The strange case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky — once believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia — who rocketed to prosperity and prominence in the 1990s, served a decade in prison, and became an unlikely martyr for the anti-Putin movement.
A documentary on the unrest in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, as student demonstrations supporting European integration grew into a violent revolution calling for the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich.
Movie|United States|10/20/2021| HBO Max |Documentary|Politics
The documentary is an immersive chronicle of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, when thousands of American citizens from across the country gathered in Washington D.C. to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election, many with the intent of disrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Through interviews with both victims and instigators, Nanfu Wang, a first-time mother, breaks open decades of silence on a vast, unprecedented social experiment that shaped — and destroyed — countless lives in China.
A young bartender in the Bronx, a coal miner's daughter in West Virginia, a grieving mother in Nevada, and a registered nurse in Missouri build a movement of insurgent candidates to challenge powerful incumbents in Congress. One of their races will become the most shocking political upsets in recent American history.
In advance of the 2020 Presidential election, Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections takes a deep dive into the weaknesses of today's election technology, investigating the startling vulnerabilities in America's voting systems and the alarming risks they pose to our democracy.
A look behind the curtain of Washington politics following three renegade Republican Congressmen as they bring libertarian and conservative zeal to champion the President’s call to “drain the swamp.”
Legendary and controversial attorney Roy Cohn was a power broker in the rough and tumble world of New York City business and politics. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top counsel during investigations into Communist activities in the 1950s, Cohn is also known for being Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, fixer and mentor. Focusing on key periods of his life, and drawing on extensive, newly unearthed archival material, a new documentary on Cohn’s life will debut on HBO in 2019.
This time-lapse documentary follows the last years of former President Václav Havel's life, creating a multi-layered portrait of a world-famous political icon and important playwright, but also an ordinary man plagued by health problems. Havel allows the filmmakers a glimpse behind the scenes of his life, revealing purely personal moments that present him in previously unrecognised contours. With a sense of humour, he reflects on his political legacy and universal human issues. The central motif is formed by the parallels between Havel's life and the successful play Leaving, which Havel always wanted to direct as a film adaptation.
Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in one of the famous Korean \Spartakiads\. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal, like a typical life as seen \through the looking glass\.
Follows the man who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020. During his months-long recovery, he makes shocking discoveries about the attempt on his life and decides to return home.
“Gorbachev. Heaven” is a documentary film about changes that reverberated throughout the world wrought by one man. A film summing-up the life of a man who changed the world in the 20th century. Gorbachev’s short time in power was marked by the collapse of this empire. He was the architect of Glasnost and Perestroika, policies that gave the citizens of the Soviet Union – what Ronald Reagan called “the Evil Empire” – a chance to be free. He tore down the Berlin Wall. But at the same time, under his rule, the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded and its destruction was concealed. Citizens demanding independence in the Baltic states died. Soldiers wielding shovels brutally suppressed protesters in Tbilisi. And Soviet tanks menaced, and killed, peaceful demonstrators in Baku. The Soviet empire collapsed under him – and he is condemned by his own people. With this burden of the past, this lonely old man is living the last days of his life in an empty house in the suburbs near Moscow.
Russian Federation, December 31, 1999. After President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of the country. From that day and for a year, Vitaly Mansky's camera documented Putin's rise to power. The story of a privileged witness. The harsh explanation of the reason why politics is the art of possibility of achieving the best with the support of many, but also of giving the worst in return.
In the Cold War years of the 1970s, an American patrol boat meets a Soviet ship off the east coast of the United States for talks about fishing rights in the Atlantic. In the midst of this, while Russian commanders are aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel where the talks are being held, a Lithuanian sailor jumps across the ten feet of icy water separating the boats. Crash-landing on the deck of the American ship, he desperately begs for asylum. Though they try, the Americans ultimately fail to provide protection and the Soviets are allowed to capture him and brutally return him to their vessel. Thus begins a stranger-than-fiction story of imprisonment, discovery, fame, and freedom. Through rare archival footage and a dramatic first-person re-enactment of that fateful day by Simas Kudirka, the would-be defector himself, this tale of one of the biggest Cold War muddles takes us on a journey of uncanny twists of fate, and the emotional sacrifices of becoming a universal symbol of freedom.
An inside account of President Trump's challenge to the results of the 2020 presidential election as told by former White House staff and appointees, including former Attorney General William Barr, and elected Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia who resisted pressure to change the results of the vote in their states.
This behind-the-scenes documentary follows Beto O'Rourke's rise from virtual unknown to national political figure through his bold attempt to unseat Ted Cruz in the US Senate.
The chilling story of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee subjected to the CIA’s program of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, later identified as torture by those outside the agency. Having never been charged with a crime or allowed to challenge his detention, Zubaydah remains imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay in Kafkaesque limbo, in direct contravention of America’s own ideals of justice and due process.
The cold war, the space race, and NASA’s moon landing are landmark events that defined an era. But they are also fodder for conspiracy theories.\r In Houston, We Have a Problem! filmmaker Žiga Virc adds new material to the discussion on both fronts. This intriguing docu-fiction explores the myth of the secret multi-billion-dollar deal behind America’s purchase of Yugoslavia’s clandestine space program in the early 1960s.
From the onset of the AIDS epidemic, author Larry Kramer emerged as a fiery activist, an Old Testament-style prophet full of righteous fury who denounced both the willful inaction of the government and the refusal of the gay community to curb potentially risky behaviors. Co-founder of both the service organization Gay Men's Health Crisis and the direct action protest group ACT UP, Kramer was vilified by some who saw his criticism to be an expression of self-hatred, while lionized by others who credit him with waking up the gay community-and, eventually, the government and medical establishment-to the devastation of the disease.
Documentary chronicling the political machinations that led to the unprecedented, contested outcome of the 2000 presidential election, including the chaotic voter recount in Florida that ended with George W. Bush winning by a razor-thin margin.
Explore the rise of cyber conflict as the primary way nations now compete with and sabotage one another. As fear mounts about how potential cyberattacks will affect 2020 elections in the U.S., the film features interviews with top military, intelligence and political officials and includes on-the-ground reporting from the frontlines of the cyber wars.
Documentary that delves deep into the history of abortion law, revealing the contradictory ways in which women's bodies have been used to further political and ideological agendas.
