2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall examines the relationship between the West and the USSR in his inimitable fashion.
Rich Hall

Chile would become the first country in the world to democratically elect a Marxist president, Salvador Allende. After his arrival to the government in 1970, the class struggle would reach a decisive point for the country in 1973.
2024

As the 2024 elections approach, Russian interference in American politics – through spies or agents of influence – is a troubling reality. Vladimir Putin is counting on Donald Trump’s victory to weaken support for Ukraine. Why does Trump almost always support Russia? Is he compromised? During his presidency, did he betray the United States in favor of the Kremlin? And why has the Republican Party shifted its stance toward Russia? Answering these questions means shedding light on a labyrinthine espionage and manipulation operation. Still ongoing, it began forty years ago, during the final years of the Cold War. Back then, Trump was merely a real estate developer, and Putin was a young KGB agent. This operation contains many dark areas, but some hold pieces of the puzzle. A former KGB leader, infiltrated “illegals,” a former Trump advisor, and former senior officials from the CIA and FBI, as well as a former prosecutor, provide testimony. . . . [taken from Nilaya Productions]
2024

In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing - to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.
2019

Documentary film about the first St. Petersburg music club TaMtAm. It existed since 1991 upon 1996 and was held by Vsevolod Gakkel, ex-cellist of "Аквариум". The concept was modelled on cult NY club CBGB-OMFUG. Despite its controversial history this is the place where a new generation of Russian punk music was discovered.
2017

March 1965. In the heat of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR are competing for supremacy in space. What both superpowers aim for in this race, is to be the first to have a man walk in outer space. To accomplish that, no price is too high and no risk is too great. Now it’s up to the unlikely duo of a seasoned war veteran and a hot-headed test-pilot to fulfill this mission. Two men in a tiny spaceship, without proper testing, facing the complete unknown. They were supposed to do what no man has done before—and no man imagined what would happen next.
2017

Wes Hurley's autobiographical tale of growing up gay in Soviet Union Russia, only to escape with his mother, a mail order bride, to Seattle to face a whole new oppression in his new Christian fundamentalist American dad.
2017

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…
2017

Soviet Lithuania in 1972. A young theatre actress is trying to make a difference and tell the forbidden story of repression in a play.
2017

The documentary follows the life of Farroukh, a young Tajik immigrant who lives in Moscow outskirts with his family and does odd jobs in dreams of becoming an actor.
2015

In 2012 two members of anarchistic female band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a Mordovian labor camp for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Russian film collective Gogol’s Wives follow each step of the feminist punk band’s battle against Putin including their first disruptive performances on a trolley bus, shooting a video about transparent elections, a controversial performance in a Red Square cathedral, and footage shot in a jail cell. Support comes from many corners including Madonna who painted the words "Pussy Riot" on her back and wore a balaclava during her Moscow show. The documentary portrays the grim state of present-day Russia, a country starkly divided between conservatism and anarchy. Pussy Riot believes that art has to be free and they're willing to take it to extremes. "Pussycat made a mess in the house," they say, and the house is Russia. The filmmakers do not seek to moralize, they simply edit events and leave viewers to draw their own conclusions.
2013

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.
2009

A Texas congressman sets a series of events in motion when he conspires with a CIA operative to aid Afghan mujahideen rebels fighting the Soviets.
2007

A look at the confrontations between American and Soviet aviation over the ocean during the Cold War, through the recollections of direct participants and eyewitnesses.
2006

In Russia, in 1907, a rich lenient husband of a loose unfaithful woman is brutally murdered. She and her two lovers are suspects, but what about the stranger she met just before the murder? With no friends left, she and the stranger bond.
1996

A candid, fly-on-the-wall BBC television documentary portrait of Russian Nationalist politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The film shows the leader on a cruise surrounded by two hundred supporters getting plenty of media attention in New York. We are left with the nagging question: to what extent is Zhirinovsky really dangerous? To take that further, to what extent are populist politicians truly dangerous?
1995

A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
1990

At the dawn of the Space Race, seven test pilots set out to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings momentous challenges.
1983

Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.
1969

A story about the clash of two cultures, two worlds - traditional Tajik culture and the new, invading and imperialist in its nature, Soviet culture, about the formation of self-awareness of the Tajik dekhkanin in the 1920s-1930s.... Poor Hasan thinks and experiences a lot before he is able to comprehend the changes in his life, to realize that old traditions and customs are no longer valued. Bent by need and disenfranchisement, he finds the strength to stand up against the Basmachi.
1966

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.
1956