Social & External
Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.
On August 24th of 1940 a group of cameramen cross the immense territory of the Soviet Union before it was attacked by Nazi Germany, and capture multiple aspects of life in this new world.
During the worst days of World War II, the British government asks the mathematician Alan Turing to unravel the mysteries of the German Enigma encryption machine, an impossible task to accomplish without the invaluable information that Hans-Thilo Schmidt, a disenchanted but greedy German citizen, had been handing over to the French secret services since 1931.
This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.
A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.
A documentary about the conquest of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis just prior to World War 2.
The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, was only one of many unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin's ruthless executioners over three decades. The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers was part of a relentless purge, the secrets and details of which have only recently been partially revealed.
As WWII looms, a wealthy widow hires an amateur archaeologist to excavate the burial mounds on her estate. When they make a historic discovery, the echoes of Britain's past resonate in the face of its uncertain future.
Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.
Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.
Documentary examining the events which led up to the Second World War.
This dramatic story concerns the fateful night of March 14-15, 1939, when President Dr. Emil Hácha was forced to sign a document legalizing the establishment of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Screenwriter J. S. Kupka conceived this historical event as a human drama about a man who is faced with the decision of whether to comply with Nazi dictates or risk bloodshed.
In the three years leading up to the Olympics, the Nazi regime saw sport as an invaluable mobilisation and propaganda tool to motivate the "master race". Whether sympathisers or followers, German athletes went along with it; however, a number of them came to regret their decisions.
Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World War II and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power. The storyline focuses heavily on Jewish-Czech Silberstein family members. Drama was filmed on the real events as a tribute to Mr. Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport from German-occupied Czechoslovakia and likely death in the Holocaust.
When the Nazi army occupied Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939, the Czech nation faced a period of mortal danger. A few weeks later, Major General Alois Eliáš entered the most dramatic period of his life – on April 27, 1939, he was appointed Prime Minister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This was despite the fact that the Nazis were aware of Eliáš's activities in the Russian and then French Czechoslovak legions, and that he was an advocate of active defense at the time of the Munich capitulation. Alois Eliáš accepted the position in the Protectorate government with full awareness of the risks and dangers: he was aware that by cooperating with the Nazis he would tarnish his name, and he knew that he could not do without feigned loyalty.
The compilation documentary We Will Remain Faithful is a testimony to the Czechoslovak resistance during the Second World War. The film covers the period from the end of the First Czechoslovak Republic to the victorious Allied advance in 1944. Director Jiří Weiss compiled it from archival footage, his own authentic and subsequently staged war footage, and material from both Allied and enemy newsreels.
Biography of Karel Čapek.
