Sons of Cuba (2009)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 28M
Director : Andrew Lang
Synopsis
The Havana Boxing Academy is a Cuban boarding school that takes 9-year-old boys, and turns them into the best boxers in the world. SONS OF CUBA follows the stories of three young hopefuls through 8 dramatic months of training and schooling as they prepare for the biggest event of their lives so far: Cuba's National Boxing Championship for Under-12's. But during the season, crisis strikes: Fidel Castro is taken ill, and all of Cuba's Olympic boxing champions defect to the USA, leaving Cuba at a crossroads, and the boys contemplating a changing world.
After Rocky goes the distance with champ Apollo Creed, both try to put the fight behind them and move on. Rocky settles down with Adrian but can't put his life together outside the ring, while Creed seeks a rematch to restore his reputation. Soon enough, the "Master of Disaster" and the "Italian Stallion" are set on a collision course for a climactic battle that is brutal and unforgettable.
Filmed over 14 months with unprecedented access into the inner circle of the man and the sport, this is the first official and fully authorised film of one of the most celebrated figures in football. For the first time ever, the world gets vividly candid and un-paralleled, behind-closed-doors access to the footballer, father, family-man and friend in this moving & fascinating documentary. Through in-depth conversations, state of the art football footage and never before seen archival footage, the film gives an astonishing insight into the sporting and personal life of triple Ballon D'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo at the peak of his career. From the makers of ‘Senna’ and ‘Amy’, Ronaldo takes audiences on an intimate and revealing journey of what it’s like to live as an iconic athlete in the eye of the storm.
While investigating the furtive world of illegal doping in sports, director Bryan Fogel connects with renegade Russian scientist Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov—a pillar of his country’s “anti-doping” program. Over dozens of Skype calls, urine samples, and badly administered hormone injections, Fogel and Rodchenkov grow closer despite shocking allegations that place Rodchenkov at the center of Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping program.
Chelsea finished third in the Premier League last season, albeit a staggering 25 points behind second-placed Liverpool, and started life under a new manager with club legend Frank Lampard taking the reins. With a transfer ban impacting the west Londoners' business, and the Covid-19 pandemic causing unprecedented disruption mid-season, Chelsea finished the domestic season narrowly losing the FA Cup final to Arsenal. Despite the disappointment, a 4th place finish secured on the final day of the Premier League campaign guarantees the Blues will be playing Champions League football in the 2020/21 season.
The story is set at the 1972 Munich Olympics where the U.S. team lost the basketball championship for the first time in 36 years. The final moments of the final game have become one of the most controversial events in Olympic history. With play tied, the score table horn sounded during a second free throw attempt that put the U.S. ahead by one. But the Soviets claimed they had called for a time out before the basket and confusion ensued. The clock was set back by three seconds twice in a row and the Russians finally prevailed at the very last. The U.S. protested, but a jury decided in the USSR’s favor and Team USA voted unanimously to refuse its silver medals. The Soviet players have been treated as heroes at home.
The world had rarely seen a frenzy as the one the Dream Team created when it arrived in Barcelona, Spain, in July 1992. The Dream Team featured 11 future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame players and three future Hall of Famers on the coaching staff, including head coach Chuck Daly.
During a summer of friendship and adventure, one boy becomes a part of the gang, nine boys become a team and their leader becomes a legend by confronting the terrifying mystery beyond the right field wall.
When a Jamaican sprinter is disqualified from the Olympic Games, he enlists the help of a dishonored coach to start the first Jamaican bobsled team.
A lifetime of taking shots has ended Rocky’s career, and a crooked accountant has left him broke. Inspired by the memory of his trainer, however, Rocky finds glory in training and takes on an up-and-coming boxer.
A losing coach with an underdog football team faces their giants of fear and failure on and off the field to surprising results.
At the NFL Draft, general manager Sonny Weaver has the opportunity to rebuild his team when he trades for the number one pick. He must decide what he's willing to sacrifice on a life-changing day for a few hundred young men with NFL dreams.
Billy "The Great" Hope, the reigning junior middleweight boxing champion, has an impressive career, a loving wife and daughter, and a lavish lifestyle. However, when tragedy strikes, Billy hits rock bottom, losing his family, his house and his manager. He soon finds an unlikely savior in Tick Willis, a former fighter who trains the city's toughest amateur boxers. With his future on the line, Hope fights to reclaim the trust of those he loves the most.
A star quarterback gets knocked out of the game and an unknown third stringer is called in to replace him. The unknown gives a stunning performance and forces the ageing coach to reevaluate his game plans and life. A new co-owner/president adds to the pressure of winning. The new owner must prove herself in a male dominated world.
Phil Weston has been unathletic his entire life. In college he failed at every sport that he tried out for. It looks like his 10-year old son, Sam, is following in his footsteps. But when Phil's hyper-competitive dad benches Sam, Phil decides to transfer his son to a new team which needs a coach. Phil steps in to be the temporary coach and immediately begins to butt heads with this dad over this new competition in their lives.
Pro quarter-back, Paul Crewe and former college champion and coach, Nate Scarboro are doing time in the same prison. Asked to put together a team of inmates to take on the guards, Crewe enlists the help of Scarboro to coach the inmates to victory in a football game 'fixed' to turn out quite another way.
Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the sport is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband intervenes.
The life story of Brazilian football legend, Pele.
Based on a true story, in which Richmond High School head basketball coach Ken Carter made headlines in 1999 for benching his undefeated team due to poor academic results.
Rosetta and new arrival Chloe band together to try to break the garden fairies' legendary losing streak in the Pixie Hollow Games, a sports spectacle filled with pixie pageantry, fantastic fairy events and hilarious surprises.
The true story of boxer Jim Braddock who, in the 1920s following his retirement, makes a surprise comeback in order to get him and his family out of a socially poor state.
A young Jewish boy travels europe in search of the grave of his Great Grandfather who was killed by the Nazis in the War.
A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.
Every kid wants to be cool and fit in - life's a blast even when you're different. When Mo's reflection is revealed, he sees a body that doesn't quite resemble any of his peers. Here, he tells the tale of his youth, growing up on the south shore of Long Island, New York
Matei lives with his grandfather in Romania. His parents have gone to work in Italy. After arguing with his grandfather, he leaves. A poignant, beautifully shot film on the illusions and disillusionments of childhood.
“My best friend, Anna, asked me if I would mind taking her fifteen-year-old son Itvan to Berlin with me. I accepted immediately.” An elegant, refined man in his forties sets off with Itvan on a long, enjoyable journey, his Winter Journey. They cross snowbound Germany by car. As the man drives the boy through cities and countryside, Itvan discovers the past and the vast job of reunification now underway. Poetry and culture are also part of the journey, which is accompanied by classical German music. When their paths cross with the man's former lovers or the journey provides unexpected encounters, Itvan also gets to know more about the man's own life. When they finally arrive in Berlin, their ways must part. Itvan watches the man leave, taking the melancholy of his existence with him. However their journey together has created an unbreakable tie between the two men. Itvan will never be the same again.
The story begins with an experiment. A filmmaker in the country of Georgia posts an ad inviting youth to audition for her film. Facing the camera, the hopefuls confess their struggles and dreams. These raw interviews unfold seamlessly into cinematic slivers of Georgian life.
A group of boys, roughly seven to eleven years of age, go skinny-dipping in a river near their small Mexican town one afternoon and there find themselves the butt of an old vagabond's practical joke, the man stealing all their clothes from them. Humiliated about having to walk home in the buff, the tykes decide to get even, declare war. Yet, as the generations battle it out, a mutual respect develops, the depth of which is evident once the man has a heart attack during one of his romps with the kids. Will the boys' older pal recuperate so that they can engage in one final battle.
The story takes place in a small village on the beach of Sea of Azov at the beginning of 1960s. Adolescents passionately dream of love about which they have heard from their elder experienced friends. 16 year-old Ignat is the first to find out what the real feeling is. His love for an adventuress who pretends to be a singer from capital becomes destructive.
If the scorpion could see and the viper could hear, there would be no escape". The viper is deaf and the scorpion can't see, so it is and so shall be, the same way the countryside is peaceful and the city bustling and the human being impossible to satisfy. Lacrau demands the return "to the curve where man got lost" in a journey from the city towards nature. The escape from chaos and emotional void we call progress; matter without spirit, without will. The search for the most ancient sensations and relationships of mankind. The amazement, the fear of the unknown, the loss of basic comforts, loneliness, the meeting with the other, the other animal, the other vegetable. A dive looking for a connection with the world. Where beginning and end are the same, but I am not.
In 1939, José Garcés is in French prison camp after the defeat of Spain's Republicans. To entertain and inspire his fellow prisoners, he tells the story of becoming a man in 1919, the year he realized that learning to live is the same as learning to die. His stiff and demanding father loses a fortune in German war bonds, takes a job in Caspe, and leaves José on his own in Zaragoza to finish high school while apprenticing in a pharmacy. José courts his beloved Valentina via letters, becomes intimate with Isabel, a maid he meets in a cinema who shares his ideas of free love, and comes under the influence of El Checa, an anarchist and gentle teacher who leads a doomed revolt.
The coming-of-age of adolescent Brian O'Connal in small town Depression-era Saskatchewan is told. The son of the local pharmacist Gerald O'Connal, Brian is in many ways a typical boy, who dislikes school if only because of his run-ins with the nervous schoolteacher, Miss MacDonald, and who tries to catch gophers with his friends, Artie and Forbsie. His best friend and protector is slightly older Jonathan Ben, better known as The Young Ben (as his father is referred to as The Ben), who is highly regarded as a problem by those in town who see themselves as the moral authority if only because of The Young Ben's association to The Ben, the town still keeper and drunk. Brian's life takes a turn when his parents have to leave town temporarily, while Brian stays on his Uncle Sean's farm. That stint leads to a series of events which make Brian see life around him through slightly older and wiser eyes.
Matthew is a boy who just left school. He is handsome and athletic and believes himself to be gay. He retains a friendship with only one school friend, Phil, who has stuck by Matthew despite hostile reactions from his peers. As their relationship grows more intense, Phil's girlfriend Sharon and his classmates become vindictive and aggressive. The two friends find themselves ostracized by both friends and family and decide to run away.
Jay is the name of the two protagonists in the film, one is living, the other dead. The living Jay is producing a documentary of the dead Jay, a gay teacher who was brutally killed. As Jay recreates and examines the life of his subject, his own life is affected when he unravels his subject's hidden life and secret love.
In the Lesotho highlands, a 15-year-old boy tends his family's flock of sheep alone through the winter. His younger brother might have to quit the village school to help him. And two girls attempt to maintain their unique friendship when one of them goes off to attend a better school and the other stays in the village. Over the span of two years the film accompanies four teenagers in an isolated mountain village on their path to adulthood - a path between individuation and tradition.
Alejandro Gerber Bicecci's "Vaho" (Becloud) tells the story of three childhood friends, Andres, Felipe, and Jose, and their lives in a dusty, run down corner of Mexico City. The boys were inseparable until they witnessed a tragedy that haunts them to the present day. The tragedy shaped each boy differently, and had a profound effect on their lives.
The screen story of four teenagers, on whom the horrors of war had left an indelible mark. Their relatives’ deaths and their yearning for fighting the Nazis led them, one way or another, to a sea cadet school that had been opened on Solovetski Islands at the start of the war. This film tells of men’s friendship, the boys’ first baptism of fire, and the victory…
Surreal tale of a 14 year-old boy who dreams of escaping the loneliness from an unhappy home & sexual abuse (from his mother's boyfriend who is also his school swimming coach). One day his back mysteriously sprouts feathers and he can metaphorically fly away from it all.
The story takes place in the summer of 1995 outside of Gothenburg, Sweden, during the rise of Neo-Nazi violence that was sweeping across the country. The film "John Hron" is the true story about a teenager, his friends and family. John is caught up in defense of a student being bullied in school. As the conflict with the bully escalates it soon causes strain between John and his friends.
15-year-old Moritz lives in a posh area of Hamburg, but his parents did not care about it. The teenager suffers from ridicule of his classmates and finds refuge in his dreams and playing the saxophone. Only when he joins a band and began performing there Moritz pulled out of the vicious circle, and finds love with new friends...
Although he was once a colonel in Argentina, the principal character in this film is now a wealthy exile living in Paris with his beloved wife, who has been unable to bear children. To fill this void in their lives, he feeds and clothes abandoned children, raising them in his mansion as if they were his own. As would never be the case in real life today, in this fantasized story set in 1925, no one objects to this behavior, and they live pleasantly and enjoyably together. Things grow considerably more animated when a stage magician places his very attractive daughter in the colonel's household, which stirs a lively romantic interest from his boys and from the great man himself.