The Black Book

Cameramen at War

January 1943 •English

A tribute to the cameramen of the newsreel companies and the service film units, in the form of a compilation of film of the cameramen themselves, their training and some of their most dramatic film.

Syndrome K

October 2019 •English

Syndrome K is the true story about a highly contagious, highly fictitious disease created by three Roman Catholic doctors during the holocaust to hide Jews in a Vatican-affiliated hospital.

Pracka v láhvi

March 1979 •Czech

Lilja 4 real

January 2003 •Swedish

Lukas Moodysson's acclaimed film Lilja 4-ever, seen by 100,000's of moviegoers is based on a real life story. The film's Lily was in fact called Danguole Rasalaites and came from Lithuania to Sweden when she was 16 years old. She was stripped of her passport and held captive in an apartment in Malmö where she was forced into prostitution.

Síla lidskosti - Nicholas Winton

March 2003 •Czech

A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. Between March 13 and August 2, 1939, Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept quiet about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. Winton was a successful 29-year-old stockbroker in London who "had an intuition" about the fate of the Jews when he visited Prague in 1939. He quietly but decisively got down to the business of saving lives. We learn how only two countries, Sweden and Britain, answered his call to harbor the young refugees; how documents had to be forged and how once foster parents signed for the children on delivery, that was the last he saw of them.

Long Is the Road

November 1948 •German

"Long is the Road" - The first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. Shot on location at Landsberg, the largest DP camp in U.S.-occupied Germany, and mixing neorealist and expressionist styles, the film follows a Polish Jew and his family from pre-war Warsaw through Auschwitz and the DP camps.

Hitler's Holocaust Railways

October 2018 •English

True Confessions

September 1981 •English

A cop clashes with his priest brother while investigating the brutal murder of a young prostitute.

Absence of Me

November 2019 •Spanish

Hundreds of boxes left by the famous uruguayan musician and political activist Alfredo Zitarrosa (1936-1989) who run away the dictatorship in the 70s, have not been touched since his death 27 years ago. Now his wife and daughters are trying to save the memories, tapes, music and sound recordings that the boxes contain to the posterity.

Zôressha ga Yatte Kita

July 1992 •Japanese

During WWII most zoo animals that could pose a danger to the public were slaughtered. Only two elephants survived the war, and trains were arranged to bring children from all over the country to see them.

François Truffaut: My Life, a Screenplay

May 2024 •French

At the end of his life, gravely ill, François Truffaut took refuge with his ex-wife Madeleine Morgenstern. She tried to keep him occupied during his long agony. The filmmaker confided in his friend Claude de Givray, with the intention of writing his autobiography. Too weakened, he abandoned the project. The film reveals part of this final story.

Jacques Rozier: From One Wave to Another

May 2024 •French

Jacques Rozier or the fierce, independent itinerary of a filmmaker in perpetual disarray, admired by his peers and pampered by the critics.

Faye

May 2024 •English

Through honest reflection, complemented by insight from colleagues and friends, Faye Dunaway contextualizes her life and filmography, laying bare her struggles with mental health while confronting the double standards she was subjected to as a woman in Hollywood.

Wall of Silence

January 1994 •German

In the small town of Rechnitz a terrible crime against humanity was performed during the holocaust. Until now, no-one dares to talk about it.

Explorer

July 2022 •English

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is credited as being the World’s Greatest Living Explorer. Among his extraordinary achievements, he was the first to circumnavigate the world from pole to pole, crossed the Antarctic on foot, broke countless world records, and discovered a lost city in Arabia. He has travelled to the most dangerous places on Earth, lost half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity and was nearly cast as James Bond. But who is the man who prefers to be known as just ‘Ran’?

For Love of Liberty: The Story of America's Black Patriots

January 2010 •English

This High Definition, PBS miniseries uses letters, diaries, speeches, journalistic accounts, historical text and military records to document and acknowledge the sacrifices and accomplishments of African-American service men and women since the earliest days of the republic.

Taxi for Tobruk

May 1961 •French

During World War II, French Commandos join forces with a German officer in order to survive the African desert.

A Word from the Director

March 2018 •English

Mike De Leon imagined Citizen Jake “as an indictment of the Duterte regime using its horrific forerunner [the Marcoses] as a template of authoritarian rule,” and he caused a stir, as usual, in posting this promotional short for the film on social media. This short is essentially a Director's Statement in video essay form, and has been screened at New York's MoMA in their Mike De Leon retrospective.

Titanic: The New Evidence

January 2017 •English

This documentary draws on new evidence to reveal that a fire was raging in Titanic's boiler rooms before she left port, that it was kept secret and, it's now believed, that it led to the tragedy

Timber Front

January 1940 •English

This black-and-white archival film outlines the importance of Canada's forests in the national war effort during the Second World War.