A major shift of political power in Sudan started with street protests throughout Sudan on 16 December 2018 That resulted in the overthrow of the dictator Omar Al-Basheer. The Sudanese Revolution took over 38 weeks to achieve its demands with over 300 casualties and +1200 arrests. Fire in the Nile is a documentary about how the people dealt with the government and how to protest until their demands have been granted.
Checkmate: Strategy of a Revolution (2003)
How does one trigger a revolution? In the Romanian uprising in 1989, everything seemed to happen by itself. The people were fed up and were plagued by poverty and terror. There comes a time when action must be taken! But, it turns out that history is not that simple, as this investigative documentary proves. The film is a thorough and revealing reconstruction of the events leading up to Ceaucescu’s downfall and execution. In actual fact, the Romanian revolution was a strictly managed operation, controlled from the outside. Hungary, Germany and especially America had big fingers in the pie.
Revolutions on Granite (2021)
Revolutions on Granite is a documentary about Maidan Nezahlezhonsti, a public square in the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine — famously home to a number of political revolutions, but also the birthplace of a cultural revolution after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The film takes a look at the burgeoning skateboard scene at Maidan in the early 1990’s, and investigates the idea of a counterculture being created in a place of strict uniformity.
Reverberations (2022)
Thirty years after the end of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1991), a filmmaker seeks to explore the trauma inflicted by the war on her family. Reverberations traces the history and politics of a nation in disarray in an intimate mother-daughter portrait that unravels the trauma that defined an era lost to history and a generation’s silence about its long-standing effects.
A Bridge at the Edge of the World (2007)
Year 1969 - in Turkey. 60s youth were living the most excited days. There was a great effort to make a bridge in Istanbul, on the Bosphorus. Meanwhile, on the eastern border of Turkey, in a Kurdish city between the borders of Iran and Iraq that is left to its destiny, in Hakkari, Zap River was taking lives since there were no passage on it.
Talking About Trees (2019)
Filmmakers Ibrahim, Suliman, Eltayeb and Manar, close friends for many years, left their motherland in the sixties and seventies to study film abroad and founded the Sudanese Film Group in 1989. After years of distance and exile, they are reunited, hoping to finally make their old dream come true: to bring back cinema to Sudan by reopening the Halfaia Cinema, a dilapidated theater in Khartoum.
Khartoum Offside (2019)
A group of exceptional young ladies in Khartoum are determined to play football professionally. They are prepared to defy the ban imposed by Sudan's Islamic Military government and they will not take no for an answer. Their battle to get officially recognized as Sudan's National Woman's team is fearless, courageous and often laughable. But their struggle is unwavering. Through the intimate portrait of these women over a number of years we follow their moments of hope and deception. Despite the National Football Federation getting FIFA funds earmarked for the women's teams, this team continues to be marginalized. However, there is a new spark of hope when the elections within the federation could mean real change of the entire system.
Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution (2009)
In 1794, French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre produced the world's first defense of "state terror" - claiming that the road to virtue lay through political violence. This film combines drama, archive and documentary interviews to examine Robespierre's year in charge of the Committee Of Public Safety - the powerful state machine at the heart of Revolutionary France. Contesting Robespierre's legacy is Slavoj Zizek, who argues that terror in the cause of virtue is justifiable, and Simon Schama, who believes the road from Robespierre ran straight to the gulag and the 20th-century concentration camp. The drama, based on original sources, follows the life-and-death politics of the Committee during "Year Two" of the new Republic.
Lost in Tunisia (2016)
After the elections that followed the Tunisian revolution, as well as the violence that shook the country, an author seeks to make a film on women's issue in his motherland. He makes his questioning the subject of his film and starts a journey.
Investigating Operation Condor (2003)
In the name of the struggle against terrorism, a special operation - code named CONDOR - was conducted in the 1970s and '80s in South America. Its target were left-wing political dissidents, the organized labor and intellectuals. Condor soon became a network of military dictatorships supported by the U.S. State Department, the CIA, and Interpol.
Nicaragua Part 1: Voyages (1985)
Composed of stills by renowned Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas taken in 1978 and 1979 during the overthrow of the fifty-year dictatorship of the Somoza family. Written in the form of a letter from Meiselas to Karlin, it is a ruminative and often profound exploration of the ethics of witnessing, the responsibilities of war photography and the politics of the still image.
Nicaragua Part 2: The Making of a Nation (1985)
Shot in 1983–84 and focusing on the work of the Historical Institute, this film witnesses how Nicaraguans are recovering their history, the memory of Sandino’s struggle, to transform their sense of identity.
Nicaragua Part 3: In Their Time (1985)
Through the eyes of journalists and photographers working at Barricada, the official publication of the FSLN, the film observes the problems of putting socialism into practice, with reports on the war, the economy, the prison system and the political process leading up to the 1984 elections.
Nicaragua Part 4: Changes (1985)
A portrait of a remote area in the rural north of Nicaragua facing difficulties with the revolutionary process. It follows Marlon Stuart, the regional FSLN political organiser, at the time of the 1984 elections.
Steal This Film II (2007)
These are strange times indeed. While they continue to command so much attention in the mainstream media, the 'battles' between old and new modes of distribution, between the pirate and the institution of copyright, seem to many of us already lost and won. We know who the victors are. Why then say any more?
Charles Gagnon (1970)
Documentary about Charles Gagnon, Québécois politician, FLQ member and communist leader.
Point and Shoot (2014)
At first glance, Matthew VanDyke—a shy Baltimore native with a sheltered upbringing and a tormenting OCD diagnosis—is the last person you’d imagine on the front lines of the 2011 Libyan revolution. But after finishing grad school and escaping the U.S. for "a crash course in manhood," a winding path leads him just there. Motorcycling across North Africa and the Middle East and spending time as an embedded journalist in Iraq, Matthew lands in Libya, forming an unexpected kinship with a group of young men who transform his life. Matthew joins his friends in the rebel army against Gaddafi, taking up arms (and a camera). Along the way, he is captured and held in solitary confinement for six terrifying months.
Jeunesse Rouge: The Story of Young Communist Revolutionaries in France (2023)
"Jeunesse Rouge" is a documentary exploring young French Communist revolutionaries fighting for a just and equal society. The film follows their organizing and mobilizing, while delving into the history of the Communist movement in France. Archival footage and interviews with activists show their passionate commitment, from protests and strikes to political education. It highlights the power of youth activism and their potential to bring about change in the face of systemic inequality.
Scenes For A Revolution (1991)
The film is about aftermaths and reckonings. Revisiting material for his earlier 4-part series, Karlin returns to Nicaragua to examine the history of the Sandinista government, consider its achievements, and assess the prospects for democracy following its defeat in the general election of 1990.
Liberty in a Soup (2015)
Every New Year, and in celebration of their Independence, Haitian families gather together to feast in honor of a line of ancestors that fought for their freedom. The centerpiece of the festivity is the joumou soup—a traditional soup dating back centuries ago. The joumou soup is a concretization of war and victory, oppression and emancipation, and the deeply rooted celebratory traditions of the Haitian culture.