Best movies like He Came to Give Us Freedom

Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.

Former Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza's journey as a person with top secret clearance and total access to the President.

March 1965. In the heat of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR are competing for supremacy in space. What both superpowers aim for in this race, is to be the first to have a man walk in outer space. To accomplish that, no price is too high and no risk is too great. Now it’s up to the unlikely duo of a seasoned war veteran and a hot-headed test-pilot to fulfill this mission. Two men in a tiny spaceship, without proper testing, facing the complete unknown. They were supposed to do what no man has done before—and no man imagined what would happen next.

A Stalinist assassin tracks exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky to Mexico in 1940.

During Gorbachev's perestroika, a Chicago student, visits Moscow while the Soviet Union is changing from Communist to Wild West capitalist society. Purely by bad luck, he becomes a pawn in a dangerous cat and mouse game for a precious icon.

A Romanian police officer teams up with a small crew of bank robbers to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie.

When the communist government raises food prices in 1962, the rebellious workers from the small industrial town of Novocherkassk go on strike. The massacre which then ensues is seen through the eyes of a devout party activist.

When dictator Joseph Stalin dies, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. As they bumble, brawl and back-stab their way to the top, the question remains — just who is running the government?

The Winter War was an epic life and death struggle that changed the course of World War II, and saved a democracy. Fire and Ice documents this timeless story of courage against all odds by a people united to preserve their freedom.

Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation, the Donbass War; all through the eyes of her family and friends settled in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city located just eighteen miles from the Russian border.

Made in wartime and edited in candlelight, Mikhail Vartanov's rarely-seen masterpiece tells about his friendship with the genius Sergei Parajanov who was imprisoned by KGB "at the peak of his artistic power". Vartanov takes us back with the scenes from his censored 1969 film The Color of Armenian Land where Paradjanov is at work on his suppressed chef-d'oeuvre The Color of Pomegranates - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - and contrasts it with the shocking request Parajanov sent him in unpublished 1974 letters from the Soviet prisons. Vartanov's camera documents Parajanov's striking last day at work in 1990 during the making of the unfinished Confession. A monumental wordless montage - the entire sixth reel - concludes Vartanov's acclaimed documentary, which, despite the prohibitive conditions it was created in, won the admiration of many of cinema's greatest artists, including Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Most people don't think about singing when they think about revolutions. But song was the weapon of choice when, between 1986 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. During those years, hundreds of thousands gathered in public to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to rally for independence. "The young people, without any political party, and without any politicians, just came together ... not only tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands ... to gather and to sing and to give this nation a new spirit," remarks Mart Laar, a Singing Revolution leader featured in the film and the first post-Soviet Prime Minister of Estonia. "This was the idea of the Singing Revolution." James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty's "The Singing Revolution" tells the moving story of how the Estonian people peacefully regained their freedom--and helped topple an empire along the way.

After escaping Russia's communist revolution, Léon Theremin travels to New York, where he pioneers the field of electronic music with his synthesizer. But at the height of his popularity, Soviet agents kidnap and force him to develop spy technology.

Biographical film, epically depicting the life of the famous scientist Lev Landau.

The Iron Curtain is based on the actual 1945 case of Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko, (Dana Andrews), who, after careful training, was assigned to the U.S.S.R. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada in the midst of World War II. Eventually, Gouzenko defected with 109 pages of material implicating several high level Canadian officials, outlined the steps taken to secure information about the the details of the nuclear bomb via numerous sleeper cells established throughout North America. The scandal that resulted when details of this case were publicized by American columnist Drew Pearson in early 1946 involved Canada, Britain and the United States.

A documentary about Kim Philby, a British member of MI6 who was in reality a spy and defected to the U.S.S.R.

Documentary by lifelong friend that supports the innocence of Alger Hiss (convicted in January 1950 on two counts of espionage-related perjury)

Tells the story of five people from the last generation of Soviet children who were brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Through the lives of these former schoolmates, this intimate film reveals how they have adjusted to their post-Soviet reality in today's Moscow.

A high school student and a young criminal are trying to get reciprocity from the most popular guy in the school. The general and the dancer in 1985 put their careers and life on the line to be together.

As his country is gripped by revolution and war, a Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life and play his part in the revolution by revealing it.

Biography of Russian physicist & dissident Andrei Sakharov focuses on his first acts in his civil rights.

In 1985, perestroika began in the Soviet Union and the Laskovy May group appeared. At their concerts there were only full houses, from unrequited love for them, suicides were committed. The figure of Mikhail Gorbachev faded in the glory of the creator of "Tender May" - Andrei Razin. An accidental photo taken on the beach, where Andrei Razin, as a child, was captured with the Gorbachev family, turned his fate upside down. It was with the help of this photograph that he became Gorbachev's nephew. He did not say this directly - just hinted, and he was instantly believed. Functionaries of all ranks acted without delay: the doors of television and radio opened before him, the Soviet stage lay at his feet. Razin traveled to all the orphanages of the Soviet Union in search of gifted children for his twin groups.

On Nov. 22, 1963 the world was shocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The mystery surrounding this history-changing event has led to many unanswered questions.

Biopic about Marshal Georgi Zhukov. Documentary footage from WWII and dramatization played by Russian and German actors.

Vadik Volnov (Garik Kharlamov) dies on his own wedding of cannabis overdose and has to prove to God that he is worthy to enter Heaven. During his conversation with God's secretary, Vadik recalls numerous memorable moments of his earthly existence, such as getting drunk on cognac on his 8th birthday, service in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, bandit showdowns in crime-ridden 1990s Russia, and, finally, meeting the love of his life.

Fiona Shaw narrates this exploration of Russia's medieval origins through to its bloody expansion to become the biggest country in the world. It's a tale that set the scene for one of the world's most enigmatic figures, and his vision of modern Russia. From a tyrannical grip on ordinary citizens to rampant corruption at the highest level, this film reveals the secrets behind holding the world's largest country together in a narrative that takes in the KGB and its ancestors as well as Stalin, murder and gulags.

A guide to human history through its most audacious power grabs. From Julius Caesar to Napoleon; from Mussolini to the strongmen of the present day - we see how the world we know has been shaped by those who dream big.

Veteran journalist and author Edward Behr spent a year investigating the rise and fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. Executed on Christmas Day 1989, Ceausescu was once a hero to his own people, and in the west. Behr's film reveals the truth behind the myth, in a tale of megalomania, farce, and horror.

Jonathan Meades examines the cult of Stalinism through its buildings and monuments.

In August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of rockers called the Beatles. He arranged their first live TV appearances on a local show in Manchester and watched as the Fab Four phenomenon swept the world. Twenty-five years later while making films in Russia, Woodhead became aware of how, even though they were never able to play in the Soviet Union, the Beatles' legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. This film meets the Soviet Beatles generation and hears their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, including Putin's deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who explains how the Beatles helped him learn English and showed him another life. (Storyville)

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, bringing the reunification of Germany and an end to the Cold War. This documentary revisits the events surrounding the wall's historic collapse. Interviews with George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl offer insight into political maneuvering while firsthand accounts from Germans provide personal perspectives of this historic event that changed the world forever.

The dramatic story of three great Russian avant-garde painters from the beginning of the last century – Kazimir Malevich, Pavel Filonov and Vladimir Tatlin – and their supporter, Nikolai Punin, the first post-revolution Commissar of the Hermitage and Russian Museums. They dedicated their lives to belief in the revolution and its connection to avant-garde art, but the communist regime betrayed them. The history depicted on the painted canvases reflects the tumultuous period of the 1920s and 30s in the Soviet Union, in Leningrad and in artistic circles of the time. Only with perestroika have the avant-garde paintings, stored in museum archives, again seen the light of day.

15 August 1990. Viktor Tsoi, the Soviet Union’s most famous rock star, leader of the band Kino, a symbol of freedom and change, dies in an accident on a Latvian highway. The bus driver who was involved in the tragic accident will bring his body back to Leningrad. A party of mourners – Tsoi’s wife and her new boyfriend, his mistress, his producer, his young son and an obsessed photographer – are part of the trip back. This is going to be a long trip, the perfect occasion for an agonizing unravelling of love, jealousy, ambition, and greed.

Top astrophysicist Sasha Greenberg has spent the past 17 years working in the United States. An invitation to speak at a Congress on Cosmology in his native Moscow brings him home for the first time to confront colleagues, and unanswered personal questions. As Russia undergoes perestroika, public and private lives are radically re-assessed and Sasha sees the social and sexual upheavals as a crisis

The fifth film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, revealing the nature and process of the fight between the Soviet Union and Germany in the Second World War.