Paweł Pawlikowski

Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.

In 1949, German writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika embark on a road trip across a Germany in ruins, from US-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar.

A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tamsin. To seal their friendship, Mona introduces Tamsin to her born-again Christian brother and helps her spy on her adulterous father. Bound together by their secrets, the two girls see their friendship deepen and enter into dangerous waters.

In 1960s Poland, young novitiate Anna is on the verge of taking her vows when she discovers a family secret dating back to the years of the German occupation.

June and Jennifer Gibbons are twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales in the 1970s and '80s. Feeling isolated from the community, the pair turn inward and reject communication with everyone but each other, retreating into their own fantasy world of inspiration and adolescent desires. After a spree of vandalism, the girls are sentenced to Broadmoor, an infamous psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together.

A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.

A BBC TV cultural review show featuring celebrity interviews.

Tanya leaves Moscow with her street-wise 10-year-old son Artiom to meet her English fiancée in London. But after he fails to turn up at the airport, Tanya, intent on staying in England, is forced to apply for political asylum and transferred to Stonehaven, a grimy former seaside resort where refugees are housed. Tanya gradually develops a relationship with an amusement arcade manager, who helps them escape. She must then decide whether to stay with him or return to Russia.

Open Space was a programme produced by the BBC's Community Programme Unit. It was an evolution of the earlier Open Door series of programmes allowing minority points of view to make a television programme about issues of concern to them. The programmes were transmitted on BBC 2 in a mid-evening slot and would attract audiences between 500,000 and 1,500,000. In a typical year there would be two or three groups of up to eight Open Space programmes each usually half an hour long. A producer, an assistant and a budget of up to £25,000 would be allocated to each programme.

In the silence and darkness of a trembling mountain, we discover the underground world through the eyes of a boy, an old miner and a woman. Where sweat mixes with the blood of history, a story emerges about colonial heritage and the endless cycle of exploitation.

An American writer moves to Paris to be closer to his daughter and finds himself falling immediately on hard times.

Vadik Chernyshov is an impoverished dreamer who spends his life drifting though Moscow with a video camera, hoping to shoot footage that will interest Western press agencies. He falls in love with the beautiful Helen, an English media executive, and subsequently they must contend with the barriers that their different backgrounds present.

A couple decides to turn their backs on civilization to build their private paradise on a desert island. However, a millionaire passing through the island makes them a sensation, making a European countess want to take over their island.

Washed up British film director, Emil, who is invited by a nascent state to make a national Epic in an obscure Caucasus Republic ruled by an eccentric and corrupt dictator. When down and out Academy award winning British film director Emil Miller receives an invitation to the Embassy of the Autonomous Republic of Karastan, little does he know that he will be embarking on one of the wildest journeys of his already diverse and colourful career.

Paris, North Station, anything comes by, even trains. One would like to stay, but they have to hurry up... Like other thousands lives crossing, Ismael, Mathilde, Sacha and Joan are going to meet here...

Long before FW Murnau's head went for a little walk without his body, the most celebrated cinematic corpse-napping was the theft of Charlie Chaplin's remains from his Swiss grave.

A look at Benedict Yerofeyev, the elusive author of the Russian underground classic From Moscow to Pietushki, who has existed on the fringes of Soviet society for most of his life.

Tattoo artist Billy and unemployed Nakos are best friends from Athens. Old bachelor Nakos is a racist, obsessed with the victim mentality, and he rages at Greece’s increasing immigrant numbers. Billy, however, is in favor of foreigners coming. They meet in Amerika Square in Athens because of Syrian refugee Tarek.