Movies genre: History

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier's protection of the city of Loudun from the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu is undermined by a sexually repressed nun's accusation of witchcraft.

An activist gets caught up in the labor movement for farm workers in California during the 1930s.

After a genial spirit shows the benevolent Ebenezer Blackadder visions of his unscrupulous ancestors, he resolves to mend his generous ways.

A rebel leader calling himself Alexander the Great escapes from prison and captures some English tourists to hold as hostages. He returns to his village and finds there a commune in existence.

In the third film of medieval thriller, Melchior's wife Keterlyn witnesses a brutal attack. The life of an unknown young man is saved, but the victim who has lost his memory does not know who he is and how he ended up in Tallinn. A ring found at the scene leads Melchior to the night brotherhood, the bizarre troupe who performed on Fair Day also raises questions. Frightening signs suggest that not only the unknown recovering from the attack is in danger, but also Melchior and Keterlyn, who are treating him. At the same time, the pope's envoy, known as a ruthless witch-hunter, arrives in the city.

Documentary filmmaker Jan Sikl came across several hours of footage showing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in private film archives. 53 years later, historical memory awakens from a long slumber with this reconstruction of the occupation, a cinematic adventure of a truly archeological nature.

In 1941, in German-occupied Warsaw, soon after the creation of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto by the Nazis, a Polish amateur 8mm camera enthusiast shot a remarkable 10-minute film from both sides of the Ghetto walls.

Marculesti, Moldova was the site of an unimaginable atrocity. Years later, few speak clearly or honestly about what happened.

Moldova: At the funeral of an old woman, tradition and modernity meet in an explosion of emotions, memories and absurdities.

While people in Western Europe were used to choose between hundreds of brands, the communist Romanian used to have a different experience: all our life we lived with only one brand for each basic product. Imagine the importance that this 'mono-brands' could acquire for the lives of those who made them and for the lives of those who consumed them. A love story between man and object.—Anonymous

As a kid in the South Bronx in the 1970s, Vivian Vazquez watched her tight-knit community become a burned-out ruin as an epidemic of fires raged through her Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood. As Vivian seeks to understand the lasting effects of this tragedy on her family and community, she uncovers a story of injustice, survival and hope that resonates deeply in cities today.

An extravagant odyssey from Communism to Capitalism as seen from the perspective of one of Romania's most charismatic symbols, the Dacia automobile.

During the Vietnam War, US Air Force pilots who flew 100 combat missions could go home. The tension built relentlessly as they survived each sortie. This is the story of the survivors and the fallen.

"Year 141 after Christ, in the Roman province of Dacia. An unusual appearance of a comet is observed on the night sky. The astrologers think it is a bad sign that will bring misfortune and death. In these frightening days, a deadly epidemic among cantoned soldiers spreads in a Roman fort (on the border of Dacia Province). Doctors are overcome by the situation. No one knows the cause of this disease and the number of deaths is steadily increasing. Four Roman explorers, led by the experienced Centurion Marcus - (along with his comrades Aquila, Tertius and Nerva) is sent by the commander of the fort - Prefect Cornelius Fulvius on a special mission to the unknown and unconquered territories beyond empire's border, those ruled by the Free Dacians, to find an unusual solution to this plague. The journey of the Romans to the mysterious Serpent Mountains becomes unexpected and adventurous. These are the dark times when Jupiter ruled the destinies of mortals - The mission of the Romans is therefore under the sign of the will of the gods and the unpredictable."

In 19th century Wallachia war-bands of Ottoman Turks from across the Danube river raid Wallachia with impunity while Wallachia's Phanariote rulers don't oppose them.

With unique access to locations across the country, viewers go on a journey through these magical realms, exploring five very different worlds -high mountains, tropical jungles, bamboo forests, great plains and temperate forests.

The film depicts the second reign of the ruler Alexandru Lapusneanu, who returned to the throne of Moldavia in 1564 after being exiled by the landowners.

Anglo-Indian Victoria Jones seeks her true identity amid the chaos of the British withdrawal from India.

The history of Skunk Works, the top-secret division of Lockheed that specialised in extreme, highly classified military aircraft design. Skunk Works produced such revolutionary planes as the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird and FB-117 Nighthawk.

Under an Eastern European totalitarian regime, a prominent dissident writer survives repression by resuming a submissive sexual relationship with her former lover. After their split-up years ago, he had joined the Secret Police in order just to take her back and provide the protection she needed. Struggling to preserve her humanity, she falls in love with a young platonic dreamer, a kind of rebel without cause, whom she initiate in literature and reinvents as a character capable to meet her own desires of freedom. BEYOND AMERICA is a love story and an action drama altogether, with archetypes of an aggressive, totalitarian society. The story fallows the pattern of a modern fairy tale based upon the classic myth of Pygmalion and Galathea with reversed roles. The year is 1957. In her last fairy tales book BEYOND AMERICA, the hauntingly beautiful dissident writer MILENA tells the story of a sailor who committed suicide, after he had been incriminated with intention of fleeing to America and was to be put in jail. The subversive volume is confiscated from bookstores by the Secret Police. Vicious colonel MARCUS charges Milena with trying to corrupt the readers' mind to commit suicide in order to escape the nightmare of the dictatorship. As a punishment, she is deprived of her writer status and ordered to work at a remote re-education camp. She either accepts to be a construction worker (a mason), or she is to be imprisoned for parasitism. To avoid the camp's misery and humiliation, Milena tries to get help from IAN, her former lover. Ian is a French language teacher and a school principal. She used to know him as a tough guy, crazy enough to hire her. But she doesn't know that after her leaving him two years ago, Ian has got some mysterious connections to Bureau nr. 1 of the regime (The Supreme Leader). On this basis, Ian defies the Secret Police's orders, and hires Milena "to reeducate" her as a literature teacher. In exchange, they resume their intimate relationship. Encouraged by her actors-friends, amidst whom the peculiar EDGAR stands out, Milena begins to clandestinely translate her book into English. Edgar promises her to smuggle it out to AUGUSTIN, the leader of the Romanian Exile in Paris. While teaching her students poems like "Have no hope, and have no fear", Milena has an eye for MANU - nicknamed Castle builder -, a young rebellious mason working at the Congress Center construction site neighboring the school. Here there is STAN, an womanizer supervisor, who is after Milena too. Manu is a fervent admirer of her books. His rough, genuine attitude catches Milena's interest. Although he obviously doesn't belong to Milena's milieu, he is in hopeless love with her; so he splits up with MARIA, his current girlfriend, and tries to capture Milena's attention by attempting a fake suicide, mirroring the suicide of the sailor in her book. As a consequence, Milena is arrested and charged with instigation to political sabotage, since the Congress Center construction site was being an important political site of the regime. In the Secret Police interrogation cell, colonel Marcus tries to force her to sign a paper stating that the sailor killed himself not because he couldn't flee to America, but because his girlfriend had been previously raped by other sailors - which Milena refuses. Knowing that a writer usually depicts his or her own secret desire in books, Marcus is wondering whether she wouldn't enjoy the same treatment in real life, so he attempts to rape her and take compromising pictures. She is saved at the very last moment by Ian's phone call. Ian wanted not only to save her, but to get rid of his dangerous younger rival too. So he has talked Manu into turning himself in and playing a madman, as this would exonerate her from any responsibility. Anxious to save Milena, Manu has agreed. Marcus suspects this set-up, but threatened by Ian's high unexplainable connections, release Milena and places Manu in an insane asylum. Impressed with Manu's ordeal, as she begins to fall for him, Milena figures out a way to have him released. She sends an anonymous report, on behalf of "angry workers", to the Supreme Leader, asking for those who hired a madman to be punished (because they had committed the true political sabotage) and threatening to call a strike if not satisfied. Out of the blue, Marcus is ordered to release Manu and declare him sane, since the regime would rather claim there is no madman worker than to punish its own Secret Police servants. Now Marcus hates Ian's gods, and decides to corner him in any way. He places him under permanent surveillance. After her new rescue by Ian, Milena has to surrender again to his protector's sexual fantasies. Tortured by an unknown feeling of culpability, Ian has meanwhile developed an alcohol problem. Unexpectedly released from asylum, Manu pops in and witnesses her sexual submission to Ian, strangely carried on a background screen displaying the Arch of Triumph image in Paris. He is devastated because he never had suspected Milena's intimate relationship with Ian. On top of this, he is now accused by his co-workers of being an informant, otherwise in their view he could not had been released. Devastated, Manu has a nervous breakdown and hurls himself into a freshly made wall, nearly killing himself, thus comitting a true political sabotage. More dead than alive, rejected by hospitals because of his so-called suicidal behavior, Manu is taken by his co-workers to Milena's home. Surrounded by books, Manu is immobilized in bed. She nurses him back to health in a cozy environment that seems this time to be their own only. The young construction worker proves to be not exactly a construction worker, since he had also been assigned at the construction site as a punishment for having written dishes recipes instead of praising the regime in a political-essay test in college. In order to get Milena out of this nightmare for good, and split her up with Manu once forever, Ian offers her a passport to flee the country to Paris, normally an impossible act under the dictatorship. As she is now in love with Manu, she refuses and splits up with Ian, enraging him out of jealousy. She continues to translate her book, to nurse Manu and initiate him in literature issues, forcing him with romantic gestures to read books. Answering his repetitive question (why did the sailor kill himself?), she encourages him to find out the answers to all riddles in the book only. She teaches him that all themes have already been written by masters like Shakespeare or Balzac, and writers ever since have only changed the characters. Thus, reversing the classic legend's roles of Pygmalion and Galathea, Milena brings Manu to a new life and forges him as the real character she wants and needs. Milena finishes the translation of her book. They dream of fleeing to the countryside and write books together. At this point, Maria drops in out of the blue to bring Manu news about his parents, imprisoned in a political camp. Although Manu rejects her, Maria tries to resume their romantic relationship. Suddenly Milena shows up, surprising them embraced. So she leaves Manu and goes back to Ian, accepting to flee the country. Ian, drunk, makes a terrible confession: he is actually an undercover intelligence agent - enrolment that he did for her. After her leaving him two years ago, he had joined the Secret Police forces, being aware that one day she would need his help. He had to be able to provide it, by thus managing to take her back. Milena is bewildered. But Ian's confession continues: he is now assigned to assassinate Augustin in Paris. Once in Paris, he won't accomplish his mission, instead he will defect and join Milena in freedom. Impressed with his sacrifice, Milena goes to an undisclosed address to wait for him to bring her a passport. Manu is looking for Milena everywhere. Apparently she vanished. He goes to Edgar and gives him the translation manuscript that Milena left home, hoping to find out where she could be. Edgar has no clue; instead he brings the manuscript to Marcus, because he is in fact a Secret Police collaborationist. Meanwhile, Marcus had decoded Ian's confession's record at his home. Thus Ian's treason is now exposed. As a consequence, Marcus unleashes Milena and Ian's haunting, as the traitor has now not only lost Bureau nr. 1' s protection, but was even ordered to be arrested and executed. Ian shoots down two agents that have come to arrest him and escapes. Following the sailor's footsteps in Beyond America, Manu ultimately finds Milena in the village on the seacoast where the sailor and his girlfriend in Milena's book used to meet. After their passionate encounter on the beach, they go back home. In the peasant house, there is Ian waiting for them. After Edgar's treason, he and Milena have to flee. He urges her to rush to catch a boat that is to leave in a few hours for Istanbul, but Marcus and a Secret Police platoon show up to arrest them. There is a shooting. Ian resists. He pushes Milena to flee through the back door. In the back yard, there is Stan pointing a gun at her. Milena succeeds escaping. Ian is shut and killed by the platoon agents. Hearing the shooting, Manu comes running. Stan shoots him down. Milena hides on the boat leaving for Istanbul, while Manu is thrown in a prison cell. Many years later, after the collapse of the communism, old Manu, now a writer, inspects his former cell. Over the Ocean, old Milena keeps coming everyday on the ferryboat linking Manhattan with the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island. She keeps reading the same book: Beyond America, ferry tales by Manu. History had separated their lives forever.—Eugen Serbanescu

Based on true events, The Ladder follows the spiritual journey of Andrei, a sensitive, socially awkward young man who turns to acting in his search for true happiness. After the fall of communism, he is blinded by the illusion of freedom and democracy and faces a series of brutal events that have deeply marked Romania's recent history. Finding comfort in playing the part of Aliosa in a stage adaptation of The Karamazov Brothers, he becomes closer and closer to his character, gradually discovering the way to understanding divinity.

The movie details the struggle of Iancu Jianu as he's torn between joining the struggle of the poor peasants from which he came from and being on the other side of the law working for the rich.

Together with Mereanu, Jianu plots to overthrow the Phanariot regime.

Sighet prison in communist Romania. An catholic cardinal considered a national hero is faced with an unusual torturer. There is only one way out, conversion or death.

The life of Dacian war-leader Burebista who ruled between 80-44 B.C.and founded a strong Dacian Kingdom despite considerable pressure from the neighboring Celtic warlords and the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast.

During the 18th century in the mountains of Wallachia, a band of outlaws aims to undermine the rule of the Phanariots and the Ottomans. Two stepbrothers, Sarbu and Amza, lead this band with their complex and violent relationship.

Grigore Pintea, a former officer in the Habsburg army, returns to his native village in Maramures.

The last days of the first romanian king, Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and the tough decisions he had to make in the summer of 1914 in order to please both Romanian Parliament and his relatives from the German Empire.