Balkan Rules (1997)
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A satiric tragi-comedy about two women and their lover Robert who is an emigrant that keeps coming back. This film shows chaotic post-communist Europe after the fall of totalitarianism. Two opposite characters, women, meet during the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. Intellectual dissident Nona and a Communist secret police bossâ mistress Ester. They meet at an anti-regime demonstration and become friends. They donât want anything to do with politics, both want to get married and have kids, but also get rich. Crazy plans and risky attempts to realize their shared dreams land them in many sticky situations in the post-revolution chaos. Too much money gets in the way of the power of friendship.
An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.
Set in contemporary Moscow and the frozen northern town of Archangel, the drama revisits the stark landscape of Communist Russia and takes place over four days in the life of academic Fluke Kelso. His fateful meeting with a former Stalinist bodyguard leads to the uncovering of one of the world's most dangerous and best kept secrets. He is led unwittingly through murder and intrigue towards his own personal "Holy Grail" - Joseph Stalin's secret legacy - a legacy that could change the face of Russian history forever.
Based on Anne Holm's acclaimed young adult novel North to Freedom, I Am David chronicles the struggles of a 12-year-old boy (Ben Tibber) who manages to flee a Communist concentration camp on his own -- through sheer will and determination. All he has in his possession is a loaf of bread, a letter to deliver to someone in Denmark and a compass to help get him there.
Lady Snowblood is caught by the police and sentenced to death for her crimes. As she is sent to the gallows she is rescued by the secret police who offer her a deal to assassinate some revolutionaries.
The movie narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1936 he decides to fight for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, an anti-fascist coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists. Similar to George Orwell's experiences documented in Homage to Catalonia, he joins the POUM worker militia and witnesses first hand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by the Stalinists, loyal only to the dictat of Moscow.
Due to a revolution in his country, King Shahdov comes to New York - almost broke. To get some money he goes to TV, making commercials and meets the child from communist parents. Due to this he is suddenly a suspected as a communist himself and has to face one of McCarthy's hearings.
Never on Sunday is a 1960 Greek black-and-white film which tells the story of Ilya, a prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist from Middletown, Connecticut â a classical scholar enamored with all things Greek. Ilya is a character close to the "hooker with a heart of gold" cliché. Homer feels Ilya's life style typifies the degradation of Greek classical culture and attempts to steer her onto the path of morality. It constitutes a variation of the Pygmalion story. The film stars Melina Mercouri and Jules Dassin, and it gently submerges the viewer into Greek culture, including dance, music, and language (through the use of subtitles). The signature song and the bouzouki theme of the movie became hits of the 1960s and brought the composer, Manos Hadjidakis, an Academy Award.
A grotesquely disfigured composer known as the "Phantom" haunts Paris' opera house, where he's secretly grooming Christine Daae to be an opera diva. Luring her to his underground lair, the Phantom declares his love. But Christine loves Raoul de Chagny and plans to elope with him after her next performance. When the Phantom finds out, he abducts Christine, incurring the wrath of Raoul -- and a horde of rabid Parisians.
Known as the best satire about communism, banned for over a decade in Hungary. 'The Witness' has become a cult classic, well received by critics and general audiences when it was finally released outside of Hungary. 'The Witness' takes place during the height of the Rákosi Era, which was closely modeled after the ruthless and brutal Stalin regime. The film follows the life of an ordinary dike keeper, József Pelikán, who has been caught for illegally slaughtering his pig, Dezsõ. Instead of doing hard time for his "heinous" crime, Pelikán is elevated into an important position, generally reserved for the communist elite. His new benefactor, the mysterious Comrade Virág, is reluctant to reveal the real reason behind Pelikán's preferential treatment. Thus, begins Pelikán's hilarious adventure deep within the "sophisticated" communist society... Until one day, when he gets called for to return the "favour" by falsely testifying against his long-time friend in a mock-up show trial.
George Clooneyâs fact-based drama about the famous radio journalist Edward R Murrow's stand against Senator McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.
Two teenagers wander rural Greece after being stranded by a car crash. They encounter an itinerant vagabond on their travels.
House Un-American Activities Committee investigators Jim McLain and Mal Baxter come to Hawaii to track Communist Party activities. They are interested in everything from insurance fraud to the sabotage of a U.S. naval vessel.
Spies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia.
We meet Jesse and Celine nine years on in Greece. Almost two decades have passed since their first meeting on that train bound for Vienna.
In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.
A story about women, set in the present and in 1950s Warsaw. Sabina, a quiet, shy woman who has just turned thirty lacks a man in her life. Her mother knows all about it and tries at all costs to find her daughter a good candidate for a husband. The whole situation is controlled by the grandmother, an eccentric lady with a sharp tongue from whom no secrets can be kept.
A wild tale of mistaken identity set during the Nazi occupation of Greece and starring the great Thanasis Vengos. Thanasis is called upon, during the Occupation, to testify at the trial of a tavern owner accused of serving cat meat to his customers. He too is accused of perjury and imprisoned with some resistance fighters. The resistance fighters escape, but Thanasis remains in his cell. He is accused of being Ivan, the notorious ringleader of certain revolutionaries.
Set in the late Ming Dynasty, "Brotherhood of Blades" tells of three close friends who serve as Jinyiwei guards. They are dispatched by a palace eunuch (Nie Yuan) to hunt down Wei Zhongxian, a eunuch politician who had been forced to resign from his influential post and exiled from Beijing. The Jinyiwei brothers return successfully from their quest, only to find that their task was but the beginning of a strange conspiracy.
Michael Pappas and his girlfriend, Cathy, are enjoying the white sand beaches of a Greek island as well as the freewheeling nature of the locals. When Michael meets Lina, who is in Greece from Paris doing archaeological work, he is enamored with the beautiful foreigner. Cathy, unhappy about Lina getting close to Michael, confronts the woman -- only to be unexpectedly wooed by her charms as well.
The Founding of a Republic is a Chinese historical film commissioned by China's film regulator and made by the state-owned China Film Group (CFG) to mark the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. The film retells the tale of the Communist ascendancy and triumph.
Danton (Gérard Depardieu) and Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak) were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France's ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass executions that became known as the Reign of Terror. Danton, well known as a spokesman of the people, had been living in relative solitude in the French countryside, but he returned to Paris to challenge Robespierre's violent rule and call for the people to demand their rights. Robespierre, however, could not accept such a challenge, even from a friend and colleague, and he blocked out a plan for the capture and execution of Danton and his allies.
Essentially true story of how Spartan king Leonidas led an extremely small army of Greek Soldiers (300 of his personal body guards from Sparta) to hold off an invading Persian army now thought to have numbered 250,000.
Professor Hans Mamlock is the distinguished chief of surgery in a university hospital. The year is 1933, and although the Professor is Jewish, he remains unconcerned with politics and the growing Nazi threat. Mamlock identifies strongly as a German, and he believes his culture to be simply incapable of the common barbarism associated with the Nazi party. Accordingly, he shows little understanding for people with strong or unpopular political views, such as Walter, a patient, and Rolf, his own son. Indeed, when Rolf joins the communists in resisting the Nazis, Mamlock throws him out of his house. As the persecution of Jews intensifies during the 1930s, Mamlock's own daughter is targeted for anti-Semitic attacks at her school...
Naive American engineer Howard Graham (Joseph Cotton) is taken by a fellow employee to an Istanbul nightclub, where he becomes attracted to dancer Josette Martel (Dolores del Rio). An attempt to murder him results in the death of an unfortunate magician instead.
Léon is ten years old, has lots of problems and an overly fertile imagination. Of course, there is mom and dad who are always fighting, and those annoying neighbors who get to spend the summer at the beach. And then, there's Léa, the exasperating girl who's always right about everything. In the summer of '68, when mom decides to leave everything behind to start a new life in Greece, Léon is prepared to do anything to kill the pain. Destroy the neighbors' house, become a professional liar and even, why not, fall in love with Léa. Together, they will overcome the pain of growing up when you feel abandoned.
Young Park Seol-Hee is eagerly planning her wedding to a young anti-Communist activist when the North Koreans invade. Her fiancé is forced to flee, leaving her behind with her family in their tiny, rural South Korean village. Rather than resist the North Korean regiment that comes to occupy the area, the townspeople (to Seol-Hee's dismay) decide to cooperate with them in order to ensure their own survival. The North Koreans, however, turn out not to be all that Seol-Hee expected. She soon realizes that there is a history between her family and that of the regiment's leader, Lieutenant Kim Jeong-woong. In between the hilarious day to day antics of Seol-Hee's eccentric family and the hard realities of war, the attachment between Seol-Hee and Jeong-woong grows. As the occupation continues, Jeong-woong becomes torn between trying to follow the increasingly harsh orders from his general and protecting the people that he has come to love and care for so much.
Romy Schneider plays an aristocratic woman in 1936 Greece, who amuses herself pursuing a shallow loveless affair with a nobleman, but unexpectedly falls in love with a political activist.
A young writer is interrogated by a sadistic secret policeman. She is accused of embedding political messages in her children's stories. The entire movie takes place in one room, with only the two actors. The movie is set in an unidentified, modern police state.
In year 1250 B.C. during the late Bronze age, two emerging nations begin to clash. Paris, the Trojan prince, convinces Helen, Queen of Sparta, to leave her husband Menelaus, and sail with him back to Troy. After Menelaus finds out that his wife was taken by the Trojans, he asks his brother Agamemnom to help him get her back. Agamemnon sees this as an opportunity for power. So they set off with 1,000 ships holding 50,000 Greeks to Troy. With the help of Achilles, the Greeks are able to fight the never before defeated Trojans.
An American professional gambler named Jack Weil (Redford) decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble. On the boat to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran (Olin), the wife of a revolutionary, Arturo (Julia). Shortly after their arrival, Arturo is taken away by the secret police, and Roberta is captured and tortured. Jack frees her, but she continues to support the revolution.
After he mends a marital rift between a vacationing young couple, the bored, fragile wife falls hopelessly in love with the husband's ex-colleague who is married to a long suffering and emotionally and physically scarred woman. The couple soon run off to Greece together to pursue the romance
Adolescence is always a difficult time; it is doubly so for Gábina. For one thing, she is growing up in the normalization years of the 1970s, and then she also has to face the reality that her father is a well-known actor disavowed by the regime. Although he abandoned the family years before, his existence casts an ominous shadow over the lives of not only Gábina, but also her older sister and mother, who are trying to find a civilized way through the social mire of the times.
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
The film follows a commercial airliner on a routine flight between Taipei and Seoul that is hijacked and taken to mainland China by the fictional Taiwan Revolutionary Army Front. Communist authorities cannot seize the plane because of the presence of an important business figure on the flight, and agree to cooperate discreetly with Taiwanese authorities to defuse an already tense situation.
The Wind Rises is the 11th animated theatrical film directed by Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli. Based on Miyazakiâs own manga and the 1937 short novel of the same name by Tatsuo Hori, this is the story of JirÅ Horikoshi, the aircraft engineer most remembered for his design work on the Mitsubishi A6M Reisen âZeroâ, Japanâs famous World War II fighter aircraft. During the WWII years, the Miyazaki family business manufactured aircraft parts, including the windshields and rudders used on the Zero.
Communists blackmail a shipping executive into spying for them.
Theseus is a mortal man chosen by Zeus to lead the fight against the ruthless King Hyperion, who is on a rampage across Greece to obtain a weapon that can destroy humanity.
The story of Macedonian soldiers who were captured by the Greek army and taken to the prison camps on Greek islands during Greek Civil War in 1946. Suspected of being communists, they are maltreated by the Greek officers running the camp
"Young and Healthy Like a Rose" is a strong visionary achievement that still looks topical today as back in the times when it was filmed and banned by the then communist censorship. A story about a young delinquent, who evolves from typical outsider to mafia boss of Belgrade seemed shocking back then; today, it is the cruel reality of our times. With incredible foresight of things to come, Jovanovic's leading character says: "I am your future". More poetical than Hollywood movies, much more realistic than "Trainspotting". An exciting story about crime, drugs and the deadly grip of the secret police in Serbia. The best role of Dragan Nikolic, one of the rare ones he presented himself as a tough guy and the authentic sex symbol from this region. A slap in the face of film and other convention. A must see!
Three stories dealing with three men and their stance towards life, given their personal background. All stories are held in Northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace), covering all the spectrum from urban to rural settings.
Visiting in England, famed American surgeon Doctor John Marlowe is decoyed to a middle European country, and discovers the operation he is to perform is on the Vosnian dictator. When the latter dies, he is replaced by a look-alike, but Marlowe is the object of a shoot-to-kill, vicious pursuit by the secret police of Vosnia since it is vital to Vosnia that the dictator's death does not become known. Fleeing, he seeks help from an English-speaking actress, Lisa Robinson, and the two are harried across the countryside before being captured.
Right Now (French: à tout de suite) is a 2004 French film by director Benoît Jacquot. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.In 1975, a young bourgeois woman falls in love with a bank robber. She follows him and his partner on the run after a bank heist resulted in a death and hostage taking. Using fake IDs, they leave Paris and travel to Spain, Morocco, and Greece.
Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.
After having been forced to leave the Soviet Union 1929 Trotsky has ended up in Mexico 1940. He is still busy with the politics. Stalin has sent out an assassin, Frank Jacson. Jacson befriends a young communist and gets an invitation to Trotsky's house.
Maciek and Andrzej, two home army fighters, were paired and ordered to kill an incoming communist party cadre. At the hotel where their target's welcoming party is being held. Maciek meets the barmaid Krystyna and the two have a brief, passionate affair, before he is pulled away from this fleeting happiness into his deadly mission.
Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.
Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on wrongful conviction of murder. Jailed shortly before the Bulgarian communist coup of 1944, he now finds himself in a new and alien world - the totalitarian Sofia of the 60s. His first night of freedom draws the map of a diabolical city full of decaying neighborhoods, gloomy streets and a bizarre parade of characters.
This expansive Greek drama follows a troupe of theater actors as they perform around their country during World War II. While the production that they put on is entitled "Golfo the Shepherdess," the thespians end up echoing scenes from classic Greek tales in their own lives, as Elektra (Eva Kotamanidou) plots revenge on her mother (Aliki Georgouli) for the death of her father, and seeks help from her brother, Orestes (Petros Zarkadis), a young anti-fascist rebel.
Fascinating journey through the life and work of the prestigious Catalan poet Jaime Gil de Biedma, both marked by sexuality and eroticism. Charismatic and somewhat eccentric, brilliant intellectual with extraordinary sensitivity and member of Barcelona's 'gauche divine' in the 60s, Gil de Biedma liked to describe himself as a 'poet of experience' while he suffered dreadfully from the dichotomy strangling him: bourgeois and executive for a multinational by day, communist and homosexual poet by night.
A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.
Based on the true story of a Russian serial killer who, over many years, claimed victim to over 50 people. His victims were mostly under the age of 17. In what was then a communists state, the police investigations were hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and those in power. The story is told from the viewpoint of the detective in charge of the case.
The Great Raid is an inspirational true story of one of the most triumphant rescue missions during World War II. As the war rages, the elite 6th Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 prisoners of war.
Rasputin is one of the most interesting people in the world during the early 20th Century. He was also one of the most enigmatic and contradictory. A holy man who was accused of raping a nun, excessive drinking, and being power hungry. Barrymore's portrayal of Rasputin plays this up, plus making claims that he will be Russia. He seems almost like Charles Manson at times in the way he can make someone, especially the Czarevitch, behave like they are totally different people compared to the way they acted before meeting Rasputin.
When a Greek fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during WWII, his fiancee falls in love with the local Italian commander. The film is based on a novel about an Italian soldier's experiences during the Italian occupation of the Greek island of Cephalonia (Kefalonia), but Hollywood made it into a pure love story by removing much of the "unpleasant" stuff.
The film narrates the story of Cuba Mukundan (Sreenivasan) who can be called an 'impractical idealist.' He is a staunch leftist who lives for the movement. Circumstances force him to take up a job in Dubai. But he finds himself a misfit in a highly materialistic world. He also realizes that the Malayalis working in this region, whom he had earlier mocked for leaving the country for monetary gains, actually perform menial jobs and physical labor in order to support their families back home. He has always had a soft corner for China as a result of his leftist leanings and when he meets a Chinese girl, she quickly finds a special place in his heart as she symbolizes China to him. Through her, he also learns of the Communist failings in other parts of the world.
September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.
Wondering what has happened to herself, now feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley Valentine finds herself regularly talking to the wall while preparing her husband's chips and egg. When her best friend wins a trip-for-two to Greece Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.
Intended as the concluding film in the trilogy on the modern history of Taiwan began with Beiqing Chengshi (1989), this film reveals the story through three levels: a film within a film as well as the past and present as linked by a young woman, Liang Ching. She is being persecuted by an anonymous man who calls her repeatedly but does not speak. He has stolen her diary and faxes her pages daily. Liang is also rehearsing for a new film that is due to go into production soon. The film, entitled Haonan Haonu, is about a couple Chiang Bi-yu and Chung Hao-tung who returns to China to participate in the anti-Japanese movement in China in the 1940s and are arrested as communists when they go back to Taiwan.
American Steve Kendall, a freighter's radio officer, discovers seaman Carlson sending an unauthorized message ashore as the ship approaches his war-poised homeland. Carlson is shot in cold blood when he jumps ship and Kendall, implicated in the espionage, swims ashore to avoid arrest. A woman he meets at the dock hides him in her apartment, where he learns Carlson was her brother, and they both work in a sabotage ring. Nedra is a singer at Tio's Cafe, and she approaches Tio for help when both the saboteurs and the secret police try to capture Steve.
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