In Search of Happiness
2005 · 52m · Documentary
Follows the lives of Boris and Masha Rak, Soviet Jews who in 1934 moved to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
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Rabbi Wolff
2016 · ★ 5
William Wolff is nearly 90 and perhaps the most unconventional rabbi in the world. As the State Rabbi of North-East Germany, he looks after the Jewish Communities in Schwerin and Rostock, but still lives in a bungalow near Henley-on-Thames. Midweek he usually flies from Heathrow to Germany. After the services on Saturdays, he either makes his way home or on a leisure city trip. His annual highlight is betting at the Horse Race of Royal Ascot and joining a fasting-retreat in Bad Pyrmont. Willy Wolff leads a Jet-Set-Life, which he actually cannot afford, but dealing with money isn't one of his strengths. Naturally, that occasionally leads to quite temporal conflicts. Rabbi Wolff is the portrait of a fascinating character, a deeply religious man who, blessed with a tremendous joie de vivre, defies all conventions. More than that, it gives insight into the world of Judaism and introduces us to a uniquely German biography.
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The Living
2009
Tells the story of the tragic events in Ukraine in 1932-33, the genocidal Great Famine or the Holodomor, and one Welshman's attempts to tell the world what was happening.
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Traces: People of the Peacock
2016
Filmmaker Binevsa Bêrîvan travels to Armenia to capture the daily life, customs, and history of the country's Yazidi Kurdish community.
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Lenin and the Other Story of the Russian Revolution
2017 · ★ 7.5
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, is remembered as the instigator of the October Revolution of 1917 and, therefore, as one of the men who changed the shape of the world at that time and forever, but perhaps the actual events happened in a way different from that narrated in the history books…
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1986 · ★ 4
Documentary about the ten days the director spent in Moscow, during the 1986 Moscow Youth Festival, as kind of a gay delegate.
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Trotsky y México. Dos revoluciones del siglo XX
2006 · ★ 6.5
"Trotsky and Mexico, two revolutions of the twentieth century" tells us of the famous Russian revolutionary asylum by President Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico.
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In Search of Mother Russia's Children
1997 · ★ 6.5
This profile of homeless young people in St. Petersburg, Russia, uses subtitles and narration to tell their tales, many of which focus on drugs, neglect and abuse.
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Better Dead Than Drafted
2025
Yonatan, an ultra-Orthodox young man protesting against conscription into the IDF, offering his perspective on the yeshiva, the conscription, and socks.
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Chernobyl 30 Years On: Nuclear Heritage
2015 · ★ 7.6
Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes and consequences are examined. In addition, a report on efforts to strengthen the structures covering the core of the nuclear plant in order to better protect the population and the environment is offered.
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Soviet Bus Stops
2024 · ★ 9
“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.
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Orphaned Land: A Heaven You May Create
2023
Spotlighting 30 years of the Israeli metal band's career, A Heaven You May Create explores not only their immense discography but also the impact they left on the music industry.
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Soviet Hippies
2017 · ★ 4.8
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.
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