We are happy to provide you with all 30 selected films for our film festival sorted be our 3 timeframes. On each kick-off day the films for the respective timeframes will be made accessible via a link provided here at each film description below and will remain available during the festival.
This gives you a very flexible way to enjoy our selected films.
For this you only have to register to receive the access code: Click here for further details in case you have not registered yet!
To see the LIVE program of our online festival from 9 to 11 August 2023 follow TWITCH or go to:
Films in Category I: Stone Age – Late Antiquity
Illyricvm
Director: Simon Bogojevic Narath
The year is 37 BC. A young Liburnian Volsus is taken by a Roman unit to help in what at first seems a simple task of collecting taxes, but the encounters with local Illyrian tribes soon lead to unexpected turns of events, as they show more resilience to subjugation than meets the eye…
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The Burnt City
Director: Nasser Pooyesh
A sound is heard from the depth of the soil as the archeological exploration of the Shahre Sukhte goes on. While following the archeologists to document the explorations, the film in parallel seeks out the sound coming from the depths of the soil and steps deep in history to accompany the ancient citizens of the city…
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Persepolis – Chicago:
Director: Orod Attarpour
The Persepolis-Chicago documentary is about the adventures of the Achaemenid tablet fragments dating about ninety years ago, when University of Chicago archaeologists came to Iran to repair and study the inscriptions on some of these tablets…
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Langobardi – Alboino e Romans
Director: Simone Vrech
This movie is an innovative docufilm about history of Lombard with an interaction between cinema and historical disclosure. It is focused on the story of Alboin, the first Lombard king arrived in Italy with his population and the foundation of the village of Romans…
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Sosandra
A 2500 years history.
Director: Lorenzo Scaraggi
How many lives can an island have?
How many men could it have housed?
Sosandra talks about the story of a special island. I have been in the heart of an archaeological excavation…
It happened last summer, July 2022…
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Films in Category II: Early – Late Medieval Era
In the saddle, on horseback – The art of war of the conquest-era Magyars
Director: Tamás Komporday
The movie takes the viewer back to the 10th century, familiarizing him/her with the art of war practiced during the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin…
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Regnum Fest
Director: János Mestellér
A reporter visits various reenactor groups who are recreating the X-XIIIth century. The leaders of the groups are talking about their activities in living history, reconstruction and armed combat on foot and horseback…
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Isenbrand saga – The duel
Director: Zoltán Krasznay
Ádám Baumgartner
Isenbrand(Bran), a warrior of Attila the hun, becomes a toy of fate: his captain betrays him, then loses everything step by step. Meanwhile, he gets into trouble with a mysterious killer, monsters lurking in the night, and the scheming of the nobles…
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Blót – Torn Between Worlds
Director: Alexander Flatau
Because she is being blamed by her father, the young Viking Freydis feels responsible for her mother’s death and develops a profound psychosis…
Read more>> with Introduction Video
Wolves
Director: Juliana Neuhuber
A family displaced by war is ambushed by highwaymen.
The encounter takes a turn when one of the robbers recognises the father as his old brother in arms…
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Fiore
Director: Alberto Mattea
At the end of a brilliant career across the most prominent courts of late medieval Italy, legendary master at arms, Fiore dei Liberi, reminisces about some key episodes of his action packed life…
Read more>> with behind the scenes
Myrlan
Director: Cieran Ryan
Inheriting the throne 20 years ago at the age of just 7, despotic king Markus journeys into the heart of the forest to satisfy the ancient harvest ritual of his people…
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Knight to Queen
Director: Sarah Lotfi
1417, France. After years of mediating a bitter civil war, Queen Isabeau is a prisoner in her own kingdom. Gambling on the Duke of Burgundy, a ruthless warlord, the Queen searches for a divine sign as the pieces move into play. Based on historical events…
Read more>> with Introduction Video
Rise of the Árpáds
Director: Krisztián Bárány
Rise of the Árpáds tells the never-before-told exciting story of the 9th century Hungarian Conquest. It also gives an insight into the rise of the most famous Hungarian dynasty, the Árpád dynasty…
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WORLD PREMIERE!
The Time of the Crusades – a Change of Perspective
Director: Patrick Wolter & Meng Chang
What do we associate with the time of the Crusades? And with this term in general? With the aim of making the multifaceted aspects of this historical period better known to the public, and without the spectacles of Eurocentrism, the Museum of Islamic Art (ISL) is planning a new permanent exhibition area in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin starting in 2026…
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Films in Category III: Modern Era – WWI
Air From Another Planet
Director: Peter Bathurst
November 1908
My Darling, Darling Richard, Do you remember my love – our return to Vienna after Arnold had discovered our affair? It feels like so long ago already…
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WORLD PREMIERE!
A Place Called Wahala
Director: Jürgen Ellinghaus
Every year the War Cemetery Memorial of Wahala / Chra in Togo (West Africa) hosts the 11th November Remembrance Day Ceremony in memory of the First World War and of the African colonial soldiers who died here in August 1914…
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Death at dawn
Director: Elisabet Prandi
Between the written words of a soldier and the feelings of a woman, a voice, a body and a space are intertwined. This short transmits to us, through the real testimony of a shot to give example of the First World War, the greatness of the human being and the horror of war…
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Downfall of an Empire
Director: Bernhard Riener
This documentary looks at the last period of rule of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and its path to decline and thus to the European catastrophe…
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El canto de las moscas
Director: Ricardo Soto
It is 1915, Mexico. Two sisters, remain hidden in their father ́s hacienda. He has left to the revolutionary struggle. The sisters await his return, surviving in the dark. Being caught might mean their death…
Read more>> with Introduction Video
Journey to New Edinburgh
Director: William McKee
How was a ‘New Edinburgh’ founded in the South Pacific Ocean, 12,000 miles away from the original? This documentary follows how the migrant colony of Otago was established in New Zealand from its genesis in Scotland through to the establishment of Dunedin City in 1848…
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Longford
Director: Charles Lambert
We know the landlords of Ireland’s big houses were cruel, selfish oppressors; feckless, dissolute and often absent. This film features top academics who take a closer look, as well as voices from above and below stairs…
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WORLD PREMIERE!
Operation Polonia 1920
Director: Kornél Kussinszky &Sándor Kiss
In August 1920 the Polish – Bolshevik war came to a crucial moment: in the area of Warsaw a decisive battle was about to take place.
Worker’s movements throughout Europe had successfully blocked the transportation of military equipment to Poland…
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Seven Thousand Souls
Director: Sanjin Miric
Serbia alone had lost a third of its entire population in the Great War, almost half its men. This film talks about those that never returned home from the two biggest Austria-Hungarian prisoner camps on the territory of today’s Czech Republic – Jindřichovice and Broumov…
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Venizelos: the Struggle for Asia Minor
Director: Nikos Dayandas
One of Greece’s greatest statesman faces formidable challenges that will test his considerable diplomatic and humanitarian skills and change the lives of millions…
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The Last Voices of
the Great War
Director: Andrea Benato & Marco Scattolini
Are there still living Great War witnesses? This question led to a search throughout Italy that gathered the voices of the children of that time who lived that conflict.
Read more>> with Introduction Video
The Little Church That Could
Director: James Newhook
Amidst a mostly Catholic community, a small tiny Anglican church offers more to the community of Placentia than people may think, and holds many connections and history to the rest of the world…
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The Spawn
Director: Julian Wallner
The leader of a group of wrongly convicted witches, wants to take revenge on the witch judge who was responsible for the death of her family…
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The Blizzard of Souls
Director: Dzintars Dreibergs
Based on true events and the novel by Aleksandrs Grins, which was forbidden in the USSR, the film follows a coming-of-age story of a´sixteen-year-old Arthur…
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Who shot Psilander?
Director: Jonas Hall
“Who shot Psilander?” tells the story of Valdemar Psilander who became the first actor in history to experience global fame as the world’s first major movie star…
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