good movies about communism
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- DirectorDavid MrnkaStarsAyelet ZurerRobert GantDaniel RchichevThe story of Milada Horáková, democratic pre-WW2 Czech politician first arrested and tried by the Nazis during the War and then the post-war Communist government for her refusal to cease her opposition activity and leave the country.
- DirectorRyszard BugajskiStarsKrystyna JandaAdam FerencyJanusz GajosTonia goes out drinking. She wakes up in prison, not having a clue why she's there. She is tortured to encourage her to confess to a crime she is not aware of.
- 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.
- 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.
- DirectorWolfgang BeckerStarsDaniel BrühlKatrin SassChulpan KhamatovaIn 1990, to protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, a young man must keep her from learning that her beloved nation of East Germany as she knew it has disappeared.
- StarsKonstantin KhabenskiyMikhail PorechenkovMaksim MatveevA flashback to earlier episodes in the life of Leon Trotsky, the Marxist revolutionary, framed by events during his asylum in Mexico City 1939-1940
- 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.
- DirectorNicolae MargineanuStarsMaria PloaeDorina LazarEcaterina NazareBased on Nicole Valery-Grossu's European best seller autobiographic novel "Bless you, prison", the film is a true story, with real events and characters. A young intellectual woman, Nicole, is arrested in the years of Stalinism simply for being an active member of an opposition party. There follow three months of exhausting interrogation and isolation. Alone in a cell, she undergoes a spiritual experience similar to that of the great mystics. She proceeds to an in-depth soul-searching that helps her discover the power of faith and steels her to put up resistance. Nicole goes through the ordeal of communist prisons, conflicts and risky activities, and manages to provide a heartening example for the other inmates. Daily prison life is not drab but full of unexpected happenings like a story.
- DirectorAndrzej WajdaStarsZbigniew CybulskiEwa KrzyzewskaWaclaw ZastrzezynskiAs World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland.
- 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.
- DirectorNicolae MargineanuStarsCristian BotaSergiu BucurIulian BurciuAdrian and Ninel are among the inmates crammed into the freight cars that have just arrived in one of the forced labor camps of the Danube-Black Sea Canal. Among those convicted, there are teachers, lawyers, poets, philosophers, peasants, artists, scientists. Gradually, they realize they are there because the communist regime wants to exterminate them all.
- StarsTatiana PauhofováJaroslava PokornáPetr StachBased on real characters and events, this drama focuses on the personal sacrifice of a Prague history student, Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1969. Dagmar Buresová, a young female lawyer, became part of his legacy by defending Jan's family in a trial against the communist government, a regime which tried to dishonor Palach's sacrifice, a heroic action for the freedom of Czechoslovakia.
- DirectorMarleen GorrisStarsEmily WatsonUlrich TukurIan HartDuring Stalin's reign of terror, Evgenia Ginzburg, a literature professor, was sent to 10 years hard labor in a gulag in Siberia. Having lost everything, and no longer wishing to live, she meets the camp doctor and begins to come back to life.
- DirectorSerban MarinescuStarsStefan IordacheGheorghe DinicaDorel VisanThe film is an adaptation of a novel by Marin Preda, a controversial novelist who died during the Communist rule soon after the book was published. It tells the story of an intellectual, professor of philosophy whose life is crushed after he is imprisoned on false accusations at the end of the Stalinist era. Basically the first part of the film tells the story of his fight for survival in prison, the second describes his tentative to regain his life after being released. His release is actually only apparent, Romania of the 60s asks from him different types of compromises and crimes, but yet his fight for survival is as tough morally as in prison.
- DirectorMartti HeldeStarsLaura Peterson-AardamTarmo SongMirt Preegel"Risttuules" is a very emotional, tragic movie about mass deportation to Siberia based on the memories of Erna. It all started on June 14, 1941, when trucks came for the innocent families with their children where they headed to the train station and later by animal wagons to Siberia. "How to survive hunger, cold, humiliation, losing friends and freedom, but still keep living on, when almost all hope is lost?"
- DirectorViesturs KairissStarsSabine TimoteoEdvins MekssIvars KrastsBased on the true story of Melanija Vanaga, this film is a brutally realistic and terrifying account of the mass deportation of residents of Soviet-occupied Latvia that took place in June 1941.
- DirectorNicolae MargineanuStarsRemus MargineanuValentin VoicilaDorel Visan'Someplace in the East' is among the first movies made in Romania after the fall of the Communism, dealing with one of the troubled period at the beginning of the Communist rule in Romania. It describes the forced expropriation of land by the Communists and the formation of the Communist farms, which was a real tragic episode in the Romanian history.
- DirectorAgnieszka HollandStarsChristopher LambertEd HarrisJoss AcklandA young priest speaks out against the Communist regime in Poland and is killed for it.
- 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.
- DirectorConstantin PopescuStarsConstantin DitaBogdan DumitracheIonut CarasThe story of anti-communist partisans in post-World War II Romania.
- DirectorAndrzej WajdaStarsBoguslaw LindaZofia WichlaczBronislawa ZamachowskaThe story of charismatic painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, who opposed social realism and maintained his own artistic freedom in spite of political obstacles.
- DirectorJohn GrootersStarsEmil MandanacRaluca BotezEduard AdamA cinematic retelling of the testimony of 'Voice of the Martyrs' founder, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, as written in his international bestseller "Tortured for Christ".
- DirectorAntti-Jussi AnnilaStarsTommi KorpelaSidse Babett KnudsenHannu-Pekka BjörkmanOne night of 1930, nationalist thugs violently abduct Ketola from his home in Finland. Beaten and forced to walk the Eternal Road towards a foreign Soviet Russia, his only dream is to return to his family cost it what it may.
- 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.
- DirectorToma EnacheStarsVali PopescuConstantin CotimanisKira HagiA young composer and double bass virtuoso, who returns to Romania after studying in Vienna, is arrested by the political police soon after getting engaged and taken to the Pitesti prison, where a brainwashing and torture-based experiment is under way. The horrible communist experiment, copied after the Soviet model, is headed by the much-feared Ciumau. The composer survives unimaginable torture due to his strong religious belief and composes Ode to God. His music will eventually save his fiancee, Lia.
- DirectorAndrey KonchalovskiyStarsYuliya VysotskayaVladislav KomarovAndrey GusevWhen the communist government raises food prices in 1962, the rebellious workers from the small industrial town of Novocherkassk go on strike. The massacre which then ensues is seen through the eyes of a devout party activist.
- DirectorAndrei GruzsniczkiStarsSorin LeoveanuOfelia PopiiFlorin Piersic Jr.In mid-'80s Romania, a gifted mathematician is under investigation for plans to publish a new theorem by smuggling it overseas.
- StarsFlorian LukasUwe KockischJörg HartmannThe lives of two families in East Berlin between 1980 and 1990 as the era of communist DDR slowly comes to an end.
- CreatorAnna WingerJörg WingerStarsJonas NayMaria SchraderUlrich NoethenMartin Rauch is recruited by the HVA to infiltrate the West Germany army. As a rookie spy, his decisions constantly put his cover at risk and force his agency to take extreme measures.
- CreatorAnna WingerJörg WingerStarsJonas NayMaria SchraderFlorence KasumbaAbandoned by Moscow and desperate for cash, the East German leadership pushes their secret operatives to experiment with global capitalism and save their sinking socialist ship. Long banished to Africa for his sins in 1983, Martin Rauch is now sent back into the field.
- CreatorAnna WingerJörg WingerStarsJonas NayMaria SchraderSylvester GrothMartin Rauch experiences the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 during his activities as an East German spy.
- DirectorYimou ZhangStarsXuejian LiTaishen ChengDongyu ZhouRomance sparks between a young woman and a young man from different economic backgrounds during China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s.
- DirectorRithy PanhStarsKhieu 'Poev' ChesYeay CheuNhem EnA unique documentary on the notorious S-21 prison, today the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, with testimony by the only surviving prisoners and former Khmer Rouge guards.
- DirectorLars KraumeStarsLeonard ScheicherTom GramenzLena KlenkeA group of twelfth-grade pupils in East Germany decide to show their solidarity with the victims of the 1956 Hungarian uprising by staging two minutes of silence during lessons.
- DirectorAngelina JolieStarsSareum Srey MochPhoeung KompheakSveng SocheataCambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung recounts the horrors she suffered as a child under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge.
- DirectorMarius A. MarkeviciusStarsBel PowleyLisa Loven KongsliMartin WallströmIn 1941, a 16-year-old aspiring artist and her family are deported to Siberia amidst Stalin's brutal dismantling of the Baltic region. One girl's passion for art and her never-ending hope will break the silence of history.
- DirectorPéter FazakasStarsJános KulkaZsolt NagyViktória StaubDuring the Cold War, the secret service of Kádár began a more dangerous state security game than ever before.
- StarsMaksim KostyuninMaryna KoshkinaElena BorozenetsThe First World War, the Bolshevik revolution, and the emergence of Soviet regime are seen through the eyes of ordinary people.