Between 1933 and 1945 roughly 1200 films were made in Germany, of which 300 were banned by the Allied forces. Today, around 40 films, called "Vorbehaltsfilme", are locked away from the public with an uncertain future. Should they be re-released, destroyed, or continue to be neglected? Verbotene Filme takes a closer look at some of these forbidden films.
Johanna LiebeneinerHerself
Margarethe von TrottaHerself
Oskar RoehlerHimself
Moshe ZimmermannHimselfErnst SzebeditsHimselfStefan DrößlerHimself
Götz AlyHimselfJörg JanningsHimself
Rainer RotherHimselfSonja M. SchultzHerselfA dramatic documentary film that deals with the Nazi rise to power in Germany in the 1930s and the development of the persecution of Jews up to the Holocaust. The film tells about the attitude of the Finnish government to the request for the handover of the Finnish Jews presented by Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1942. The main focus of the film is the life of Jewish refugees in Finland in the years 1938-1942 and the attitude of the Finnish government to their handover in the fall of 1942.
Every year, thousands of commercials are made that never reach our TV screens, deemed too shocking to see. In order to make it onto the screen, they must clear all manner of obstacles, from fussy clients to obsessive regulators and restrictive rights issues. X-Rated takes a look at these outlawed pieces of advertising, revealing the most explicit, controversial and shocking ads never seen. These are ads that break all manner of taboos, from sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, animal cruelty, rapping pensioners, swearing children, suicidal toys and naked athletes to Kylie in her undies on a bucking bronco. Amongst the contributors are advertising executives, producers and censors. The programme also takes a look at the embarrassing world of western celebrities in Japanese ads.
The highly anticipated follow-up to their critically acclaimed VIDEO NASTIES: MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP & VIDEOTAPE documentary, director Jake West and producer Marc Morris continue uncovering the shocking story of home entertainment post the 1984 Video Recordings Act. A time when Britain plunged into a new Dark Age of the most restrictive censorship, where the horror movie became the bloody eviscerated victim of continuing dread created by self-aggrandizing moral guardians. With passionate and entertaining interviews from the people who lived through it and more jaw dropping archive footage, get ready to reflect and rejoice the passing of a landmark era.
A portrait of Peruvian Jorge Poholyrec, a 71-year-old pariah who is a defender of National Socialism and such extremist postures as misogyny, eugenetics, the importation of females, and the suppression of minority populations.
An investigation of government censorship in Iran.
This FitzPatrick Miniature visits the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the largest geographically unbroken political unit in the world, covering one-sixth of the world's land mass.
After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
Shalom Italia tells the story of three brothers, who set off on a journey to find a cave in the woods of Tuscany. The place where they, as children, hid to escape the Nazis. But more than a search to find a geographical location, the brothers are on their way to locate the common ground of memory, the nexus where the conflicting versions of their stories can come to rest.
Based on a true story of inmates at KZ Buchenwald that risked their lives to hide a small Jewish boy shortly before the liberation of the camp.
In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
Nazi occupied Poland, during the World War II. Hans, a former brilliant student, has become an SS officer stationed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. When he is commissioned by his superior officer to build an efficient gas chamber, Hans, facing the harsh reality, begins to realize the magnitude of the atrocious acts of which he is being accomplice.
Nagyvárad, Hungary, 1944. From February to June, Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old Jewish girl, wrote a diary describing the harsh conditions of her life under Nazi occupation. How would she have told her story if she had used Instagram?
As World War II looms, Pope Pius XI calls on a humble American priest to help him challenge the evils of Nazism and anti-Semitism. But death intervenes, and Pope Pius XII now carries out a very different response to Hitler and the Holocaust.
With candor, humour and courage, a group of African-Canadian women challenge cultural taboos surrounding female sexuality and fight to take back ownership of their bodies. Combining her own journey with personal accounts from some of her radiant, endearing friends, co-director Habibata Ouarme explores the phenomenon of female genital mutilation and the road to individual and collective healing, both in Africa and in Canada.
Propaganda short film depicting the rise of Nazism in Germany and how political propaganda is similarly used in the United States. The film was made to make the case for the desegregation of the United States armed forces.
Peer through the lens of a high profile political dissident, banished from the online world. After introducing the viewer to each of the five characters, the film recounts how each individual then came to lose their access to social media and the affect it had on them at the time, and since the event. With their stories told, they present the broader issues raised by their media de-platforming and what they foresee in their future in media and the whole of Western Culture at-large.