Novembertage – Stimme und Wege

Marcel Ophüls interviews various important Eastern European figures for their thoughts on the reunification of Germany and the fall of Communism.

Šuolis

In the Cold War years of the 1970s, an American patrol boat meets a Soviet ship off the east coast of the United States for talks about fishing rights in the Atlantic. In the midst of this, while Russian commanders are aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel where the talks are being held, a Lithuanian sailor jumps across the ten feet of icy water separating the boats. Crash-landing on the deck of the American ship, he desperately begs for asylum. Though they try, the Americans ultimately fail to provide protection and the Soviets are allowed to capture him and brutally return him to their vessel. Thus begins a stranger-than-fiction story of imprisonment, discovery, fame, and freedom. Through rare archival footage and a dramatic first-person re-enactment of that fateful day by Simas Kudirka, the would-be defector himself, this tale of one of the biggest Cold War muddles takes us on a journey of uncanny twists of fate, and the emotional sacrifices of becoming a universal symbol of freedom.

Putins Bären - Die gefährlichsten Hacker der Welt

They call themselves Fancy Bear, Cozy Bear or Voodoo Bear. Elite units of the Russian secret services are hidden behind these code names. They are among the most dangerous hackers in the world. The bears were already in the computer of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015, interfered in the US election campaign in 2016 and are currently influencing the war in Ukraine. The makers of the successful YouTube channel “Simplicissimus” in co-production with funk and SWR are back and show the destructive potential of state hacking with this documentary. With the help of leading German hackers, cyberspace experts and a lot of humor, they delicately demystify the Russian bears: Who are the people behind them? How do they operate? And what makes them so incredibly dangerous?

Mad, une héroine de l'ombre

Operación Pedro Pan

Between 1960 and 1962 more than 14,000 cuban children were sent alone by their parents to the USA. This clandestine operation -with the participation of the CIA and the Catholic Church- became known as "Operation Peter Pan". Many of the parents had expected to follow their children, who had been granted visa waivers by the US government, but the Missile Crisis terminated the flights between the two countries and the children found themselves stranded in the USA. In 2009, for the first time a group of the Peter Pan children, now adults visited Cuba to give "closure and make peace with the land where they were born".

История гражданской войны

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

Fliegen und Engel

Ilya Kabakov is considered one of the most important contemporary artists worldwide. Born and raised in the Ukraine in the period between Stalin and Gorbatschow he left the country in the 80s. In his Installations and his numerous paintings Kabakov creates a world of its own, which leaves the heaviness of socialist and post-socialist life far behind. The film links Ilya Kabakovs artistic spaces with insights into Russian everyday life, which itself sometimes appears like an installation by the artist.

A Spy in the FBI

Robert Hanssen is a contradiction. On the surface he is a family man, devout Catholic, and career FBI agent. Secretly, he is a spy, betraying the trust of everyone he knows. Former FBI agents and journalists recount Hanssen’s life, what drew him to espionage, how he stayed hidden in plain sight for over 20 years, and the events that brought down the most damaging spy in American history.

Schaut auf diese Stadt

Started in the summer of 1961, even before the Wall was built, the film becomes an explanation after this historical event as to why things can no longer go on as they were before. Unmistakably, as in almost all of Karl Gass' films, the passion with which he treats his subject is unmistakable. If you want to get to know the zeitgeist of the historically significant year 1961, which on both sides knew more the Cold War vocabulary than factual arguments, you can see the Eastern variant in this propaganda film.

Mind Games - The Experiment

Can exercise sharpen the brightest minds? In this ground-breaking experiment, four world-class gamers, competing in eSports, Chess, Mahjong and Memory Games, put this to the test.

Winston Churchill : Un géant dans le siècle

A new look at the public and private life of one of the most important statesmen in the history of Europe: Winston Churchill (1874-1965), soldier, politician, writer, painter, leader of his country in the darkest hours, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a myth, a giant of the 20th century.

Täuschung - Die Methode Reagan

A documentary about US-led covert actions under the Reagan administration intended to bolster the perception of Soviet aggression, undermine the peace initiatives of Sweden's PM Olof Palme, and to tie the non-aligned Sweden to NATO.

Something to Do with the Wall

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore. But in 1989, as the original film neared completion, the Wall came down, and McElwee and Levine returned to Berlin, this time to capture the radically different atmosphere of the reunified city.

Iran : une puissance dévoilée

What kind of world power is Iran becoming, and how will Western countries deal with it?

I pirati dello spazio

The '60s. Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, two amateur radio enthusiasts, listened to sound from space with home-built equipment in their hometown of Turin. But one night, they recorded something quite different from the usual static that would change their lives forever...

Naître Svetlana Staline

In 1967, in the middle of the Cold War, Joseph Stalin's only daughter goes to the American embassy in New Delhi and asks for asylum. Svetlana leaves behind her country and her two children. Hunted by the press, the KGB, and many admirers, the woman, nicknamed the Kremlin princess, will never cease to flee. From the summit of the Soviet empire to the solitude and poverty of her last years in a Wisconsin home, Gabriel Tejedor traces the destiny of a resolutely free woman, at the very heart of the century and its geopolitical challenges.

Secret Satellite

Documentary that explores the birth and growth of satellite espionage.

The Real Spies Among Friends

Documentary telling the real story of the Cambridge Spies - subject of the drama series A Spy Among Friends.

Комсомол

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.

這不是一場遊戲

Angela Su’s fictional artist Rosie Leavers is the last remaining person to upload her consciousness to a video game. Contemplating during a pandemic year which also saw people’s resistance movements in many parts of the world, the work pinpoints the uncanny affinities between gaming and warfare strategies. They have mutually informed the infrastructure of both worlds since time immemorial when diplomatic conflicts played out on the battlefield of the 64 squares of a chess board to flight simulation technologies which were adapted to shape gaming experiences as we know it now. When the conflict is between the state and its people, she speculates that gaming strategies empower civilians in resistance movements to counter imperialism through its own operative logic. But once we upload our consciousness, are we able to return to the sensibilities and political motivation that inspired the revolution to begin with?