Enigma

Jan 28, 2025

1h 34m

★ 6.3

Choose your destiny.

Overview

Two legends contested their identities as women in the court of public opinion: April Ashley, who was immortalized as a trailblazer by embracing her transgender history; and Amanda Lear, who has consciously denied and obfuscated her history for decades. Their divergent paths reveal disparate but intertwined legacies.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Story Syndicate

Five All in the Fifth Entertainment

Pacific Films

HBO Documentary Films

Enigma Trailers

Cast

Self

April Ashley

Self

Amanda Lear

Self

Marie-Pierre Pruvot

Self

Allanah Starr

Self

Morgan M. Page

Self

Dolly Van Doll

Narrator (voice)

Rebecca Root

Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

Salvador Dalí

Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

David Bowie

Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

Tina Turner

Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

Jean-Paul Gaultier

From abject poverty to becoming a ten-time boxing world champion, congressman, and international icon, Manny Pacquiao is the true definition of a Cinderella story. In the Philippines, he first entered the ring as a sixteen-year-old weighing ninety-eight pounds with the goal of earning money to feed his family. Now, almost twenty years later, when he fights, the country of 100 million people comes to a complete standstill to watch. Regarded for his ability to bring people together, Pacquiao entered the political arena in 2010. As history’s first boxing congressman, Pacquiao now fights for his people both inside and outside of the ring. Now at the height of his career, he is faced with maneuvering an unscrupulous sport while maintaining his political duties. The question now is, what bridge is too far for Manny Pacquiao to cross?

6.0

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Film director and screenwriter Seijun Suzuki (1923-2017), who in the sixties was the great innovator of Japanese cinema; and his collaborator, art director and screenwriter Takeo Kimura (1918-2010), recall how they made their great masterpieces about the Yakuza underworld for the Nikkatsu film company.

7.7

TINA

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Tina Turner overcame impossible odds to become one of the first female Black artists to reach a mainstream international audience. Her road to superstardom is an undeniable story of triumph over adversity. It’s the ultimate story of survival – and an inspirational story of our times.

8.0

Showgirls of Pakistan

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Enter the universe of three mujra dancers in Pakistan as they dodge state censorship and violence to vie for stardom.

7.0

Mario y los perros

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An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.

2.3

Lily: A Transgender Story

Dec 8, 2020

Filmed over five years, we follow Lily Jones, 20, as she transitions from male to female, leaves her seaside home for the city, undergoes gender reassignment surgery and finds love.

7.0

Kim Novak: Hollywood's Golden Age Rebel

Mar 5, 2023

Kim Novak never dreamed on being a star, but she became one. Most famous for her enigmatic performance in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), the Chicago-born actress never quite fitted into the Hollywood mould and wanted to do things her own way.

7.7

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Jul 21, 2005

A chronicle of Bob Dylan's strange evolution between 1961 and 1966 from folk singer to protest singer to "voice of a generation" to rock star.

6.5

The Man Who Defied Beijing

May 14, 2019

A portrait of Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017), a witness of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), a dissident, a woodpecker who tirelessly pecked the putrid brain of the Communist regime for decades, demanding democracy loudly and fearlessly. Silenced, arrested, convicted, imprisoned, dead. Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2010, alive forever. These are his last words.

7.0

Afternoons of Solitude

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The life of the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey during a day of bullfighting, from the moment he dresses up to the moment he undresses.

6.5

The Armstrong Tapes

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Never-before-heard audio tapes recorded with Neil Armstrong during the final years of his life reveal an intimate portrait of this iconic - and famously private - man. Illustrated through previously unseen personal photographs and archival footage, this documentary special takes viewers on an emotional journey into the thoughts and experiences of the first man on the Moon.

7.7

The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft

May 9, 2024

Filmmaker Werner Herzog combs through the film archives of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft to create a film that celebrates their legacy.

6.6

Elton John: Never Too Late

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Sir Elton John looks back on his life and the astonishing early days of his 50-year career in this emotionally charged, full-circle journey. As he prepares for his final concert in North America at Dodger Stadium, Elton takes us back in time and recounts his struggles with adversity, abuse, and addiction, and how he overcame them to become the icon he is today.

6.0

Yo soy Arturo Fernández

Jul 7, 2019

A gentle portrait of the mythical Spanish actor Arturo Fernández (1929-2019) in the hour of his passing, in his own words, through his latest interviews, not previously broadcast, and the words of those who knew him thorough decades of charming and good performance on stage, his true home, as well as in cinema and television.

8.0

Dawn: A Charleston Legend

Jun 16, 2022

In 1968, Gordon Langley Hall claimed he was a woman misdiagnosed as male at birth because of a genital defect. To correct this, Gordon underwent one of the first sex reassignment surgeries in the United States. Her subsequent marriage to a black auto mechanic and the mysterious birth of their daughter Natasha sent Charleston, SC society into a fury and cast serious doubts on the truth behind Dawn’s story.

8.7

Salvador Dalí: Génie tragi-comique

Mar 3, 2019

No overview available.

6.2

La Cicciolina: Godmother of Scandal

May 10, 2017

The personal and professional story of Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina, is probably unique: she left communist Hungary and moved to Italy, where she found a fertile environment for a life dedicated to scandal.

7.0

Alain Delon, l'ombre au tableau

May 7, 2019

A childhood in boarding school, volunteered at 17 for the war and dismissed for indiscipline, thug in Marseille turned gigolo in Paris, he became actor thanks to some inspired women. Then flying high, fast and far, thanks to his director masters René Clément, Luchino Visconti & Jean-Pierre Melville.