The story of what daily life was like in Poland under communism: private conversations, cruel interrogations, recruitment attempts, recorded and filmed with hidden devices; of how the secret services spied on every activity of ordinary citizens: nothing escaped the brutal system of control developed by the Soviets in the name of freedom.
Angela Merkel's decision in autumn 2015 to open the borders for refugees split the country - some praised the moral stance, others criticized the surrender of sovereignty. Yet what would appear to be well-planned activity is in reality a policy of muddling along, chance, trial and error. The Driven Ones is a chronicle of the refugee crisis which shows that the political actors are being driven along, crushed between self-imposed constraints and events that have spun out of control.
Nowadays we associate Johannes Kepler with his famous laws of planetary motion. But the history of his discoveries is a drama of Shakespearian proportions - full of intrigue, passion, depravity and corruption.
In the aftermath of the fire that struck Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019, the cathedral is in danger of collapsing. A race against time begins for a hundred men and women who will face danger, the unknown, and toxic lead dust for a year to save this world heritage site. Architects, stonemasons, carpenters, crane operators, scaffolders, rope access technicians, archaeologists: this unique project brings together rare skills. With rare enthusiasm and cohesion, they will achieve numerous technical and human feats. This film recounts the spectacular and moving adventure of these builders fighting to save Notre Dame.
Raw materials such as wood and iron are brought back to life by the passage of air, thus generating sound, music: a magical combination of science and imagination, a physical fact that nevertheless conceals a mysterious aspect for the listener. The mechanical reproduction of this miraculous breath is ensured by skilled hands, which care for, build and restore the individual parts of the musical instrument, giving it a new lease of life. The centuries-old knowledge of the art of organ building, handed down from generation to generation, finds its home in a workshop in the district of Segariu, a small town in the Marmilla region, at the gateway to central Sardinia. Beyond the craftsmanship process there seems to be an invisible and unstoppable motion that survives the millennia: the pursuit of the breath of nature, the wind, which for the ancient Greeks (Πνεúµα) was also the spirit.
In French colonial Vietnam, a nervous young woman has to satisfy the brutal General’s taste for a traditional dish to save her family from capital punishment.
This is the story of an incredible rise to power, the most comprehensive documentary on Hermann Goering ever made. He was a man of many faces: vain, ambitious, more brutal than any other of Hitler's minions, yet the most popular Nazi official of all, at times even more popular than Hitler himself. He embodied the jovial side of the Third Reich. Yet the same man who organised dissolute bacchanals also founded the Gestapo, set up the first concentration camps, and had his own comrades murdered in the purge of 1934. These unique personal records form the largest and most important single film find from the Nazi era in past years.
Husband and wife team Greg and Felicity take a journey across Romania to try to answer one simple question - where is Dracula's Castle? Along the way they struggle as fiction, history and legend all mix together to confuse the question, but they get to experience some of the incredible beauty and impressive castles of Romania.
The Rosie Kay Dance Company present a piece about the strange history and pop-cultural aftermath of CIA mind control experiments during the Cold War, with documentary segments by Adam Curtis.