
Narrator
Historian
Self/Nikita Khrushchev's Son
Historian
(archive footage)

A shock wave started as Stalin's daughter Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva fled to the West. During her childhood, she remained at the center of power and was her father's favorite child. However, her life was overshadowed by death and violence. Her mother and brother died, family members were murdered, and her partner was exiled by Stalin. The Iron Curtain was an obstacle in her family dream. This documentary shows for the first time interviews with friends and relatives, exclusive photos and documentation, as well as the last and never broadcast interview with Alliloejeva.
2015-10-04
6.5
Escaping the shadow of her father
This excellent and breathtaking documentary is the result of a long study on the Gulag to try to understand why more than 60 million Soviet citizens were sent to the camps from 1918 to 1956, how such a massive confinement could take place during two generations. From the Solovki in the north-west to the Kolima in Siberia, from Lenine to Kroutchev, a polar geography is erected into the Gulag system. One does not escape from camps. After ten years of imprisonment, one dies. Some survived, some left traces; they witness: organisation, work and discipline, but also resistance, repression and revolt.
6.7On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.
0.0Tells the story of the tragic events in Ukraine in 1932-33, the genocidal Great Famine or the Holodomor, and one Welshman's attempts to tell the world what was happening.
7.1The 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.
8.2The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.
0.0Emmy 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.
6.7Budapest, Hungary, Christmas 1957. The state, insecure after the defeated revolution of 1956 and increasingly put under the influence of a renewed Stalinist atmosphere, has decreed that all security officials must pass an exam to verify their loyalty. But to be actually effective in a shadowy world where suspicion and secrets reign, the subjects must be unaware that they are being tested.
Poland under Stalinist rule, 1953. A young nun Anna is brought to a prison where an influential priest is kept in. She discovers the priest is the man she loved a few years before. Communist authorities try to make her spy on him now.
4.8Observing the first years of the formation of Soviet power, about the life and work of Feliks Dzerzhinsky from 1918-1925; in July 1918, as a result of a revolt of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, German ambassador Mirbach is killed. Feliks Dzerzhinsky alone goes to the headquarters of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Anarchists, he manages to persuade ordinary soldiers and sailors, participants in the rebellion, who are now cracking down on their leaders.
8.2How 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.
7.0Inspired by the woman who edited "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929), "Woman with an Editing Bench" reveals the personal impact of Stalin’s censorship of cinema on a woman navigating politics, bureaucracy and the impetuous outbursts of collaborators to create something beautiful despite the odds.
5.6Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to the US as an advocate of socialism.
6.6Zurich, 1905. Nineteen-year-old Russian Sabina Spielrein is put by her parents in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from a severe form of hysteria and refusing to eat. A compassionate doctor, Carl Gustav Jung, takes her under his care and, for the first time, experiments with the psychoanalytical method of his teacher Sigmund Freud. Thus is born a sweeping story of love and passion, of body and soul, soaring to the utmost heights, but also plunging to the darkest depths of the 20th century.
5.8Based on Nicole Valery-Grossu's European best seller autobiographic novel "Bless you, prison", the film is a true story, with real events and characters. A young intellectual woman, Nicole is arrested. There follow three months of exhausting interrogation and isolation. Alone in a cell, she undergoes a spiritual experience similar to that of the great mystics.
7.0Animals on a farm lead a revolution against the farmers to put their destiny in their own hands. However this revolution eats their own children and they cannot avoid corruption.
5.7Animals on a farm lead a revolution against the farmers to put their destiny in their own hands. However this revolution eats their own children and they cannot avoid corruption.
6.3Belgrade in 1963. In a yard surrounded by buildings, a group of young people of different backgrounds and social status, but of similar views about love and self-affirmation, spend their time together. Their friendship is dyed with various events typical for socialism, such as working actions or Youth Day's parade. All what happens within this yard may become an allegory of one generation's destiny.
7.3In 1950s communist Czechoslovakia, a government minister, a war veteran long a loyal party man, leads a relatively comfortable life with his wife. However, he soon finds himself under surveillance, then under arrest. Unclear what his offense is, agents for the totalitarian regime interrogate and torture him, aiming to use their unending power to gain a false confession for these supposed crimes against the state.
7.7Convinced that his subtenant is a spy and an enemy of the state, Ilija Čvorović falls into deep paranoia which leads to an absurd and destructive chain of events.
4.3A young boy loses his innocence in a pre-perestroika Russian prison during the chaotic last months of the Khrushchev regime
6.8The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
8.2Oliver Stone charts the history of the United States from the Second World War to the present.
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.
7.0One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows-Primo Levi. The Oscar®-winning Helen Mirren will introduce audiences to Anne Frank's story through the words in her diary. The set will be her room in the secret refuge in Amsterdam, reconstructed in every detail by set designers from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan. Anne Frank this year would have been 90 years old. Anne's story is intertwined with that of five Holocaust survivors, teenage girls just like her, with the same ideals, the same desire to live: Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Helga Weiss and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Their testimonies alternate with those of their children and grandchildren.
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.
6.8Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.
7.4A documentary on why 'Money Heist' sparked a wave of enthusiasm around the world for a lovable group of thieves and their professor.
6.3Not since the invention of the Internet has there been such a disruptive technology as Bitcoin. Bitcoin's early pioneers sought to blur the lines of sovereignty and the financial status quo. After years of underground development Bitcoin grabbed the attention of a curious public, and the ire of the regulators the technology had subverted. After landmark arrests of prominent cyber criminals Bitcoin faces its most severe adversary yet, the very banks it was built to destroy.
6.2What happened after Einstein fled Nazi Germany? Using archival footage and his own words, this docudrama dives into the mind of a tortured genius.
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.
6.2SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
8.0Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
6.9The most comprehensive retrospective of the '80s action film genre ever made.
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".
6.8JB Smoove and Martin Starr host a celebration of 20 years of "Spider-Man" movies, from the Sam Raimi trilogy to Marc Webb's movies and the trio from Jon Watts.
6.5A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
6.3An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.
7.2Filmmakers discuss the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (“Le cinéma selon Hitchcock”), written by François Truffaut and published in 1966.
7.0A tribute to Italian filmmaker Sergio Corbucci (1926-90), presented by American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.