Besa: The Promise

Jul 19, 2012

1h 26m

★ 10.0

Overview

A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

JWM Productions

Besa: The Promise Trailers

Cast

himself

Norman H. Gershman

himself

Rexhep Hoxha

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.

7.3

The Smuggler and Her Charges

Nov 14, 2016

A captivating and personal detective story that uncovers the truth behind the childhood of Michaël Prazan's father, who escaped from Nazi-occupied France in 1942 thanks to the efforts of a female smuggler with mysterious motivations.

5.0

Francisco Boix: A Photographer in Hell

Jan 1, 2000

In 1939, just finished the Spanish Civil War, Spanish republican photographer Francesc Boix escapes from Spain; but is captured by the Nazis in 1940 and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria, a year later. There, he works as a prisoner in the SS Photographic Service, hiding, between 1943 and 1945, around 20,000 negatives that later will be presented as evidence during several trials conducted against Nazi war criminals after World War II.

7.3

Goering's Catalogue: A Collection of Art and Blood

Mar 14, 2021

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

0.0

Okinawa/Santos

Nov 5, 2020

During World War II, many Japanese immigrants in Santos, Brazil, were forced to move to another place. Matsubayashi draws attention to the fact that 60% of the immigrants were from Okinawa. Based on testimonies from interviewees, this film reveals the hidden historical relationship between Okinawa and Brazil.

6.8

A, B, C... Z

Feb 16, 1971

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

6.2

13 Hours That Saved Britain

Apr 20, 2011

In this documentary, experts dissect the Battle of Britain, which took place on Sept. 15, 1940 — a day that determined the fate of the nation.

0.0

Elvis and the USS Arizona

Nov 14, 2021

The surprising story of how one of music's biggest icons helped to establish a USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor. Elvis’ fundraising concert drew public attention to the plight and helped to galvanize efforts to finish the USS Arizona Memorial as it stands today.

7.3

The Half-Life of Genius Physicist Raemer Schreiber

Jul 17, 2018

Our two-hour film highlights the life and career of Dr. Schreiber with respect and clarity. Raemer, his wife Marge, and young daughter Paula would move to the high-desert of New Mexico where he and other brilliant minds would change the world forever.

7.5

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Aug 6, 2007

Steven Okazaki presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first -- and hopefully last -- uses of nuclear weapons in war. Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath.

5.9

The Valkyrie Legacy

Nov 24, 2008

Created as a companion documentary to the film "Valkyrie," this documentary details the true story behind the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.

6.3

A Compassionate Spy

Aug 31, 2022

Physicist Ted Hall is recruited to join the Manhattan Project as a teenager and goes to Los Alamos with no idea what he'll be working on. When he learns the true nature of the weapon being designed, he fears the post-war risk of a nuclear holocaust and begins to pass significant information to the Soviet Union.

7.5

Tony Robinson's VE Day Minute by Minute

May 8, 2020

Tony Robinson’s VE Day: Minute By Minute will take a unique look at a pivotal day in the history of the modern world, delving into the key events that made VE Day such a momentous twenty-four hours. This is the story of what happened on that most celebrated and important day, including original interviews with historians and veterans who tell their stories and share their first-hand experiences. Using unseen archive footage and stills, plus never told accounts from veterans who were there, this one-off special will chart the moment the clock struck midnight, to 24 hours later, when fighting officially stopped across Europe. Up and down the country it was dawning on people that they were waking up not with fear or anxiety, but with relief and excitement. This was a Great Britain no one had experienced for six years. A Britain at peace. At almost no notice street celebrations were being prepared and tens of thousands were flocking to London and other city centres.

9.0

Battle of Okinawa in Color

Jun 25, 2017

By mid-1945, Hitler is dead and the war has ended in Europe. Halfway around the world, however, the fighting is still going strong on a small island in the Pacific. Okinawa was the site of the last battle of the last great war of the 20th century, with a casualty rate in the tens of thousands. Through it all, military cameramen risked their lives to film the conflict, from brutal land combat to fierce kamikaze attacks at sea. See the footage they captured and experience this intense battle the way the soldiers saw it -- in color.

7.5

1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz?

Sep 19, 2019

In 1944, two prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. They told the world of the horror of the Holocaust and raised one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century.

7.8

Stalingrad - Stimmen aus Ruinen

Jan 3, 2023

No overview available.

6.0

Churchill: When Britain Said No

Jun 2, 2015

Documentary which examines the reasons why Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party lost the General Election of 1945, after Churchill had just led the country to victory in the World War II.

10.0

A Yiddish World Remembered

Nov 14, 2004

Elliott Gould narrates this affectionate look at life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It's unreal that all this could have just disappeared," says Polish native Mariem Adler Stok, one of the seniors whose memories of this "Yiddish world" give this documentary its life. The hour traces Jewish history in Europe and explores Jews' focus on education, their religious customs, clothing, food, music and theater.

7.0

Art of War

May 3, 2009

Documentary on the main principles of Sun Tsu "Art of War" illustrated with examples from the second world war, the Vietnam war and the American civil war.

6.5

The Dead Nation

Aug 25, 2017

A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.

Besa: The Promise

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Besa: The Promise Trailers