A collection of five short films tackling the military industrial complex, the rise of fascism, political polarization and various issues in modern society.
Because of the war, a 12-year-old boy from England, Hugh, is sent to live with the Andrews family in Ohio. Don, the Andrews' 11-year-old son, eagerly accepts the English boy, and is happy when his school-friends do the same. But his isn't so happy when things begin to change when his father fore-goes their evening game of Chinese Checkers to play chess with Hugh, and Hugh shows himself to be a formidable scholar, and impresses Don's girlfriend Betty, and becomes more popular with the boys than Don was...and Don is beginning to think that Hugh is too much of a good thing. Don gets downright depressed and decides to run away. Uh, oh, here comes Hugh.
An Army medic brings his girlfriend to stay with him at an out of the way Vietnam outpost in 1967, the woman disappears one day and he begins searching for her.
A criminal mastermind uses a "death ray" machine to bring down government airplanes. Police dog, Silverstreak, aids in capturing the insane inventor of the machine. Masked aviator Pilot X is part of the "Air Hawks" gang who threaten the Baker Aircraft Company. Pilot X's actions are focused on stealing Baker's Aerometer, a revolutionary navigational instrument. World-famous aviatrix, Fawn Nesbitt, aids in combatting the attacks on Baker's aircraft.
This short feature, an early directing credit for Alan Parker, shows the reality of life during the WWII air raids with none of the traditional 'Blitz spirit' so often portrayed. Eric spends the nights crammed into a brick shelter with his dad, sister and her screaming kids, and every bombardment brings tears over the loss of his mother in an earlier raid. When he learns his sweetheart is to be evacuated, he finally buckles under the stress.
A blend of fact and fiction, based on the actual lives of the actors, the film depicts a troupe of actors and dancers struggling to practice their art in the burned-out shell of Cambodia's former national theater, the Preah Suramarit National Theater in Phnom Penh.
Produced with the cooperation of leading Civil War historian Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump, Lee & Grant is a personal look at two iconic leaders of the Civil War. Surprising details reveal the bold choices and almost godlike power Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee summoned on decisive battlefields like Vicksburg and Gettysburg that, within days of each other, turned the tide of the war.
At the end of World War Two, Polish people move to the western lands vacated by Germans. But some ruthless profiteers pose as government representatives and intend to make off with loot from a deserted town they took over. One honest man stands up against them because he believes these goods belong to the people.
A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
November 1980. Southern Iran. We are at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Abadan, the capital of the Iranian petrol industry resists the repeated assaults of the Iraqi army, but is soon under full siege. Omid, a 14-year-old boy, has stayed back in the city, with his grandfather, waiting for his elder brother to come back from the frontline. Along with Omid, we discover several other uncommon characters, each one having stayed for a personal reason. Each one resisting in his own way. But as the Iraqi siege of the city hardens, Omid has to quickly find a way to save those he loves.
Zeina is a Catholic student whose good friend Haidar, a Muslim, has always been particularly close. After a futile attempt to get together (he gets caught in traffic), they each decide to make an audio tape trying to explain, based on their own ideas, why there continues to be fighting in Lebanon now, in 1977, and why they are against it. Zeina is about to leave for the United States and Haidar is to meet her at the airport, where they will exchange their tapes. Alas, fate intervenes because when he arrives early at the airport, he is harassed by someone looking to prey on gullible refugees and he gets so angry that he grabs a taxi out of there, throwing his tape away as he does so. When Zeina arrives and realizes he is not there, she is broken-hearted.