It is in 1947, India has been given its independence from British rule and the Islamic partition that would become Pakistan has been painfully born. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan realizes this great ambition and a year later succumbs to the illness through which he has willed himself to live. As his life begins to ebb away Jinnah relives the dilemmas and triumphs of his life, the drama of his ideals, his romance, his happiness and the tragedy of the death of his wife. It takes the find out more...

Liam Neeson surpasses himself with his portrayal of the legendary Irish folk hero in this stirring historical drama. The controversial patriot's life, from his advent after the Easter Rising to his untimely death, is vividly depicted by a sterling cast in this passion-packed biopic. Excellent. find out more...

The film is based on the life of John Reed, the Communist, journalist, and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days that Shook the World. The film works both as a history of the American left and as an epic romance, between Reed and Louise Bryant, an important feminist and radical journalist in her own right. After involvement with labour and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the 1917 October Revolution and, inspired, return to the US, hoping to find out more...

The first of Eisenstein's classic series of films. The story of a revolt in a factory and its murderous suppression contains all the elements that went into his later films - the crowd masses, the mosaic of detail, the caricatures, faces of love, breathless montage and ferocious images of cruelty. find out more...

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A biography of Aisin-Gioro "Henry" Pu Yi, who at the age of three was named the Emperor of China and died as a gardener at the Botanical Gardens of Peking. Told in an interesting flashback/flashforward style, we learn of Pu Yi's childhood, the time he spent in the Forbidden City, his term as the emperor of Japan's Manchukuo, his imprisonment by the Communists and his eventual release back to public life in 1959. A true epic with a cast of millions. find out more...

Back in 1914 the young Ida Dalsar fell in love with an ardent young socialist, the future Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. She sold her shop to finance his career, possibly married him, had his child, got dumped, but kept coming back for more before being incarcerated in a mental institution. In other words this is the story of a girl who fell for the wrong man (and a country that fell for the wrong politics).
Particularly well received in France this was considered a serious contender fo find out more...

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