another question that is examined is, given his record of “terror”, why was he so popular? Why did so many Russians mourn his death in 1953? This could be an overview and introduction to a study of both Stalin and USSR in the post revolution period.

Monstrum

Gulag

Documentary examining Stalin's Gulag. Between the October Revolution and Stalin's death in 1953, millions of people died in the camps. The film explores the Gulag legacy, hearing from victims and perpetrators of the system.

Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.

Stalin's Last Plot

January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.

Stalin: Man of Steel

Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.

Women of the Gulag

Through unique and candid interviews the film tells the compelling and tragic stories of the six women – last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression and terror that devastated the Soviet population during the regime of Stalin.

Geheimes Russland: Moskaus Unterwelten

What lies hidden beneath Moscow? Subway palaces full of Soviet propaganda, Stalin's magnificent bunkers, centuries-old river systems. For decades, there have been repeated clues, cryptic statements and hints about Moscow's underground. The cinematic search for clues shows Stalin's command bunker and the government object GO-42, a headquarters of the Soviet military during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. A residential house with potted plants and curtains was built over GO-42 as camouflage. Until the end of the Cold War, specially trained soldiers took care of the bourgeois residential charm and turned on the lights in the evening while 2,000 people threatened the world around the clock with intercontinental missiles. The documentary also shows encounters with the illegal explorers of these complex transportation and housing systems, the Diggers.

Song of Heroes

The building of blast furnaces Magnitogorsk and the Kubas Basin by Komsomol, the Communist Union of youth, as part of Stalin’s first five-year plan.

The Hitler–Stalin Pact

How could Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, come to a secret pact in 1939? The captivating and detailed story of the diplomatic fiasco that led to the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact and its devastating consequences.

Stalin, the Red Tyrant

On March 9, 1953, Joseph Stalin was buried in Moscow in front of a million people. His funeral is that of a demi-God. Ultimate paradox for one of the greatest criminals in History who brought misfortune to his people while arousing collective admiration.

Silent Displacement – The Unknown Deportation of Ingria

"It Happened in Ingermanland" - about a forgotten people's displacement that took place during the Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union. During the WW2, when the Nazi army arrived in the area of St. Peterburg/Leningrad about 63 000 Ingermanlanders was deported to Finland. In 1946 Stalin wanted them back for his work camps. About 5 000 fled to Sweden and settled there.

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) - Muse of Keening

A short film by Barry Lowe and Dino Mahoney, starring Pauline Burton as Anna. The film is an introduction to the great Soviet era modernist poet, Anna Akhmatova; shot in winter in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), it contains rare interviews with people who knew her, academics, and dramatized readings of some of her poems.

The Last Freedom of Georgy Konstantinov

A film about the dramatic and extraordinary fate of the lonely man who confronted the meat grinder of the communist regime. Georgy Konstantinov, 19 years old, blew up Stalin's monument in Sofia and death passed him by only because the dictator died two days later. He miraculously survived 10 years in prison and psychiatric wards and managed to escape to France. His State Security file numbers more than 40,000 pages. Even today, he does not cease to expose the crimes of the regime with the strength of truth and of his character.

Children of the Revolution

A man (Richard Roxburgh) the Australian government blames for 1990s political woes blames his mother (Judy Davis), a communist Stalin seduced in 1951.

The Ambush

Idealistic young man supports the party and the new Yugoslavia's communist regime, but soon gets involved in various political and criminal machinations becoming more and more confused about what's right and what's wrong.

Room 237

A subjective documentary that explores various theories about hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick's classic film The Shining. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments.

Wormwood

In this genre-bending tale, Errol Morris explores the mysterious death of a U.S. scientist entangled in a secret Cold War program known as MK-Ultra.

A Decade Under the Influence

A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.

John Candy: I Like Me

Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me

From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.

Night Will Fall

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".

Elstree 1976

A documentary about ten very different lives connected by having appeared onscreen wearing masks or helmets in Star Wars.

Louis Theroux: Twilight of the Porn Stars

In 1997, Louis Theroux made a documentary about the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles. 15 years later, he returns to find a business struggling with the deluge of free porn on the internet. Louis revisits some of the original programme's contributors as well as meeting the latest crop of porn performers dreaming of porn stardom.

Fuck

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

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski

Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.

Love, Antosha

From a prolific career in film and television, Anton Yelchin left an indelible legacy as an actor. Through his journals and other writings, his photography, the original music he wrote, and interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues, this film looks not just at Anton's impressive career, but at a broader portrait of the man.

Cameraperson

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

I Am Heath Ledger

The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.

The Skywalker Legacy

The story lives forever in this feature-length documentary that charts the making of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Sidney

This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.

42 Up

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.

Listen to Me Marlon

With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.

McQueen

Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.

Avatar: The Deep Dive - A Special Edition of 20/20

An inside look at one of the most anticipated movie sequels ever with James Cameron and cast.