Life and Death Under Communism
Films that take place in communist countries, showing the reality of life there. There are just a few of these "Hollywood's missing movies":
http://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies
Suggestions welcome!
http://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies
Suggestions welcome!
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- DirectorRoland JofféStarsSam WaterstonHaing S. NgorJohn MalkovichA journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.
- DirectorAndrzej WajdaStarsAndrzej ChyraMaja OstaszewskaArtur ZmijewskiAn examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940.
- DirectorPhilip KaufmanStarsDaniel Day-LewisJuliette BinocheLena OlinCentral Europe, 1968: A Czech doctor with an active sex life meets a woman who wants monogamy, and then the Soviet invasion further disrupts their lives.
- DirectorAndy GarciaStarsAndy GarciaInés SastreBill MurrayA wealthy Havana club owner and his family are torn apart by the violent sociopolitical upheaval brought about by the transition from the dictatorial regime of Batista to the Marxist revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1950s Cuba.
- DirectorWarren BeattyStarsWarren BeattyDiane KeatonEdward HerrmannA radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
- DirectorGoffredo AlessandriniStarsFosco GiachettiAlida ValliRossano BrazziThe time is the Russian Revolution. The place is a country burdened with fear - the midnight knock at the door, the bread hidden against famine, the haunted eyes of the fleeing, the grublike fat of the appeasers and oppressors. In a bitter struggle of the individual against the collective, three people stand forth with the mark of the unconquered in their bearing: Kira, who wants to be a builder, and the two men who love her - Leo, an aristocrat, and Andrei, a Communist. In their tensely dramatic story, Ayn Rand shows what the theories of Communism mean in practice. We the Living is not a story of politics but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what dictatorship - of any kind - does to human beings, what kind of men are able to survive, and which of them remain as the ultimate winners. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb? Who are the winners in this conflict? Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand offers an answer that challenges the modern conscience.
- DirectorAndrey SmirnovStarsDarya EkamasovaNina RuslanovaVladislav AbashinA chronicle of the life of an illiterate Russian peasant woman between 1909 and 1921, focusing on her private life and major historic events in the country.
- StarsValeriy GarkalinZhanna EppleValeri PoroshinThe film is set in the late 1940s - early 1950s of the XX century. It was a time of cruel and incompetent ideological interference in Soviet science, the suppression of everything reasonable and progressive - in particular, in genetics and breeding, a time when scientists often had to choose between an honest name and life. The hero of the film, faced with such a choice, only miraculously manages to escape from the massacre.
- DirectorFlorian Henckel von DonnersmarckStarsUlrich MüheMartina GedeckSebastian KochIn 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.
- DirectorDavid LeanStarsOmar SharifJulie ChristieGeraldine ChaplinThe life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
- DirectorRoland Suso RichterStarsHeino FerchNicolette KrebitzSebastian KochDuring the Cold War, Germany was divided into two states - East and West. This epic story tells about their dramatic connections.
- DirectorPaul FeigStarsBen TibberJim CaviezelJoan PlowrightA twelve-year-old boy escapes from a Bulgarian Communist concentration camp and sets out on a journey to reach Denmark.
- StarsEvgeniy MironovDmitriy PevtsovSergey KaryakinThe film takes place in the USSR in 1949. In the Marfino sharashka near Moscow, convict scientists are working on the order of Stalin himself - a secret telephony apparatus.
- DirectorAleksandr RogozhkinStarsIgor SergeevAleksey PoluyanMikhail VasserbaumDepiction of "troika" type of mass murder trials and it's influence on those who carried out plans to mass murder million of people. Somehow Russia was able to produce such movie, which easily could be documentary about actual events.
- DirectorCasper WredeStarsTom CourtenayEspen SkjønbergAlf MallandIvan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system. He was accused of becoming a spy after being captured briefly by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II. He is innocent, but is sentenced to ten years in a forced labor camp. The day begins with Shukhov waking up sick. For waking late, he is forced to clean the guardhouse, but this is a comparatively minor punishment. When Shukhov is finally able to leave the guardhouse, he goes to the dispensary to report his illness. It is relatively late in the morning by this time, however, so the orderly is unable to exempt any more workers and Shukhov must work. Based on the life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
- DirectorAndrey KonchalovskiyStarsTom HulceLolita DavidovichAleksandr ZbruevThe true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin's private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator's death. Told from Sanchin's view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his "Master" despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife's affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand.
- DirectorFrank PiersonStarsChristopher JonesPia DegermarkRalph RichardsonFrom the John le Carré novel about a British spy who sends a Polish defector to East Germany to verify missile sites.
- DirectorNikita MikhalkovStarsNikita MikhalkovIngeborga DapkunaiteOleg MenshikovIn the USSR in 1936, shadows of Stalin's repressions fall on a famous, revolutionary hero. The accusations of him being a foreign spy are nonsense, and everyone knows that. However, a slow process of his downfall has already started.
- DirectorElia KazanStarsFredric MarchTerry MooreGloria GrahameA Czech circus owner/clown and his entire troupe employ a daring stratagem in order to escape en masse from behind the iron curtain.
- DirectorIvan PasserStarsRobert DuvallJulia OrmondMaximilian SchellThe life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin.
- DirectorTomás Gutiérrez AleaJuan Carlos TabíoStarsCarlos CruzMirta IbarraJorge PerugorríaIt is a satire about life in Cuba. The members of a funeral procession and some truck drivers who need to take the same route begin to talk about God and the world and they end up discovering that life for both groups has many similarities and many differences, depending on the point of view.
- DirectorPavel ChukhrayStarsVladimir MashkovYekaterina RednikovaMikhail FilipchukA woman meets a man who isn't the right man for her - but she hasn't realised it yet...
- DirectorDelbert MannStarsJohn HurtJane AlexanderDoug McKeonTrue tale about two men planning to escape from communist East Germany in a hot air balloon, but only if they can take their families with them.
- DirectorYimou ZhangStarsYou GeGong LiBen NiuAfter Fugui and Jiazhen lose their personal fortunes, they raise a family and survive difficult cultural changes during 1940s to 1970s China.
- DirectorPeter WeirStarsJim SturgessEd HarrisColin FarrellSiberian gulag escapees travel four thousand miles by foot to freedom in India.