Japan's War in Colour

Using never-before-seen footage, Japan's War In Colour tells a previously untold story. It recounts the history of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective, combining original colour film with letters and diaries written by Japanese people. It tells the story of a nation at war from the diverse perspectives of those who lived through it: the leaders and the ordinary people, the oppressors and the victims, the guilty and the innocent. Until recently, it was believed that no colour film of Japan existed prior to 1945. But specialist research has now unearthed a remarkable colour record from as early as the 1930s. For eight years the Japanese fought what they believed was a Holy War that became a fight to the death. Japan's War In Colour shows how militarism took hold of the Japanese people; describes why Japan felt compelled to attack the West; explains what drove the Japanese to resist the Allies for so long; and, finally, reveals how they dealt with the shame of defeat.

2005-01-17 | en

The Truce

Karlag, short for Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp, was one of the largest labor camps within the Soviet Gulag system. Established in 1931, it was located in the Karagandy Region of Kazakhstan. The film will explore the hardships faced by people during the 1930s-1950s and the resilience of human dignity despite the daily struggle for survival. The atmosphere of Karlag will be conveyed through costumes, props, and sets created after extensive research in archives and museums.

2025-10-10 | es

Why I'm Alive

Mariupol. Pre-war life in a small Ukrainian town on the shore of the Azov Sea, with a good family life, quarrelsome neighbors, amateur opera, denunciations to the NKVD, and a dance floor in the city garden, the persecution of religion and, of course, with love.

2021-11-04 | uk

Wie konnte es geschehen? - Teil 1: "Deutschland erwache..." (1914 - 1938)

In 1945, 160 German cities lay in ruins and the loss of millions of lives, billions in material assets and countless cultural treasures was mourned throughout Europe... With the question “How could it happen?”, the film goes back to the year 1914, when the “primal catastrophe of the 20th century” took its course with the First World War.

2006-01-01 | de

Sunshine

The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.

1999-09-13 | en

The Yellow Tie

The extraordinary life of Sergiu Celibidache, from his childhood in Romania to his exile in pursuit of a career in music, his struggle for survival in wartime Germany and his rise, fall and rise again, in an unimaginable life journey.

2025-11-14 | ro

Three Minutes: A Lengthening

The story of the only three minutes of footage —a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938— showing images of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk (Poland) before the beginning of the Shoah.

2022-12-02 | en

History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige

This film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. This film raises questions about collective history – questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.

1991-04-10 | en

The Battle of the River Plate

In the early years of the World War II, the Royal Navy is fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open to supply the British Isles, facing the great danger posed by the many German warships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, which are scouring the ocean for cargo ships to sink.

1956-10-30 | en

Democracy on Trial

FRONTLINE investigates the roots of the criminal cases against former President Trump stemming from his 2020 election loss. With the presidential race for 2024 underway, veteran political filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team examine the House Jan. 6 committee’s evidence, the historic charges against Trump and the threat to democracy.

2024-01-30 | en

Yamato

Directed by Junya Sato and based on a book by Jun Henmi, "Yamato" has a framing story set in the present day and uses flashbacks to tell the story of the crew of the World War II Japanese battleship Yamato. The film was never released in the United States, where reviewers who have seen it have compared the military epic to "Titanic" and "Saving Private Ryan."

2005-12-17 | ja

Days of Glory

1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten…

2006-09-27 | fr

Memoirs of a Geisha

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

2005-12-06 | en

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.

2005-02-13 | de

Leningrad. Stimmen einer belagerten Stadt

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

2024-01-09 | de

A Hole In The Head

A pig farm in Lety, South Bohemia would make an ideal monument to collaboration and indifference, says writer and journalist Markus Pape. Most of those appearing in this documentary filmed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Croatia have personal experience of the indifference to the genocide of the Roma. Many of them experienced the Holocaust as children, and their distorted memories have earned them distrust and ridicule. Continuing racism and anti-Roma sentiment is illustrated among other matters by how contemporary society looks after the locations where the murders occurred. However, this documentary film essay focuses mainly on the survivors, who share with viewers their indelible traumas, their "hole in the head".

2017-03-16 | cs

Road of Love

The true story of Traian Popovici, a Romanian Mayor that saved 20,000 Jewish People from death during WWII and his friend, who married a Jewish woman against Hitler's orders.

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La prohibition américaine, une aubaine française

2025-01-19 | fr

Schindler's List

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

1993-12-15 | en

Das Boot

A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.

1981-09-17 | de