Resistant

Between 1954-1962, one hundred to three hundred young French people refused to participate in the Algerian war. These rebels, soldiers or conscripts were non-violent or anti-colonialists. Some took refuge in Switzerland where Swiss citizens came to their aid, while in France they were condemned as traitors to the country. In 1962, a few months after Independence, Villi Hermann went to a region devastated by war near the Algerian-Moroccan border, to help rebuild a school. In 2016 he returned to Algeria and reunited with his former students. He also met French refractories, now living in France or Switzerland.

The award-winning filmmaker Peter Lilienthal is dedicated to this extremely poignant documentary of U.S. military policy and the living conditions of former resistance fighters in Latin America.

Like all Israeli youth, Atalya is obligated to become a soldier. Unlike most, she questions the practices of her country's military, and becomes determined to challenge this rite of passage. Despite her family's political disagreements and personal concerns, she refuses military duty and is imprisoned for her dissent. Her courage moves those around her to reconsider their own moral positions and personal power. OBJECTOR follows Atalya to prison and beyond, offering a unique window into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of a young woman who seeks truth and takes a stand for justice.

After the end of his 12-year sentence for attempted murder, anarchist activist and war veteran Kenzo Okazaki lays out his vision of an ideal world.

At the risk of a 5-year prison term, Francesco Da Vinci struggles with his Virginia draft board to be recognized as a sincere conscientious objector to the Vietnam war.

This documentary is the story of two Mennonite brothers from Manitoba who were forced to make a decision in 1939, as Canada joined World War II. In the face of 400 years of pacifist tradition, should they now go to war? Ted became a conscientious objector while his brother went into military service. Fifty years later, the town of Winkler dedicates its first war memorial and John begins to share his war experiences with Ted.

Amani is 31. When he was an infant, he survived the genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi population. Three decades later, Amani has set up an organisation in Nyamirambo, one of the more economically impoverished districts of the country’s capital, Kigali. It employs creativity, artistic practice and performance to grapple with poverty and generational trauma – acknowledging that deep-seated ideologies can easily foment prejudice and create an environment that proved so catastrophic in the past.

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Documentary on Finnish peace organisations and pacifism.

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At the end of WWI, the treaty of Versailles established the conditions for peace in Europe. The aim for the victorious powers was to make Germany pay reparations, and to guarantee a future without war. Yet a decade later, the denunciation of 'Versailles' became a powerful lever for the nazis to obtain power as these reparations would mark the beginning of the humiliation of the German people, and nurture a feeling of having been bestowed a hopeless future. In the 20 years that follow the end of WWI, the issue of reparations and responsibility will effectively poison international relationship. The treaty negative impact goes well beyond WWII as the new European borders it implemented led to many conflicts during the twentieth century. This documentary shines a light on the causality between the decisions taken with the treaty of Versailles, and the ensuing events of the century.

This film, directed by Dominique GAUTIER, takes the viewer on a worldwide excursion into the history and structure of the Esperanto language, introducing its present-day speakers. The words of these users of the language are reflective of a variety of activities and viewpoints, and in the film they are interwoven so as to reveal bit by bit how the utopia of its initiator, Ludwig ZAMENHOF, is concretised every day.

Ko Eun-young, a thirty, non-naitive Jeju Island woman with no experience in politics, runs for Jeju governor in the 2018 local elections. The bumpy ride Ko and her colleagues undergo during the election campaign moves and changes them.

The exceptional portrait of a pacifist general, the only senior officer to have spoken out against torture. This precious testimony still remains censored in France, since no national channel has to date decided to program this documentary. Son and brother of a soldier, General Pâris de Bollardière was destined for a career in arms. He was, for many years, one of the most brilliant representatives of this adventurer career in France, from Narvik to the Algerian War. After fighting in the French maquis, he reached Indochina, where he suddenly found himself in the aggressor's camps. His beliefs are strongly shaken. But it is in Algeria, where the French army practices torture and summary executions, that he takes the big turn. He expresses his contempt to Massu, and is relieved of his command. Until his death in 1986, Jacques de Bollardière fought for world peace, from the Larzac plateaus to the Mururoa atolls.

When a young couple buys a contested home at auction from the U.S. government for $5,400, they become involved in a political and moral battle much larger than what they originally bargained for.

The protests of 1968 had a significant impact on the great cities of the world. But people like to forget that the periphery went through the same social upheavals – Central Switzerland, for example. This is hardly surprising: in the founding cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy, society followed a strict order; tradition, shaped by centuries of Catholic rule, seemed untouchable. But in the 1960s, the local youth could not take these stifling conditions anymore: starting in 1969, resistance broke out across Central Switzerland.

From the rights of minors before the juvenile court, young offenders from the neighborhoods of eastern Paris, or children of Algerian origin from the shantytowns of Nanterre, to the defense of colonized Kanaks and Polynesians; from the fight for conscientious objector status to the denunciation of torture and the death penalty, lawyer Jean-Jacques de Félice has been involved in every struggle. His pacifism knows no bounds: with organizations like Cimade, LDH, and the Louis-Lecoin Committee, he assists draft dodgers in numerous countries. These include Portuguese conscientious objectors refusing to fight in the wars in Angola and Mozambique, American deserters opposed to the Vietnam War, and Israeli objectors refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. It is no surprise that, as early as 1971, he was one of the very first lawyers representing the farmers of the Larzac plateau.

An event organised by CND pits the bomb against poetry. Hear artists who hoped that words and rhymes could put an end to destructive times.

The history of the citizens' movement that for thirty years worked hard to overcome fear, fight hatred and eradicate the violence exercised by the savage terrorist gang ETA, both in the Basque Country and in the rest of Spain.

"Well, I believe in anarchy! And I believe it will come true one day." That's what "May the Rebel," a union activist, anti-militarist, and anarchist, always ready to denounce oppression and defend victims, affirms at 85. Born in Brittany, she earned her living at age 10 delivering butter. In Paris, at 20, she became involved with the Anarchist Union. Sébastien Faure became her mentor. She used a grenade to trigger the Sacco-Vanzetti affair. A union delegate in Moscow in 1922, she sang "Hymn to Anarchy" before Trotsky. Children during the Spanish Civil War, Jews during the Second World War, conscientious objectors alongside Louis Lecoin during the Algerian War, and later, through her newspaper Le Réfractaire, the Larzac, Plogoff, and Creys-Malville protests—all these were battlegrounds for May Picqueray. To the very end, she remained true to her commitment to defending peace and individual liberties.