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Two thousand years ago, it was a flourishing city in the middle of what is now a Syrian desert. At the crossroads of trade routes, Palmyra attracted caravanners from Mesopotamia, India and China. In what remains of its ruins, rediscovered by Europeans in the 17th century, its numerous necropolises bear witness to a prosperous past. Carved in limestone in the first centuries of our era, the faces of the representatives - men, women and children - of its greatest families adorn the walls of its tombs. Since 2012, Danish archaeologist Rubina Raja has been leading a long-term project to find, document and retrace the family trees and daily life of these Palmyrenians.

On October 25, 1946, fifty years ago, the so-called Doctors' trial began in Nuremberg. Ernst Klee has compiled extensive material for this film about concentration camp doctors, for example, who nevertheless lectured at universities again after the war or found a place in the executive chairs of pharmaceutical companies. He documents the role of world-famous companies in human experimentation. He was also able to work through the investigation files against Josef Mengele in their entirety for the first time and view unknown material from Auschwitz.

The epic story of Thomas Edward Lawrence the First World War military officer who united the tribes of Arabia against the Ottoman Turkish army. The film reveals that while being one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century, he was also a deeply troubled man, delving into his personal torment, the secret his family were hiding, and the punishment he endured.

Flanders, Hispanic Monarchy, 1616. The inhabitants of the small town of Boom are busy organizing the annual local festivities when the arrival of the Duke of Olivares, who rules the country on behalf of the King Philip III of Spain, is announced. While the male citizens cowardly surrender to panic, the brave female citizens decide to become the best hosts the Spaniards can ever meet. (German version of the French film La Kermesse héroïque, 1935.)

The pianist Miguel Ángel Lozano embarks on a personal and artistic journey with the purpose of reconstructing the life of his grandmother, Maria Forteza (1910-60), singer and pioneer of Spanish sound films.

Writer and historian Dr Helen Castor explores the life - and death - of Joan of Arc. Joan was an extraordinary figure - a female warrior in an age that believed women couldn't fight, let alone lead an army. But Joan was driven by faith and today, more than ever, we are acutely aware of the power of faith to drive actions for good or ill. Since her death, Joan has become an icon for almost everyone: the left and the right, Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists. But where, in all of this, is the real Joan - the experiences of a teenage peasant girl who achieved the seemingly impossible? Through an astonishing manuscript, we can hear Joan's own words at her trial and, as Helen unpicks Joan's story and places her back in the world that she inhabited, the real human Joan emerges.

Zahi Hawass, an Egyptian archaeologist, has been excavating the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo, for several decades. He hopes to discover the tomb of Imhotep, the architect of humanity’s first pyramid: Djoser’s Step Pyramid. Together with his team, he will unearth fabulous tombs and uncover the secrets of Egyptian mummies.

Story that takes place during the so-called War of Paraguay or War of the Triple Alliance.

After being passed over in the succession, Absalom rebels and raises and raises an army to depose his father, King David. Also called "David's War with Absalom" and "A Prince of Israel".

Two men show extraordinary courage by secretly mapping Paris' underground during the 1940 German occupation.

A look at the life and work of Chilean writer Isabel Allende, the most widely read author in Spanish, with a special focus on her latest novel.

German women may be perceived as passive witnesses to the horrific crimes committed by the Nazi regime, but many were active participants that were as brutal and merciless as their better-known, male counterparts. Over the past 15 years, a new generation of international historians has been digging into the truth of how deeply the Third Reich’s women were involved in the atrocities. Combining their fresh analyses with striking archival footage, this film reveals previously unknown stories about the women who refused to live in the shadow of Nazi men.

Spain. 1978. Year of the first democratic elections following the dictatorship, and of the birth cine quinqui (delinquent movies): films that rapidly became a big commercial success, showing things that were banned by the censorship not too long before.

A documentary about Che Guevara in Bolivia, based upon his journal listing daily agendas

Portrait of Panama Al Brown, a great boxer in the 30's, and its story with France, with a focus on its relationship with Jean Cocteau, surrealist, poet, director, artist.

A perspective on the Romanian revolution which started in Timișoara.

The true story of King George VI's struggle to overcome his stammer, and the parts played in his battle with his disability by his speech therapist, brother, father and wife.

Short film about "Yuyanapaq", the photo exhibition of the armed conflict in Peru, at Casa Riva Agüero, Chorrillos, Lima-Peru.

In Austria, he was known as an art collector and idealist. In Mexico, he was a colonialist aggressor responsible for thousands of deaths. And in France, he lost an empire. But who was the real Archduke Maximilian? Join us as we examine the brief and contentious reign of the last emperor of Mexico, a complex and conflicted member of the powerful Habsburg family, from his royal childhood in Vienna to his alliance with Napoleon III, who wanted to expand his empire to the Western Hemisphere.

At the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, highly political marriage plans are being forged. Princess Wilhelmine's parents want her to marry into the English or Austrian royal family so that she can become queen or even empress. But she is in love with the crown prince of the small principality of Bayreuth...

In 1789, French poet André Chénier struck up a romance with a young aristocrat.

At the turn of the last century, a beautiful spy takes advantage of a handsome officer to get across the Russian border without her passport. They fall in love. But the Grand Duke also falls in love with the young woman, who has in fact been assigned to kill him. A jealous mistress kills the spy before she can commit the crime.

Madame de Montespan, the Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XIV, has been in disgrace since the King set eyes on a younger beauty, Marie-Angélique Scorailles. Having had enough of the situation, the rejected mistress decides to visit La Voisin, a woman known as a fortune teller, a doctor, a midwife and who is also said to arrange black masses and sell poisons. Some time later Marie-Angélique, now Duchess of Fontanges, dies mysteriously aged only twenty...

Set in 1480, the story revolves around the siege of Otranto, a pivotal port city in the Salento region, by the Ottoman Empire. It portrays the events of the battle that enabled the Turks to conquer this strategically important city.

On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.

The year is 1978. Hartmut Geerken, director of the Goethe-Institut in Kabul, is on a mission. “We cannot change society, but we can change the landscape,” he says—literally. A trickster, a Don Quixote, Geerken approaches cultural work with playful defiance, forging deep mutual respect with a land foreign to most Europeans. The film follows him pushing a grand piano on a handcart for an impromptu concert with Afghan and German musicians, visiting a village artist, and meeting a famed tabla player—illiterate, yet musically eloquent beyond words. What begins as a whimsical journey becomes a poignant love letter to a country on the brink of irrevocable change—lighthearted, yet laced with melancholy.

Surpassed only by the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the most successful writer of all time. We all know her characters and incredible plot twists, but what do we know about Agatha herself? Combining rare access to Agatha's family, her personal archive and speaking to those who know her work best, discover what made the world's most successful crime writer tick.

In the Bavaria of the 1980s, a father and his son compare their respective views on a family past heavy with resentment and unsaid.

They were the absolute superstars in ancient Rome: charioteers. The heroes of the racetrack, often slaves, risked their lives in every competition. Only a few enjoyed the rewards of victory into old age. Using ancient documents and artifacts, the documentary traces the biography of Scorpus, probably the most successful Roman charioteer.

April 1945. In a dramatic operation the SS transports 139 special prisoners, and kin of the prisoners, into the Alps. The plan: to use the prisoners as bargaining chips in possible negotiations with the Allies. During the journey a number of prisoners plan their escape and experience six days between liberty and death, their fates in the hands of ruthless and increasingly nervous criminals. But the hostages band together and turn the tables with a clever ploy: they call in the Wehrmacht to aid them…

On January 8th, 1933, a general strike was declared throughout Spain. The strike was quickly quelled, except in Casas Viejas, a small village in Cádiz. During the repression, the security forces of the Second Republic murdered in cold blood twenty-two peasants, including women and children.

A disturbing chapter in Russian history is explored in this documentary. In 1933, Joseph Stalin sent 6000 "unwanted" citizens of Moscow and Leningrad to a desolate Siberian island - with no food or clothes to speak of. Decades later this documentary returns to the island.

During the 16th century the Cossacks and their Ukraine homeland is ruled by Poland. This is the story of the leader of the Cossacks and how his son was sent to study under the Poles to learn how to defeat them in battle. However, the son falls in love with the daughter of a Polish nobleman.

After the United States mounted a covert mission to eliminate America's number-one terrorist target, celebration turned to mounting questions. Now, Peter Bergen obtains rare access to interview former CIA agents, Navy Seal operatives, and a Black Hawk pilot who reveal how the United States gathered the intelligence needed to pull off the surprise attack. He'll talk to White House and Pakistani intelligence officials, as well as neighbors of the Pakistani compound and eyewitnesses to the raid.

The story of famous Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis.

In a country in Southern Italy, on the border between Campania and Lucania, a baron reduced to poverty tries to give order to events: what has happened in recent years? It all seems to have started with the double disappearance of a woman and her elderly husband during a magic show. Stories and memories stratify and interpenetrate each other, leading to the political and temporal collapse of that magical world, which fades into an indistinct memorial abyss and fades into an underground escape, in time.

Once the commercial exploitation of the resources existing in the American provinces of the Hispanic Monarchy began, hundreds of Africans were enslaved. Those who remained in Spain ended up forming a community that, over time, managed to gain a small space in society. Music and dance helped to strengthen their identity.

Historian Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of a centuries-old masterpiece in glass. At 78 feet in height, the famous East Window at York Minster is the largest medieval stained-glass window in the country and it was the creative vision of a single artist - a mysterious master craftsman called John Thornton, one of the earliest named English artists. The East Window of York Minster is far more than a work of artistic genius, it is a window onto the medieval world and the medieval mind - telling us who were once were and who we still are, all preserved in the most fragile medium of all.

The insurrectionary atmosphere of May 68, four young people try to evolve in their respective circles despite the conflicts. Lucien, a writer in the making, recounts what he sees and experiences.

The last journey of Thomaskantor Johann Sebastian Bach leads from Leipzig to Potsdam. Already 60 years old, he hopes that an audition with the Prussian King Frederick II will not only bring him artistic recognition and renewed appreciation, but also an end to his grueling financial worries.

When Spanish Civil War ends in 1939, some of the women who played a leading role in the creative and literary boom known as Generation of 1927, stay in Spain, sacrificing the spirit that had enlightened them; but many others take the hard and long path of exile.

It is the early 1300's and the treasury of France, under the rule of Philippe IV (Philippe le Bel or Philippe the Beautiful), is empty. The king decides the only solution is to raid the treasures of the Knights Templar (amongst others) and concocts various charges of treason, heresy and deviance against the Knights and their Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Having confessed under torture to the crimes of which he is accused, de Molay is condemned to be burned at the stake. With his dying breath he curses the king, the king's advisor (Guillaume de Nogaret), the pope (Pope Clement V) and the thirteen succeeding generations of their families. There follows one of the most dramatic periods in French history, half a century of political intrigue, murder, treason, war and famine, which ultimately culminates in the 100 Years War.

The love affair between the French Emperor Napoleon and the lady Josephine leads through Napoleon's rise to power and their eventual divorce.

Dan Cruickshank returns to his childhood home of Warsaw for the first time in almost 60 years. In a personal and moving film, he recalls his boyhood memories to explore the memories of the city and the memories of its people. No city in Europe suffered so much destruction in the Second World War, no city rose up so heroically from the ashes. The Nazis had razed Warsaw to the ground, but after the war the people fought hard to bring their city back from the dead in one of the greatest reconstruction jobs in history. As a boy, Cruickshank lived in the rebuilt old town and it inspired his love of architecture and made him the man he is today.

Most movie fans know that the first filmmakers liked to shoot trains entering stations. This example by Sussex film pioneer George Albert Smith illustrates why. The train's rush towards the audience brings movement and visual drama. The flurry of human activity offers plenty for the audience to engage with - who are these people and where are they going? And the time pressure exerted by the fact that the train must soon depart adds narrative tension - will everyone get on and off in time?