Set around the Volga river, the story begins around 1900, when Russian peasants are let free and allowed to own their farmlands. But soon they suffer from losses during the 1917 Russian Revolution and the following Civil War. Then, the major national catastrophe is started by Stalin: his communist government kills millions of farmers and steals all their food supplies, causing the longest and deadliest famine all over central Russia during the 1920s and 1930s.
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.
In February 1917, Imperial Russia plunges into revolution. Nine months of unrest before a coup brought about an upheaval that changed the course of history and profoundly altered the future of civilisation.
A fresh new look at Lolita, the famous and controversial novel published in 1955 by Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov (1891-1977), a masterpiece of English-language literature that has been constantly misinterpreted by countless readers who have mistakenly turned its young heroine into an erotic icon.
The great adventures of Kim Dae-gun, a young man dreaming of a New Joseon. He is full of curiosity and takes action rather than words. He willingly accepts the fate of becoming Joseon’s first priest and sets out to study in Macau with his seminary classmates. And finally opens the way of the modern Joseon Dynasty by traversing the sea and land!
On January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.
On October 17, 1961, the “Algerian workers” in France decided to demonstrate peacefully in the streets of Paris against the curfew imposed on them by the police headquarters.
He is considered the greatest European poet of the Middle Ages and his work unfolds the whole panopticon of occidental education – theology, philosophy, sciences, politics and literature. But who has really read it, the “Divine Comedy”? Who knows more of its creator Dante Alighieri than that he had an eagle-like profile and was in love with a woman named Beatrice? 700 years after Dante’s death, the filmmaker Adolfo Conti travels through Italy with Dante’s words in mind and eyes to see the world as Dante did. As the film encounters the beauty of arts and the Tuscan landscape, the forces of nature, a dramatic life story is unfolded.
Ivan, first tsar of Russia. History will remember him as "the Terrible. Russian people love him for centuries. He liberates Russia from foreign oppressors, demands absolute obedience and loyalty in order to radically modernise Russia? Ivan IV, Grand Duke of Moscow, first Tsar of Russia by the grace of God. A madman? A sadist?
CIA vs. Bin Laden. 20 years after 9/11 and 10 years after his death. The most revealing documentary ever produced about the 10 year hunt for Osama Bin Laden by the Central Intelligence Agency. We interview former Directors, CIA case officers, military leaders, members of European intelligence services, and US Congressman who played direct roles in the hunt and elimination of the world's #1 terrorist. Many of the people most deeply involved with the hunt and killing of Bin Laden have been reluctant to share their stories until now. There was simply no benefit for these quiet professionals, their families, or the agencies they served to be in the public eye. But they have collectively decided that now is the time - to go on record and tell their stories before it's too late. As far as possible, we will permit testimonies of those who dealt directly with the ex-Al Qaeda leader. His family, his lieutenants, his fighters.
An examination of the work and lives of actresses in the Iranian film industry prior to the 1979 revolution, featuring myriad interviews and rare film clips.
A poignant drama set in 1970s Australia about a newly-single father’s efforts to weather the turbulence of change – in his life and in the world around him – while a new immigrant endeavours to find her place in a foreign land.
In 1913, Czech skiing champion Bohumil Hanč perseveres alone in a fierce snowstorm during a race, collapses from exhaustion and exposure, and is found by his friend Emerich Rath, who risks his own life in a desperate rescue attempt. Tragically, Hanč succumbs to the elements, and shortly after his friend Václav Vrbata, who lent Hanč his coat, also perishes in the blizzard.
During World War II, the photographer Francisco Boix and other Spanish Republican prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where 120,000 people died, managed not only to survive their indescribable experience, but also, after the war, to reveal to the world what really happened in that hell, saving from destruction thousands of official photographs taken by the SS.
Outside the Sudanese capital Khartoum, the remains of an ancient city stand in the desert. Are you ready to dive beneath the pyramids of Sudan's black pharaohs?