Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb.

In the German-occupied Paris, Helene is torn between the love for her boyfriend Jean, working for the resistance and the German administrator Bergmann, who will do anything to gain her affection.

Old West highwayman Bill Miner, known to Pinkertons as "The Gentleman Bandit," is released in 1901 after 33 years in prison. A genial and charming old man, he re-enters a world unfamiliar to him, and returns to the only thing that gives him purpose — robbery.

This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China's vast territory and declared himself emperor in 221 B.C. During his reign, he introduced sweeping reforms, built a vast network of roads and connected the Great Wall of China. From the grandiose inner sanctum of Emperor Qin's royal palace, to fierce battles with feudal kings, this film re-creates the glory and the terror of the Qin Dynasty, including footage of Qin's life-sized terra cotta army, constructed 2,200 years ago for his tomb.

For 200 years, the United States Congress has been one of the country's most important and least understood institutions. In this elegant, thoughtful and often touching portrait, Ken Burns explores the history and promise of this unique American institution. Using historical photographs and newsreels, evocative live footage and interviews with David Broder, Alistair Cooke, Cokie Roberts, Charles McDowell and others, the award-winning film chronicles the personalities, events and issues that have animated the first 200 years of Congress and, in turn, our country.

Donald Marshall is imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit.

Cook and Peary: The Race to the Pole is an unabashedly biased recreation of the controversy concerning the "conquering" of the North Pole. Robert E. Peary (Rod Steiger), a US Navy commander and shameless self-promoter, sets out through Arctic wastes in 1909 to discover the Pole, an expedition that many others have attempted but failed to complete. His principal rival is Dr. Frederick A. Cook (Richard Chamberlain), who insists that he'd already reached the Pole in 1908. Though the experts (and the US Congress) conclude that Perry was first, public opinion is firmly in Cook's corner--as is this TV movie.

On a December night in 1943, three Jewish children escape from Nazi-occupied France and are given refuge by Sister Gabrielle at a Catholic school in which the Gentile students must face their fears about harboring Jews from the Nazis. As the students become acquainted with their Jewish peers, they grow more sympathetic to their situation and eventually go to great lengths -- and take serious risks -- to save the lives of their newfound friends.

This film discusses the search for the last remains of Demasduit (Mary March), one of the last of the Indigenous Beothuk people, set in the Red Indian Lake area of Central Newfoundland. A young girl, Bernadette Buchans, believes that she is related to Mary March. Throughout the whole film, Bernadette and her father Ted are searching for the grave of her mother. An archaeologist/ photographer, Nancy George, accompanies them and she also believes that she has family connections to the Beothuks.

The story of Samuel de Champlain's futile search for a passage to China in North America and his later founding of Quebec.

A young Ojibwa girl from 1770 marries a Scottish fur trader and leaves home for the shores of Georgian Bay. Although the union is beneficial for her tribe, it results in hardship and isolation for Ikwe. Values and customs clash until, finally, the events of a dream Ikwe once had unfold with tragic clarity.

Part of the Daughters of the Country series, this film, set in the 1850s, unfolds against the backdrop of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly of the fur trade. In protest, some Métis engage in trade with the Americans. Madeleine, the Métis common-law wife of a Hudson's Bay Company clerk, is torn between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her brother, a freetrader. Even more shattering, a change in company policy destroys Madeleine's happy and secure life, forcing her to re-evaluate her identity.

A woman goes slowly mad as she is confined to a room for weeks on end by her husband.

In this short documentary, five black women talk about their lives in rural and urban Canada between the 1920s and 1950s. What emerges is a unique history of Canada’s black people and the legacy of their community elders. Produced by the NFB’s iconic Studio D.

This film illustrates the struggles of Canadian prairies women to achieve a more just and humane society within the farm movement and at large. During the early 1900s, women on the prairies looked for ways to overcome their isolation. Out of the resulting farm women's organizations grew a group of women possessing remarkable intellectual abilities, social and cultural awareness, and advanced worldviews.

This animated short challenges enduring myths, spawned by fairy tales and romances, about women in medieval society. It explores the differences and similarities between that distant period and our own, and shows what medieval women’s lives were really like.

Set in 1815, this is the dramatic story of a child of the fur trade, son of a Native mother and a Scottish-Canadian fur trader. John Mackenzie's father is a wintering partner of the Montréal-based North West Company, which was for decades the wealthiest merchant enterprise in North America. To mark his entry into adulthood, twelve-year-old John is travelling for the first time to Fort William, the Company's lavish winter headquarters by Lake Superior. In following his journey, the film reveals the complex network of people--Scottish, French and Native Canadian--that made up fur-trading society and gave a unique flavor to the opening up of Canada's northwest.

The history of nuns mirrors the history of all women -- in what we are taught about the past, women are almost invisible. Although today's one million nuns outnumber priests two to one, they must struggle to be heard by the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy from which they are excluded. Behind the Veil: Nuns is the first film ever to record from a global perspective the turbulent history and remarkable achievements of women in religion, from pre-Christian Celtic communities to the radical sisters of the 1980s. Contemporary nuns of strength, dignity and commitment speak of their lives and of their predecessors.

Using archival documents, fictions, current accounts, and excerpts from a theatrical creation, Paul Tana paints a nuanced portrait of the Italians of Montreal. From the first waves of immigration at the beginning of the century to the men and women taken to a prisoner of war camps during World War II, to the hardships and joys of building vibrant lives in Montréal. Caffè Italia Montréal chronicles a significant chapter in Canada’s history.

The dramatic story of two youths--one French and one Indigenous--who share a pivotal time in Canada's history: the first contact between European and First Nations peoples.

Follows the crew of a Canadian submarine in World War Two and their fight against the Japanese Imperial Navy.

Solitary anarchist, Lucien Brouillard ceaselessly fights for his rights and those of his societal peers. His subversive whistleblower activities will bring him endless troubles, and he will begin a real descent into Hell after his former childhood friend, and now judge, Jacque Martineau.

The Chronicle of 1812

A docudrama on the closing of the town of Schefferville. When Raoul loses his job at the mine because the operations are ending, he's been settled there for ten years with Carmen and their son. They're now forced to leave the town, leaving behind the traces of an ephemeral prosperity.

It seems that Canada don't want to hear about their heroes of the two World Wars, especially in Quebec. In English, La Guerre oubliée means The Forgotten War. Here, we talk about the 1914-18 big thing. This documentary doesn't use old footage, but actors to show us some parts of that war in Quebec. Joe Bocan sings some songs of that period and makes the narrations. There's also some rare veterans of the war who talk.

A view of the life and works of the late Alex Colville, the celebrated Canadian painter. Shows the influence on his life and works of his experience as an artist during World War II, and of his relationship with his wife, Rhoda. Friends and critics speak of the construction and sense of menace in his work, and Colville comments on his sense of order, goodness, and contingency.

Join two youngsters and their teacher as they discover clues to Dinosaurs: Puzzles from the Past. Putting dinosaurs in perspective is their first task. They follow a time line back from the Age of Man to the era of dinosaurs. Animation introduces a variety of dinosaurs and their environment. Students see fossilized dinosaur bones uncovered by excavators at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. They also visit a paleontologist in his lab and see a comparison of bones from two different dinosaurs. At a museum in Ottawa the two youngsters see a full-scale reconstructed tyrannosaur skeleton and identify it as a meat-eater by its feet and teeth.

A drama documentary about the life of explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

A visual interpretation of the massive disarmament rally held in New York City on June 12, 1982. With huge rallies held simultaneously around the world, people gathered together on this day at the height of the Regan-era nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union.