1. An Ordinary Country (Zwyczajny kraj)
The story of what daily life was like in Poland under communism: private conversations, cruel interrogations, recruitment attempts, recorded and filmed with hidden devices; of how the secret services spied on every activity of ordinary citizens: nothing escaped the brutal system of control developed by the Soviets in the name of freedom.
It has an average vote of 4.5 on TMDB.
2. CIA vs KGB: Battleground Berlin (KGB-CIA, au corps à corps)
For 50 years, Berlin was the symbol of the Cold War. The city at the heart of the intelligence war between the US and the Soviet bloc. Thousands of KGB or CIA, agents observed each other, cogs in the biggest information war in history.
3. Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party (Congrès de Tours. 1920 : La Naissance des deux gauches)
(Congrès de Tours. 1920 : La Naissance des deux gauches)
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
4. Palace for the People (Дворците на народа)
The life and death of socialist architectural monsters. An epic fairy-tale in five chapters.
It has an average vote of 8.7 on TMDB.
5. Women of the Gulag (Женщины ГУЛАГа)
Through unique and candid interviews the film tells the compelling and tragic stories of the six women – last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression and terror that devastated the Soviet population during the regime of Stalin.
It has an average vote of 4.5 on TMDB.
6. My Favorite War (Mans mīļākais karš)
Ilze Burkovska, a little girl who is obsessed with stories of World War II and will be a filmmaker in a distant future, lives in Latvia under the totalitarian boot of the Soviets and the ominous shadow of the many menaces and horrors of the Cold War.
It has an average vote of 6.7 on TMDB.
7. American Reds: The Failed Revolution
The documentary AMERICAN REDS provides a historical overview of 20th century Communism and the growth, decline and contemporary relevance of the Communist Party, USA . Since its founding in 1919, the CPUSA has championed the struggles for democracy, labor rights, women’s equality, and racial justice. During its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, it attracted millions of Americans to support its causes and almost 100,000 men and women to enlist in its ranks. The film begins with the Party's emergence as a small militant sect in the 1920s and documents its rise to the foremost radical group in the United States during the Great Depression, fighting against racism, sexism and fascism, as well as for the rights of workers to organize. It ends with the decline of the Party during the Cold War under the assaults of the FBI and anti- communist crusades.
8. Barbarossa: Hitler Turns East (Barbarossa: Hitler Turns East)
Hitler's invasion of Russia was one of the landmark events of World War II. This documentary reveals the lead-up to the offensive, its impact on the war and the brinksmanship that resulted from the battle for Moscow. Rare footage from both German and Russian archives and detailed maps illustrate the conflict, while award-winning historian and author John Erickson provides insight into the pivotal maneuvers on the eastern front.
9. Soviet Bus Stops
“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.
10. Man with a Movie Camera (Человек с киноаппаратом)
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
It has an average vote of 7.9 on TMDB.
11. The History of the Civil War (История гражданской войны)
The epic story of the Russian Civil War : the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.
It has an average vote of 3.3 on TMDB.
12. East-West Passage (Kelet-nyugati átjáró)
In the summer of 1989 tens of thousands of tourists from communist East Germany came to Hungary. They were deeply disillusioned because they felt they had no future in East Germany. There was no freedom, no choice in the shops, salaries were low and they could not travel except to Eastern Europe. They wanted to go to a prosperous and free West Germany but they could not get passports, so they hoped that by travelling through Hungary, the least suppressed country of the Soviet Block, they could cross the Iron Curtain into Austria and then travel on into West Germany. For them the Hungary of twenty years ago was the new east-west passage. Written by Czes
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
13. The KGB Connections: An Investigation into Soviet Operations in North America
Documentary - This 1982 film explains the KGB infiltration of America. Who they are, what they are doing, and how well they have infiltrated North America. - Harold Brown, Nikita Khrushchev, V.I. Lenin
14. Revolution: New Art for a New World
Drawing on the collections of major Russian institutions, contributions from contemporary artists, curators and performers and personal testimony from the descendants of those involved, the film brings the artists of the Russian Avant-Garde to life. It tells the stories of artists like Chagall, Kandinsky and Malevich - pioneers who flourished in response to the challenge of building a new art for a new world, only to be broken by implacable authority after 15 short years and silenced by Stalin's Socialist Realism.
It has an average vote of 7.5 on TMDB.
15. You Can't Live Like That (Так жить нельзя)
A film about the sociopolitical condition of the Soviet society at the end of the eighties.
It has an average vote of 3 on TMDB.
16. Test of a clean hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 megatons (Испытание чистой водородной бомбы мощностью 50 млн тонн)
Documentary movie about testing of the largest nuclear weapon in history, the Tsar Bomba. Declassified and made available to the public in 2020.
17. :03 from Gold
The 1972 Olympic men's basketball final, in which Team USA was accorded their first ever loss since the sport was adopted in competition, was one of the most controversial events in history the history of the Games.
18. Nestor Makhno (Néstor Makhno, Paysan d'Ukraine)
With breathless pace, Hélène Chatelain reconstructs the life of Nestor Makhno from his writings, Soviet propaganda films, reactions of workers today and the memory he has left in the hearts & minds of his people in Gouliaïpolié, in the east of the Ukraine.
19. The Hitler–Stalin Pact (Le Pacte Hitler-Staline : autopsie d'un cataclysme)
How could Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, come to a secret pact in 1939? The captivating and detailed story of the diplomatic fiasco that led to the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact and its devastating consequences.
It has an average vote of 8.2 on TMDB.
20. The Cars We Drove into Capitalism (Колите, с които нахлухме в капитализма)
A cinematic, character-driven insight to what it meant to produce and to own a car in communist times: the Socialist propaganda dreams and the hard reality of living that dream. The freedom that these slow and clumsy vehicles were giving to their owners; the cars as an instrument in the Cold War battle; legends and homemade tune-ups as an attempt to stand at least a little bit off the crowd.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.