Movies: Communism

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution....

Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fig...

Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the...

Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives h...

A stowaway sneaks aboard a ship departing on a cruise down the Vistula River. The captain takes him for a Communist Party cultural coordinator and the intruder gladly adapts to his new role, immediately setting to work at manipulating the passengers ...

A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared....

In an insurrectionary climate, four twenty-year-old friends talk about politics. As a big protest looms, one of them, Clara, has to write a college essay. Caught in the virtual images and the comfort of her bedroom, going out is harder than expected....

Set in 1979, following a young Communist man's relationship with a gay Catholic writer, exploring tolerance, inclusion, homophobia and challenging its Cuban audience with great humour. Based on the short story by Cuban writer Senel Paz....

In the 1980s, a single mother who fled communist Czechoslovakia has to return to her homeland in order to pay an old debt. The risky trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open....

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and...

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A research-based essay film, but also a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into a few democratic nation states....

Convinced that his subtenant is a spy and an enemy of the state, Ilija Čvorović falls into deep paranoia which leads to absurd and destructive chain of events....

Belgrade in 1963. In a yard surrounded by buildings, a group of young people of different backgrounds and social status, but of similar views about love and self-affirmation, spend their time together. Their friendship is dyed with various events typ...

Jankovics's adaptation of the eponymous play is divided into multiple parts, and depicts the creation and fall of Man throughout history....

The owner of an impoverished circus in Communist-ruled Czechoslovokia plots to flee across the border to freedom, taking his entire troupe of performers and wild animals with him....

After having lost her parents, young Juli returns from the Soviet Union to her native Budapest. Scarred by the wounds of the past, the ghost of Stalin’s oppression haunts her as she reunites with her aunt and adoptive mother Magda....

Starting in 1881 this film shows the personal battle between Lenin's Ulyanov family and the royal Romanovs that eventually led to the Russian revolution....

New York City, October 10, 1965. A group of wooden giant figures from Pamplona, representing Basque culture and traditions, parade down the street; but the local authorities have not allowed the appearance of all of them: due to the racial prejudices...

Hong Kong, 1978. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee is kidnapped by North Korean operatives following orders from dictator Kim Jong-il....