Andrei Rublev (1966)
An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.
Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
Cinderella Man (2005)
The true story of boxer Jim Braddock who, following his retirement in the 1930s, makes a surprise comeback in order to lift his family out of poverty.
Maurie (1973)
When an African-American basketball star suffers sudden paralysis, his white friend and teammate assists in his rehabilitation.
El rey (2018)
Spain, June 2014. King Juan Carlos I abdicates after forty years on the throne. The historical cycle that began in 1978 has ended. It is the beginning of a new era. Felipe VI is the new king and the future is uncertain.
Prampolini-Menarini Express (2022)
A found footage / object film: the colorful 1960s in Italy, a joyful time, live-giving coating of born-again found images, re-animated, examined, reviewed in a past time, revisited.
Will There Really Be a Morning? (1983)
This is the story of actress Frances Farmer, her struggles with mental illness and involuntary confinement in an insane asylum.
M. Butterfly (1993)
In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
In the 1970s, a young transgender woman called “Kitten” leaves her small Irish town for London in search of love, acceptance, and her long-lost mother.
Life and Fate by Vassili Grossman (2018)
The convoluted and moving story of Russian writer Vassili Grossman (1905-64) and his novel Life and Fate (1980), a literary masterpiece, a monumental and epic account of life under Stalin's regime of terror, a defiant cry that the KGB tried to suffocate.
The Bob Mathias Story (1954)
Film biography of the Olympics Decathlon champion, with the famous athlete and his wife playing themselves.
The Contender (2000)
The vice president is dead, and as the president makes his choice for a replacement, a secret contest of wills is being waged by a formidable rival. When Senator Laine Hanson is nominated as the first woman in history to hold the office, hidden agendas explode into a battle for power.
Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
In the 1980s U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, Texas socialite Joanne Herring and CIA agent Gust Avrakotos form an unlikely alliance to boost funding for Afghan freedom fighters in their war against invading Soviets. The trio's successful efforts to finance these covert operations contributes to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
An Afternoon in Geneva (2013)
In 1973, towards the end of the Franco regime, the famous catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda bumped into the literary critic Josep Maria Castellet in Geneva where she lived exiled and she invited him to tea at her house. The writer was a most discrete person and maintained everything that concerned her wrapped in secrecy. Indeed she herself had become a secret or perhaps, even a maker of secrets. However that afternoon, strangely, she opened up and shared many intimacies.
Dreamcatcher (2003)
Four boyhood pals perform a heroic act and are changed by the powers they gain in return. Years later, on a hunting trip in the Maine woods, they're overtaken by a vicious blizzard that harbors an ominous presence. Challenged to stop an alien force, the friends must first prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians by a military vigilante ... and then overcome a threat to the bond that unites the four of them.
Sisi/Last Minute (1991)
The immature young ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, was extremely shy around women but (according to this film) was constantly being propositioned, lewdly or otherwise, by ambitious courtesans. When he was finally married to his Empress, the teen-aged Bavarian princess Sisi (Elizabeth), it seems that his relief knew no bounds, for he was now sure that he would never have to think about sex ever again. According to the filmmakers, this is the true history of that marriage. This story is a complete reversal of the romantic legend depicted in the popular 1955 film Sissi, which helped brighten the emerging stardom of Romy Schneider.
Escape from East Berlin (1962)
East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.
The Tender Bar (2021)
JR is a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie, is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father — JR begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams, with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar.