Discover Movies

Meet the Christian community that survived Roman persecution, Byzantine rule, and has successfully co-existed with Islam for 14 centuries.

Just days before the opening of the XXXIst Olympic Games in Rio (5-21 August), this documentary uses the exploration of the ruins and new technologies to reveal the site of Olympia in Greece where the sporting contests were held in ancient times. Both a religious sanctuary and a sports site, Olympia was, for nearly one thousand years, host to the most prestigious games in Ancient Greece. Using reconstructions and 3D computer imagery, this documentary by Olivier Lemaître brings the past wonders of Olympia to life and immerses the viewer in the cradle of the Olympic Games.

"Truth Wins" - A history film that is particularly elaborate in terms of its features and that attempts to illustrate the perpetual victory of the truth about the lie in three epic episodes.

The story of a small village in Touraine between 1788 and 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, with its lord, its wealthy peasants, and its poor. The wealthy peasants, expelled from the communal pastures by the count, take him to court. Guillaume Coquard joins the other villagers in drafting the cahiers de doléances (lists of grievances). On the eve of the convocation of the Estates General, the village loses its lawsuit. On the night of August 4, 1789, the deputies vote to abolish privileges. The peasants will be able to buy them back. But the poorest wonder: with what?

A musical summary of the post-Culloden journey of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

In August 1961, a few railway cars and barbed wire divided East Germany from West. It was a barrier that would be extended and become increasingly more sophisticated, a technological counter to each escape attempt. Computer imagery reconstructs how the Berlin Wall grew from a meager obstacle to a 97 mile barrier of concrete slabs, watchtowers and guards.

The former French colonies in Central and West Africa have been independent since 1960, but most of these countries still use the currency of the former oppressor: the CFA franc. It was linked to the French franc when it was introduced, so the national bank in Paris controlled monetary policy. Now the currency has a fixed exchange rate with the euro. The link with the European currency strongly influences the monetary policy of CFA countries. And that means the value of the CFA franc is defined by political decisions taken elsewhere, rather than by the domestic economy.

Shedding a new light in the deepest depths of the Adriatic sea, a modern fairy tale that renews the spirit of underwater exploration.

This documentary tells the true-life story of Oggi Tomic, born in Sarajevo but now living in Cambridge. He co-rote and co-directed the film. He was born in 1985 with water on the brain and given only months to live, abandoned by his mother and brought up in a series of Bosnian orphanages during the bitter Yugoslav civil wars. Finally as a teenager he made his way to the UK and a new life. In 2012 he returned to meet his long-lost biological family - and had to grapple with the fact that they are Serbs, and that some of them were among the enemy army that shelled and sniped at during the 1,300 days of the siege of Sarajevo which began 20 years ago

Based on the Dream of Macsen Wledig.

This documentary is an homage to the forgotten women of Bauhaus. It's time to finally tell their stories. For both as women and as artists they are role models – courageous and inspiring pioneers of modernity.

On May 21, 1975, the trial of the members of the Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinstein Gang) began. Four members appeared before the Stuttgart court to answer for the attacks that had been raging for five years in the young Federal Republic of Germany. The documentary, whose title is borrowed from Berthold Brecht's In Praise of Dialectics, recounts the conditions of the trials and detention of the Baader-Meinstein Gang members and the disqualification of Klaus Croissant as their lawyer.

A documentary made by History Time on YouTube. Written, researched and produced by Pete Kelly.

Agripino is Portuguese. He lives on the outskirts of Bordeaux. He arrived in France in 1965 after a week-long clandestine journey into the unknown. This film retraces that journey into the unknown, evoking the fate of a man whose country refused to let him leave.

This Italian black-and-white film, based on a true story, was originally made for television. It concerns the life and sad end of Evariste Gallois (Mario Barriba), a brilliant student mathematician whose republican politics and hot-bloodedness resulted in his death; it is unclear whether he died by political assassination or as a result of a duel.

Shambhala is a parallel dimension, a mirage which has fired the imagination of a wide variety of people.

Teatro Regio’s 2013 revival of their highly successful 2006 production of Verdi’s Don Carlo celebrates the 40th anniversary of the theatre’s reopening in 1973. With traditional staging and lavish costume design, the production garnered high acclaim in the national and international press, with GB Opera commending the ‘sumptuous’ setting and French online music magazine ResMusica praising director Hugo de Ana’s decision to revive the show ‘in all its splendour’. Shown here in the four-act version, Don Carlo is the fascinating tale of father-son power struggles, adultery and love that borders on incest. The cast – under the powerful baton of Gianandrea Noseda – is headed by renowned Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas, and also features Ludovic Tézier, who has been hailed as ‘one of the best Verdian singers of our time’

In 1972, 16-year-old Marie-Claire Chevalier was raped and became pregnant. Helped by her mother to have a clandestine abortion, she was finally denounced and arrested. Both faced imprisonment. Gisèle Halimi, their lawyer, transformed their trial into a historic battle. By denouncing an unjust law, they mobilized public opinion and paved the way for the Veil law, legalizing abortion in France. This forgotten struggle resurfaced almost half a century later, in 2019, when schoolchildren proposed that Marie-Claire be made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, transforming what had long been her shame into a source of pride and a symbol for future generations.

Writing against oblivion: The film captures the names of the 66000 Austrian victims of the Shoa written by hand on the Prater Hauptallee in Vienna.

The 13th Dalai Lama has just died. The armies of the terrible Warlord are at the gates. The fate of Tibet seems sealed. But a vision emerges from the waters of the Great Lake of Prophecies. Does it point the way to the Dalai's new reincarnation? Only he could save Tibet. The situation is almost desperate, but a small expedition has set out from Shangri-La to find him. It is an improvised and apparently ill-assorted team consisting of Alexandra, a very young French explorer, Aphur, a young warrior monk, and Kewstang, an elderly and very friendly Lama. Will the trio be able to find the new 14th Dalai and save Tibet?

French revolutionaries had swept into Prussia to wreak havoc, and now Napoleon marches in to inflict sad defeats on the Queen's troops, in the conflict between 1806 and 1807.

A route by the Catalonia wine country accompanied by the reflections of wine personalities. History, land, ecology, genetic uniqueness, local consumption, etc. Halfway between documentary and reportage this work aims to rediscover a drink that reached the Catalonia's coast 2,700 years ago, and that nowadays it's an important part of people identity. Raul Deamo directs this debut documentary. It's an independent project, funded with crowd-funding and trans-media vocation that has taken three years to complete.

An experimental documentary on the Magdalene Laundry Institutions in Ireland, told through the myth of the banshee.

An experiment in style over substance. It attempts to present the actual medium of film as the focus as opposed to the bland subject matter. The film looks to gain the viewers interest by drawing attention to the fact they are watching a film. It is a comment on the quick cutting and style prevalent in popular film.

Early 19th-century England is usually seen through the eyes of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. Sue Perkins explores a dramatically different version, as lived and recorded by Anne Lister. A Yorkshire landowner, she kept a detailed, partly coded diary, revealing graphic details of her love affairs with women. Regency England was surprisingly tolerant of Anne's chosen lifestyle, and it was only when Anne sought to sink a coal mine on her land that criticism of her private life became public.

Over the mountains of Northern Mongolia lies the shadow of a mystery that generations of adventurers, scientists, and historians have tried to solve since the 13th century: the location of the tomb of the greatest conqueror of all time, Genghis Khan.

The abusive harvest of a simple fruit built an empire: the United Fruit Company. A fruit that conquered the markets of the world, but devastated Central America. The amazing story of the banana: pioneers of globalized capitalism, dictators of banana republics, revolutionaries, the inventor of modern advertising, tons of bananas, bloody shades of yellow. The story of a ruthless enterprise, without borders or rules to respect, except the cruel law of supply and demand…

The film loosely retells the legend of the Alvensleben ring through a series of one-take scenes filmed at different locations in Kalbe. Each scene acts like a fragment of memory that moves between centuries. Historical reenactments mix with contemporary elements. Three brothers appear as rulers of modern "kingdoms": the supermarkets of Kalbe. Their conflict eventually leads to their downfall.

Horse breeder Scott Engstrom has been trying for years to prove that the Appaloosa, a rare American horse breed, came from Asia and not Spain. With only 109 true Appaloosas left in the world the question is vital. After spotting a horse uncannily like an Appaloosa on a TV show filmed in Kyrgyzstan, the fiery 69-year-old heads for central Asia.

Anita Brookner, art historian, TV presenter and author of the Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac, added to her accomplishments in the 1980s by sharing with television audiences her understanding and appreciation for some of the finest works by the world’s greatest ever painters. In this collection, Anita’s contributions to the BBC’s 1981 series 100 Great Paintings are brought together in one place to create a masterclass in art appreciation, with her unique insights helping to increase our awareness of the cultural significance and creative processes behind works by the likes of Cezanne, Ingres, Delacroix and David.

In the early 1960s, during the height of Franco's regime, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards emigrated to other European countries, mainly France, Germany, and Switzerland. Among them were many young women who left their villages for the first time, traveling alone to Paris to become “maids of all work.” Si tu vas à Paris tells the story of seven women from the same village in Valencia who, at the age of 18 or 20, decided to take control of their future.

Medieval historian Dr Janina Ramirez looks back to a time when British craftsmen and their patrons created a new form of architecture. The art and architecture of France would dominate England for much of the medieval age. Yet British stonemasons and builders would make Gothic architecture their own, inventing a national style for the first time – Perpendicular Gothic – and giving Britain a patriotic backdrop to suit its new ambitions of chivalry and power. From a grand debut at Gloucester Cathedral to commemorate a murdered king to its final glorious flowering at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, the Perpendicular age was Britain’s finest.

The population of Moscow doubled between 1917 and 1930, reaching almost 4 million people. The problem of public transport became particularly acute. The decision to begin construction of the Moscow Metro was made in June 1931 at a plenary session of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The first shaft was laid on a test site on Rusakovskaya Street in 1931. The deadlines for the launch of the first phase were fantastic and unrealistic. The only means available was propaganda. The heroism of the workers was romanticized and praised in all the media. Twenty-one percent of the city's annual budget was spent on the construction of the metro. On May 15, 1935, the first train with passengers departed from Sokolniki station. The Moscow Metro began its work.

A young man recovering from an illness grows a garden with his best mates before the war tears them apart.

Shots of Paris on May 15, 2016 with a Parisian narrator telling us the story of May 15, 1848, when protesters finally pushed the establishment to let them have a popular vote to elect their ruler.

In August 1936, the Olympic Games, orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda, took place in Berlin. This was a vast charm offensive designed to present Germany as a nation that respected the Olympic principles of equality and fraternity. This documentary reveals the political strategies of the Third Reich, which benefited from the complicity of the International Olympic Committee in thwarting calls for a boycott by several countries. Once the games were over, Nazi policy intensified. How could the civilized world turn a blind eye to this "great illusion"? Gretel Bergmann, the German Jewish athlete at the center of a bargaining chip between the German authorities and the US government, and Noël Vandernotte, who won a bronze medal in rowing, share their stories.

The rejection of the project for a new, more socially just constitution by the Chilean people in 2022 has reignited the conflicts that have plagued the country for five decades. On September 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup, General Pinochet ended the socialist revolution launched by President Salvador Allende, legitimately elected in a democratic election. The subsequent dictatorial regime with fascist features brought great violence and terror to the Chilean people. The accompanying neo-liberal economic system, which made the country one of the richest in the region, led to an ever-widening social gap in society, which in turn fell into a kind of passivity. In 2019, long after the dictator was voted out of office and the democratization that followed, a new social movement is shaking the prevailing order. From Allende's socialism to Pinochet's fascism, this historical fresco in documentary form returns to the origins of the rupture.

In 1979, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, revolution broke out in Iran and overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This event marks the end of a two and a half thousand year old monarchy. This documentary retraces the lives of these two enemies who clashed for more than thirty years, from the Shah's rise to power in the 1940s until his fall.

The story of the Spanish Republicans of La Nueve, the 9th Company of the Régiment de marche du Tchad, part of the French 2nd Armored Division, known as Leclerc Division, whose troops were the first who entered Nazi-occupied Paris on August 24, 1944.

Historian Thomas Penn reveals the secrets of founder of Britain’s great Tudor Dynasty - and his amazing trajectory to power. Two weeks after landing on the shores Wales in 1485 with a small band of mercenaries, Henry of Richmond defeats the notorious Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. He is crowned Henry VII and then begins a career of realpolitik, a charming exterior making a savage ambition. The War of the Roses, his wife Elizabeth of York, and the beginning of the Renaissance are all part of this incredible history, as are Henry’s obsessions with money and astonishing spy network.