Fascism in Colour

After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

Eine Familie unterm Hakenkreuz

Germany, 1929. Helmut Machemer and Erna Schwalbe fall madly in love and marry in 1932. Everything indicates that a bright future awaits them; but then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power and their lives are suddenly put in danger because of Erna's Jewish ancestry.

Opération Foxley : L'assassinat d'Hitler

Throughout his time as head of the Nazi party, Adolph Hitler evaded numerous attempts to assassinate him. However the secret Operation Foxely came the closest to succeeding. Based on declassified World War II documents from the British secret service, this award-winning film reconstructs the detailed plan that nearly resulted in the murder of the notorious German Fuhrer, and why it failed.

Hitlers Traum von Micky Maus - Zeichentrick unterm Hakenkreuz

The order comes in the summer of 1941 from propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels himself: The best animators are summoned to Berlin. Their task: Producing feature-length cartoons in ‘Disney-Quality’ with the newly founded ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH’. To get trained, the Disney movie “Snow White” is re-traced frame by frame. After the final victory, one new feature-length production of quality shall be released every year from 1947 onwards. – that is the plan. Only in 1943, the first production is completed: “Armer Hansi” a 17-minute-long colour movie, realized with the effortful Multiplane-technology. The second film by the ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm’ is only completed in 1946 – by DEFA. In the territories occupied by Germany, cartoons are produced as well, sometimes harmless ones, sometimes propagandistic ones. With excerpts from animated movies, life-action film documents, and witness reports by contemporaries, this documentary draws a picture of the cartoon production in the third Reich.

Hitler's Best Kept Secret: The Eva Braun Tapes

Eva Braun. Hitler’s mistress and eventual wife. A woman with a passion for photography and film, documenting the daily ongoings among Hitler’s inner circle. Now, a haunting look behind closed doors, uncovering the Eva Braun tapes.

Hitler: The Comedy Years

A documentary about the portrayal of Adolf Hitler in popular culture.

Verbotene Liebe - Queere Opfer der NS-Diktatur

Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era – but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They should be excluded from the national community. More than 50,000 queer people have been proven to have been persecuted. The documentary highlights three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror.

The Memphis Belle

This WW2 documentary centers on the crew of the American B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle as it prepares to execute a strategic bombing raid on Nazi submarine pens in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

Avant la catastrophe - La Chute de la République de Weimar (1930-1933)

Triumph des Willens

A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

Die guten Feinde

An intimate quest by a son to understand the identity of his father; a look back at the Berlin of the 30s and a special group of friends who loved life and, in the darkest hours of German history, ultimately chose good over evil.

Juin 1940, le grand chaos

From May 10, 1940, France is living one of the worst tragedies of it history. In a few weeks, the country folds, and then collapsed in facing the attack of the Nazi Germany. On June 1940, each day is a tragedy. For the first time, thanks to historic revelations, and to numerous never seen before images and documents and reenacted situations of the time, this film recounts the incredible stories of those men and women trapped in the torment of this great chaos.

After Mein Kampf?

By combining actual footage with reenactments, this film offers both a documentary and fictional account of the life of Adolf Hitler, from his childhood in Vienna, through the rise of the Third Reich, to his final act of suicide in the waning days of WWII. The film also provides considerable, and often shocking, detail of the atrocities enacted by the Nazi regime under Hitler's command.

BeFreier und Befreite

Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, due largely to the shame attached to rape in German culture at that time.

Mort d'Hitler, l'histoire d'un secret d'État

On April 30, 1945, while the Russian Army surrounded Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. His body was discovered a few days later by the Soviets. He would be positively identified after a top secret inquest in which Hitler's personal dentist would play a central role. And yet, at the same time, Stalin publicly declared that his army was unable to find the Führer's body, choosing to let the wildest rumors develop and going so far as to accuse some of his Allies of having aided the monster's probable escape. What secrets were hidden behind this dissimulation? What happened then to the two ladies involved in the identification of Hitler’s body?

The Tea Coffee Experiment

A group of friends come up with the brilliant idea of testing the non-existent drink known as "Tea Coffee".

Rund um die Freiheitsstatue - Ein Spaziergang durch die USA

Nazi propaganda film “exposes” the United States and its plans against Germany and the German people. Shows so-called signs of decay, gang-wars, slums, riots of blacks, etc. Small wonder, the comment is, that the Statue of Liberty turns it back on America.

Objectif Bakou, comment Hitler a perdu la guerre du pétrole

This film tells the story of World War II as experienced by the inhabitants of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, at the time a satellite of Moscow. The very rich oil deposits of the region aroused the covetousness of Hitler who needed the oil from Baku to carry out his program of world domination. His entire campaign of 1942-1943 was aimed at seizing them. But the Soviets and the Allies were determined to prevent him from doing so, by all means, including the most radical, even if it meant wiping the city off the map.

The Haunted Screen: German Film After World War I

In this film essay, critic Peter Buchka explores the German cinema of the 1920s, ranging from the disquieting images of Fritz Lang's Metropolis to the castrating sexuality of Marlene Dietrich in Die Blaue Engel. The program provides an introduction to Weimar cinema, with Buchka's essay narrated over the images from film clips of 1920s era German films.