This journey through time retraces fourteen centuries of a rich shared history between Jews and Muslims. A story of great historical rigor, without concessions or bias, driven by fluid and inspired realization.
From the armistice of 1918, which marked the end of the First World War, to the declaration of war in September 1939, the beginning of the Second World War: an era during which there was an aspiration to create a new world, prosperous and at peace, but which provoked a new tragedy, seen through the destinies of thirteen people who were both actors and witnesses of the upheavals of the so-called inter-war period.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Tsetung established a system of labor camps for systematic repression, known as Laogai, an abbreviation for "Reform Through Labor". In such camps, forced labor and physical and mental torture were used to bring about a so-called mental reform, re-education in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Chinese were affected. Many were executed. In hundreds of camps, the Party took advantage of the prisoners' free labor to build the economy. Self-criticism and denunciation were often the only way to escape martyrdom. Successive waves of purges culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which saw massive human rights abuses, political assassinations, massacres, and exiles in remote parts of the country. Using unreleased archive footage, the documentary tells the story of the invention, development and improvement of China's totalitarian system of surveillance and repression up to the present day, never told before.
East Berlin, 1956. Bertolt Brecht, revolutionary of the theater and poet of the state, looks back: his exploits as a teenager during the World War I; his romantic adventures during the twenties; the escape of the Nazi regime; the return from exile. The life of a timeless classic, a class fighter, an indefatigable free spirit, a committed artist.
They climb up mountainous paths, swim across rivers or fight their way through icy wastelands with -50 degrees Celsius. Their path takes them through amazing natural landscapes, producing spectacular scenery for a very ordinary task. The participants, at times without shoes and for days at end, are mere students on their way to school.
After going before the judge for the third time, 15-year old Manon is placed in a reform centre for six months. Challenged by her own uncontrollable temper, and the bureaucracy of the institution, will this be Manon’s last chance at redemption?
When two of his countrymen - arms dealers - are kidnapped, a German police investigator is sent to Algiers in search of them. Beginning a steamy affair with an Algerian prosecutor investigating the case for her country probably wasn't the best idea, but as the pair go deeper, they uncover a corruption scandal testing their loyalty to their nations and to each other.
À la recherche du Hobbit (French for Looking for the Hobbit) is an exploratory documentary series directed by Olivier Simonnet in 2014, in which illustrator John Howe, story-teller Nicolas Mezzalira, and Professor Leo Carruthers of the University of Paris-Sorbonne explore real-world settings and famous myths that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology. The documentary explores many locations of Medieval significance.