


2025-01-19
8
8.2Oliver Stone charts the history of the United States from the Second World War to the present.
8.2Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
6.8Former United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
6.8The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
7.4A 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.
7.0Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
6.9A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
6.4This documentary brings to life the stories of four people believed by their family and friends to be “DB Cooper,” a man who hijacked a 727 flying out of Seattle and jumped from the plane over the wilds of Washington State with a parachute and $200,000, never to be heard from again.
7.6When 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".
7.5Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
7.2Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.
7.2With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
6.0From 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.
7.1An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
7.6A years-in-the-making documentary on the legendary punk band the Ramones. Through a mixture of archival footage, archival and new interviews with all members of the band's various lineups, and new interviews with a number of their contemporaries, the film traces the peaks and valleys the band experienced over the course of its 20-plus year career before disbanding in 1995.
6.4She was once as famous as Jackie O—and then she tried to take down a President. Martha Mitchell was the unlikeliest of whistleblowers: a Republican wife who was discredited by Nixon to keep her quiet. Until now.
7.6A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.
6.8Experience the iconic rock band's legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era’s avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage.
6.2Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
7.8Elliot Ness, an ambitious prohibition agent, is determined to take down Al Capone. In order to achieve this goal, he forms a group given the nickname “The Untouchables”.
7.1An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.
0.0In August 1936, the Olympic Games, orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda, took place in Berlin. This was a vast charm offensive designed to present Germany as a nation that respected the Olympic principles of equality and fraternity. This documentary reveals the political strategies of the Third Reich, which benefited from the complicity of the International Olympic Committee in thwarting calls for a boycott by several countries. Once the games were over, Nazi policy intensified. How could the civilized world turn a blind eye to this "great illusion"? Gretel Bergmann, the German Jewish athlete at the center of a bargaining chip between the German authorities and the US government, and Noël Vandernotte, who won a bronze medal in rowing, share their stories.
8.2In Israel, a joint French-Israeli scientific mission is set to unearth the secrets of the hill of Kiryath-Jearim (or Kiryat Ya’arim), converted to the site of a Catholic convent, where, according to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was kept for at least twenty years before being brought to Jerusalem by King David, father of King Solomon, who would eventually build the Holy of Holies inside the First Temple to house it.
7.3In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
7.3The sinking of the RMS Titanic remains one of the most enduring and mysterious tragedies of the 20th century. For decades, investigators and amateurs alike have floated theories for why it occurred and who was to blame for the extraordinary loss of life, but no one answer could fully explain what happened. Until now. To mark the 100th anniversary of the infamous disaster, Smithsonian Channel will premiere Titanic's Final Mystery. The two-hour special investigates a century of theories and uncovers astonishing new forensic evidence that proves the most likely theory for the case.
8.0During the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, a postman poses as a photo developer, helping Japanese forces while secretly sheltering Chinese refugees. He later risks his life evacuating them and revealing evidence of the atrocities.
From Race Track to Assembly Center documents life for San Francisco Bay Area residents of Japanese ancestry incarcerated at the Tanforan Race Track in San Mateo County after being evicted from their homes during World War II.
7.1True story of the undersized Depression-era racehorse whose victories lifted not only the spirits of the team behind it but also those of their nation.
6.7In 2001, Jimmy Wales published the first article on Wikipedia, a collaborative effort that began with a promise: to democratize the spreading of knowledge, monopolized by the elites for centuries. But is Wikipedia really a utopia come true?
9.0Archival film maestro Göran Hugo Olsson has assembled—from a vast catalogue of footage in the vaults of Sweden’s national television service SVT—accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as witnessed and represented by Swedish journalists. Stories of the beginning of the Israeli state interwoven with the Palestinian struggle for independence. News coverage with Yasser Arafat and interviews with Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban during a visit to Sweden unseen since first broadcast. From the tenth anniversary of Israel’s founding to the First Intifada, perspectives and encounters with statesmen, civilians, revolutionaries, and intellectuals tell the story from myriad angles of an evolving media landscape, revivifying a history of the ongoing conflict.
7.6In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
8.0A 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.
8.7The Glorious Story of Castles Carriers of myths and legends, castles strongly mark our imaginations, appearing most often as the pivot of a dark and barbaric period. Reality is different. They are full of mystery and grandeur, emblematic abstractions of the Middle Ages, they testify to medieval civilization.
8.0While global attention focuses on Ukraine, the Middle East, and Trump’s trade policies, the situation in East Asia is shifting rapidly. Former wartime enemies Japan and South Korea are drawing closer and aligning themselves with Taiwan. An emerging alliance is forming—one that, together with the U.S., positions itself against China. But does this strengthen peace, or turn East Asia into a powder keg?
7.0In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
10.0The film tells the story of the events in Western Ukraine before the outbreak of World War II, the rise of Soviet rule, changes in borders, and the disappearance of entire states from the world map. The film is based on archival documents, materials and memoirs of witnesses, representatives of the Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish peoples of pre-war Galicia.
7.6A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
The poverty of Slovak workers during the Great Depression during the Masaryk Republic reached such a level that it led to a well-organized strike. The capitalists and their minions tried by all means to break it. Even the workers who had not yet been elected soon recognized their place and supported the initiative of the communists, who selflessly led the strike movement. The poster-like, purely ideological story succumbs to paper-like dialogues and plots, and the narrative portrayal hardly convinces of the credibility of the whole story.
6.7The story of the Bugattis of Milan and Molsheim, the eccentric family behind the brand: Carlo, the patriarch and furniture designer; Rembrandt, the troubled sculptor; Ettore, the gifted engineer; Jean, the unfortunate heir. Art and design. Beauty and luxury. The fastest cars. Races. The need for speed.