Gulag

Little Potato

Wes Hurley's autobiographical tale of growing up gay in Soviet Union Russia, only to escape with his mother, a mail order bride, to Seattle to face a whole new oppression in his new Christian fundamentalist American dad.

The Scientist, The Imposter and Stalin: How to Feed the People

The documentary tells two very different human fates in the 1920s Soviet Union. Nikolai Vavilov was a botanical genius, Trofim Lyssenko was an agronomist who made great promises and fake inventions. Each of them tried to solve the country's nutritional problem, but only one succeeded.

Rich Hall's Red Menace

2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall examines the relationship between the West and the USSR in his inimitable fashion.

Michael Jackson: Moscow Case 1993

The Moscow Case is a 52 minute documentary with never-before-seen footage of Michael Jackson in Moscow during the "Dangerous" tour. This film tells the behind the scenes story of Jackson's ill fated concert in September 1993. It includes unique archival footage showing Michael close up and personal while meeting fans and playing with orphan children.

The Arrow of Time

President Mikhail Gorbachev recounts the end of the Cold War and the reduction of nuclear arms.

Russian Close-Up

Albert Maysles' visual diary of the faces and places encountered along a cross country motorscooter ride through the Soviet Union in the late 1950s.

Psychiatry in Russia

In 1955, Albert Maysles traveled by motorcycle throughout Russia. During this trip, he shot what was to become his first film, 'Psychiatry in Russia', an unprecedented view into Soviet mental healthcare. Originally televised by the David Garroway Show on NBC-TV in 1956.

Soviet Hippies

The hippie movement that captivated hundreds of thousands of young people in the West had a profound impact on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Within the Soviet system, a colorful crowd of artists, musicians, freaks, vagabonds and other long-haired drop-outs created their own system, which connected those who believed in peace, love, and freedom for their bodies and souls. More than 40 years later, a group of eccentric hippies from Estonia take a road trip to Moscow where the hippies still gather annually on the 1st of June for celebration that is related to the tragic event in 1971, when thousands of Soviet hippies were arrested by the KGB. The journey through time and dimensions goes deep into the psychedelic underground world in which these people strived for freedom.

Traces: People of the Peacock

Filmmaker Binevsa Bêrîvan travels to Armenia to capture the daily life, customs, and history of the country's Yazidi Kurdish community.

Soviet Bus Stops

“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.

The Paper Brigade

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

Camp Century: The Hidden City Beneath the Ice

How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.

Ten Days That Shook the World

An epic presentation of the turbulent days leading to the Russian Revolution. Based on the classic work by John Reed, this important documentary makes use of rare footage and little-known information, stirringly narrated by Orson Welles.

Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party

Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Men Go to War

Explore the inside story of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear holocaust. In the first major feature documentary on the subject, the film brings to life the three central characters - Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev - and explores how the world's most powerful men fell into an abyss of their own making and outlines the courage and luck it took to climb out again.

In Search of Happiness

Follows the lives of Boris and Masha Rak, Soviet Jews who in 1934 moved to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

Chernobyl

With the good of the people in mind, Valery Legasov, a Soviet scientist called to the scene of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, stands up to censorship behind the iron curtain.

The Last Freedom of Georgy Konstantinov

A film about the dramatic and extraordinary fate of the lonely man who confronted the meat grinder of the communist regime. Georgy Konstantinov, 19 years old, blew up Stalin's monument in Sofia and death passed him by only because the dictator died two days later. He miraculously survived 10 years in prison and psychiatric wards and managed to escape to France. His State Security file numbers more than 40,000 pages. Even today, he does not cease to expose the crimes of the regime with the strength of truth and of his character.

Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.

The Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files

On Nov. 22, 1963 the world was shocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The mystery surrounding this history-changing event has led to many unanswered questions.