The Helsinki Effect

Feb 21, 2025

1h 28m

★ 7.9

The meaningless conference that changed everything...

Overview

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was the starting point for the slow but sure collapse of communist authoritarian rule in Eastern Europe. The Helsinki Effect offers new perspectives on the events of the Cold War. The film tells the story of the CSCE process, which had a major impact on the end of the Cold War, and sheds light on secret top-level discussions behind closed doors, through voice simulations using artificial intelligence.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

Polygraf

Kloos & Co.

Indie Film AS

The Helsinki Effect Trailers

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Arthur Franck

Self (archive footage)

Urho Kekkonen

Self (archive footage)

Leonid Brezhnev

Self (archive footage)

Gerald Ford

Self (archival footage)

Henry Kissinger

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

6.9

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass

Nov 12, 2021

Thirty years after the release of his film JFK (1991), filmmaker Oliver Stone reviews recently declassified evidence related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which took place in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

8.0

La vie au temps de Cro-Magnon

Oct 19, 2019

No overview available.

6.4

The Good Shepherd

Dec 11, 2006

Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally upright young man who values honor and discretion, qualities that help him to be recruited for a career in the newly founded OSS. His dedication to his work does not come without a price though, leading him to sacrifice his ideals and eventually his family.

8.0

Nos restaurants : Une grande histoire française

Dec 30, 2023

No overview available.

No Image Available

6.0

Die Dichter und die Räterepublik

Jan 1, 1990

Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.

No Image Available

0.0

China: Power and Prosperity

Sep 25, 2019

Covering China's powerful leader, his signature foreign policy, U.S.-China trade and technology wars, how Chinese technology helps stifle dissent, and more. A collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, PBS NewsHour conducted more than 70 on-camera interviews in eight Chinese cities and across eight countries.

8.0

The Secret Order

Nov 14, 2022

Phil Comeau shines a spotlight on the Ordre de Jacques-Cartier, a powerful secret society that operated from 1926 to 1965, infiltrating every sector of Canadian society and forging the fate of French-language communities. Through never-before-heard testimony from former members of the Order, along with historically accurate dramatic reconstructions, this film paints a gripping portrait of the social and political struggles of Canadian francophone-minority communities.

8.7

Vigilantes INC. - America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen

Sep 6, 2024

Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen The 2024 election is in danger: 8,500 self-proclaimed vigilante vote-fraud hunters have already challenged the rights of 851,000 voters of color. Investigative reporter Greg Palast (Guardian/Rolling Stone) hunts down the MAGA vigilantes including one dressed like Doc Holliday—with his loaded 6-guns—who blocked the vote of 4,000 Black soldiers including MAJ Gamaliel Turner. Palast and Major Turner confront the vote rustlers in scenes humorous, weird and dangerous.

10.0

1994: The Bloody Miracle

Jan 1, 2014

As South Africa celebrates its 20th anniversary of the advent of democracy in 1994, it is difficult to believe the ‘Mandela miracle’ nearly didn’t happen. In an orgy of countrywide violence, some were intent on derailing the first free elections. Now, for the first time, those responsible for countless deaths and widespread mayhem explain how they nearly brought South Africa to its knees. 1994: The Bloody Miracle is a chilling look at what these hard men did to thwart democracy, and at how they have now made an uneasy peace with the ‘Rainbow Nation’ in their own different ways.

8.4

Nuremberg: The Nazis Facing their Crimes

Oct 25, 2006

The documentary of the Nuremberg War Trials of 21 Nazi dignitaries held after World War II.

8.0

The Battle of France

Jun 3, 1964

A montage of newscasts tracing the events of the "damned war" and the German invasion of 1940.

0.0

Allies

Oct 19, 1983

ALLIES is a landmark documentary from 1983, made at the time of Bob Hawke’s unequivocal embrace of the American alliance.

No Image Available

0.0

NARC. Mini-Doc – North East Cultural Activism

Nov 10, 2022

This documentary speaks to local activist groups in the music industry and culture scene to find out why people are driven to fight back and speak out on subjects they’re passionate about. With an aim of inspiring the next generation, each activist gives their advice on how you can put a cause you are passionate about in the local scene into action. Hope Lynes spoke to Phil Douglas from LGBTQIA+ organisation Curious Arts; grassroots promoter Hana Harrison from Art Mouse; Tracks' Sarah Wilson, who campaigns for better female representation in the music scene with her project Noisy Daughters; Chantal Herbert from feminist Black and queer-led organisation Sister Shack; and disability activist and musician Ruth Lyon. It’s hoped that this intimate and personal documentary will explore the starting points to beginning your own activism.

7.2

Tunnel to Freedom

Jul 22, 2021

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

No Image Available

0.0

Nomoto: A BC Tragedy

Oct 23, 2022

The injustice of the Japanese internment is explored through the story of Kyuichi Nomoto, one of the first Japanese Canadians to graduate from UBC, who suffered a breakdown deep in the BC Interior.

0.0

Split Screen

Nov 20, 2022

The story of January 6, 2021, where approximately 2000 people stormed the US Capitol to stop the certification of the Electoral College Votes, killing some and leaving over 140 injured. A firestorm of angst, anger, violence and confusion.

6.7

The Society of the Spectacle

May 1, 1974

Guy Debord's analysis of a consumer society.

The Helsinki Effect

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

The Helsinki Effect Trailers