24 Hours Berlin
Arpad Bondy
Romuald Karmakar
Bettina Blümner
Rosa von Praunheim
Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu
Dominik Wessely
Brigitte Bertele
Andres Veiel
Roland May
Corinna Belz
Regina Schilling
Matthias Luthardt
Florian Opitz
Stefan Schwietert
Thomas Heise
Gerd Conradt
Volker Koepp
Elfi Mikesch
Andreas Pichler
Maja Classen
Kerstin Hoppenhaus
Tamara Trampe
Hubertus Siegert
Karin Jurschick
Susanna Salonen
Hanna Doose
Nathalie Steinbart
Dirk Laabs
Heidi Specogna
Neelesha Barthel
Andreas Voigt
Knut Beulich
Hakan Savas Mican
Britt Beyer
Calle Overweg
Susanne Binninger
Thorsten Trimpop
Hans Rombach
Konrad Kästner
Sebastian Heidinger
Döndü Kiliç
Alice Agneskirchner
Eva Stotz
Caroline Goldie
Silvia Chiogna
Volker Heise
Caterina Klusemann
Mirko Dreiling
Oliver Rauch
Jo Goll
Ute Badura
Judith Beuth
Sabine Brand
Jutta Doberstein
Ilka Franzmann
Mechthild Gassner
Bettina Haasen
Heike Hartung
Sissi Hüetlin
Sven Ihden
Oliver Jarasch
Tom Kimmig
Conny Klauß
Jette Miller
Frank Müller
Maren Niemeyer
Sibylle Tiedemann
Griet von Petersdorff
Also Directed by Arpad Bondy
Harald Schumann talks to people from every walk of life to understand the situation in Greece. From ordinary shopkeepers to people from within the Troika.
The astonishing life-story of “Lili Marleen“ composer Norbert Schultze.
A community-based documentary following four local arts projects in the London Borough of Hackney.
Also Directed by Romuald Karmakar
A look at five pioneers of electronic music for whom work is their raison d'etre.
Documentary short by Romuald Karmakar.
Film by Karmakar.
Documentary about attack dogs and their owners in Hamburg by Romuald Karmakar.
Short documentary about a memorial ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Berlin 2014.
A young couple in the big city. She is full of energy for life; she wants to have fun and be happy. But husband sits all day on the couch, reading. But the young woman does not give up; she wants more out of life. She encourages him, she provokes him
Documentary by Romuald Karmakar.
Documentary short by Romuald Karmakar.
Romuald Karmakar directs the actor Manfred Zapatka in performing the three-and-a-half hour speech originally declaimed before ninety-two SS generals by Heinrich Himmler on the 4th of October, 1943 in the Golden Hall of the Posen Palace.
In 196 BPM Romuald Karmakar documents the 2002 Berlin Love Parade. Using a single take each and wihtout dialogue or commentary, he shows three sites of the techno jamboree that has rocked the German capital one summer weekend every year since 1989.
Also Directed by Bettina Blümner
How many rounds you do have to spin on the dance floor until all your dreams come true? Eugene, Gino, Christina and their friends are already past their prime. But that doesn't stop them to search for love and sex. They meet in Paris daily in dimly dance clubs where they express their desire for living a full life in togetherness through dancing. And if prince charming is reluctant to appear the well-heeled ladies spent some money for lessons with 'taxi boy' Michel. Michel dances with them for money - and behaves like a real gentleman. In search of love both - men and women - overcome nearly every obstacle, even if in many cases it doesn't bring them closer to their aim.
Teenage Sascha has two dreams: to write a novel about her mother and to take revenge on her step-father who brutally murdered her. When she meets the newspaper editor Volker, he invites her to come to his and his son's place. A subtle love triangle begins which helps Sascha to find her personal way of growing up.
A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.
Three friends in search of their friend Wanja in Cuba.
Also Directed by Rosa von Praunheim
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign and the repression of the Communists as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.
Bosom buddies BeV StroganoV, Ovo Maltine, Ichgola Androgyn and Tima die Göttliche are four Berlin drag queens who met in the mid 1980s. These four queens became Germany's most popular drag performers and have been busy fertilizing the German cultural scene. Besides being performers, they are also political activists - in AIDS awareness, anti-gay violence, the sex workers movement and the struggle against the extreme right and racism. The film tells their story.
German iconoclast filmmaker and gay-rights activist Rosa vonPraunheim examines his own life and career in the documentary Phooey Rosa! With a quickly paced editing style, the film is a mix of personal banter, candid interviews, and clips from his filmography. It also includes footage from his early film Bed Sausage to his later work Neurosia. At the age of 60, vonPraunheim reveals intimate details about his past relationships and his childhood growing up after WWII. He also implicates some of his friends and inspirations, including Luzi Kryn and Rainer Kranach.
Half documentary, half docu-drama about a German karate champion, who used to be a successful pimp...
Documentary portrait of German production designer Albrecht Becker.
Documentary about the current hustler scene in Berlin. Experienced its world premiere of the film at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival in Berlin. Based on interviews with former and active prostitutes the realities of male prostitutes in Berlin are treated. The film is value-free, objective, and records the hustler scene as a social Submilieu, which is characterized by both tragic fates, as well as everyday things and routines. Not only the direct sale of sexual services is discussed, but also other aspects associated with male prostitution: poverty, drug addiction, AIDS, crime, migration, love and partnership.
The life story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew, who as a physician established the field of sexology, and fought militantly against German anti-sodomy laws in the late 19th century. The script reveals main characters in Hirschfeld's life including impossible love interest Baron von Teschenberg, and Hirschfeld's aids- young Karl Giese and guardian angel, the transvestite Dorchen, as they establish the First Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin in 1920, and follows their struggles to keep it open, up to the rise of the Third Reich in the mid 1930s.
Filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim searches for his biological mother after discovering late in life that he was adopted.
Via the UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive: "Shocking, often hilarious, and always controversial, Rosa von Praunheim delivers a radical treatise on heterosexuality in Red Love by intertwining statements of an outspoken, middle aged advocate of free love, with a melodramatic reenactment of a feminist novel by Alexandra Kollontai, Lenin's first Minister of Culture. Frau Helga Goetze, who at the age of 46 left her seven children and husband of 30 years, describes in detail the progress of her sexual liberation. Now 55 years old, she conservatively estimates the number of her lovers over the last few years at 200."
Also Directed by Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu
Anishoara is a 15-year old girl living with her grandfather and little brother in a small village among the rolling green hills of Moldova. Her life is marked by the quotidian rhythms of country life; in summer she feels the overwhelming sensation of first love when on a trip with friends to the melon harvest. In autumn a strange German tourist disrupts her otherwise calm existence. In winter she travels for the first time to the sea alongside the young man with whom she fell in love. In spring she longs for her lover's return, but when that moment comes it's not what she expected.
In a small village in the Republic of Moldavia, an old woman dies, leaving her son Petru and her granddaughter Anisoara behind. According to their tradition, the whole village mourns and bids farewell. After the death watch during a stormy night they make their way to the cemetary. The old men carry the heavy coffin over stony paths up to the sacred hill. The sun is high and the way seems endless, but against the thirst there is wine and against the grief there is singing. So in this landscape of paradisal beauty, joy mixes with sorrow and in the end, life stands above death
Also Directed by Dominik Wessely
Portrays the film star Mario Adorf and his passion for acting, the stage, the cinema, singing and writing. Together with the director Dominik Wessely, the film comes closer to Mario Adorf as a person and highlights important stations of his private life and his international career. When Mario Adorf begins to talk about his life, over 60 years of theatre and film history come to life. A dialogue with him is not only a retrospective, but also an intensive exchange of ideas about film and theatre and his view of the world, love and ageing.
Documentary film.
The incredible story of Bruno Lüdke (1908-44), the alleged worst mass murderer in German criminal history; or actually, a story of forged files and fake news that takes place during the darkest years of the Third Reich, when the principles of criminal justice, subjected to the yoke of a totalitarian system that is beginning to collapse, mean absolutely nothing.
No overview found.
Also Directed by Brigitte Bertele
One morning, a Japanese monk shows up in a village: He does not speak a word, has a head injury and is evidently on the run. Chief Inspector Louise Bonì immediately senses that the young man is in grave danger. However, her supervisor Bermann does not believe her word - because since a deadly use Bonì is psychologically struck and is mainly due to an alcohol problem. Nevertheless, she continues to investigate on her own. The trail leads to a mysterious Zen monastery and a private children's aid organization, which mediates Asian adopted children. Soon Louise awakens a terrible suspicion.
Once again, the "border crossing" is celebrated, as every seven years in the Upper Hessian town of Bergen. It is really turbulent at this folk festival, when the municipal boundaries are confirmed from old tradition and everything is upside down. For this occasion leaves Thomas Weidmann his girlfriend and flees because of his botched university career from the city of Berlin back to his native village. At the party, he meets Kerstin Werner, whose life has just come out of joint - her marriage is broken and her husband Jürgen on the jump to another, younger woman.
Freelance journalist Jan Schulte hopes for a job at the online portal of Berlin newspaper “Die Republik” when he discovers a potential scandal. Federal minister of health Elisabeth Stade apparently helped her brother’s search for a heart transplant by moving him up the waiting list illegally. But then Schulte’s colleague Britta claims the compromising material is a fake. Editor-in-chief Weishaupt and publisher Winter refuse to run the article. As Jan keeps on digging into the scandal, investigating state secretary Katharina Pflüger and political advisor Frank Gruber, his evidence is suddenly stolen from the newspaper office, and soon a competing tabloid breaks the story...
After the death of her father Georg Inga Hauck drives together with her son Max in their home village. In her old home she meets Anna Kertesz. Inga's parents had taken Anna 28 years ago after her adult brother Zoltan mysteriously disappeared. Since the same day also Ingas was missing then six-year-old brother Magnus. Inga is being overtaken by her past in her parents' house. Soon her nerves are bare. And every day her memories come back.
Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF 2 in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland. The first episode was broadcast on November 29, 1970. The opening sequence for the series has remained the same throughout the decades, which remains highly unusual for any such long-running TV series up to date. Each of the regional TV channels which together form ARD, plus ORF and SF, produces its own episodes, starring its own police inspector, some of which, like the discontinued Schimanski, have become cultural icons. The show appears on DasErste and ORF 2 on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. and currently about 30 episodes are made per year. As of March 2013, 865 episodes in total have been produced. Tatort is currently being broadcast in the United States on the MHz Worldview channel under the name Scene of the Crime.
No overview found.
Judith decides to go on her own to the salsa-dancing night, even though her boyfriend, with whom she goes there every week, can’t accompany her. A stranger, with whom she briefly dances, offers to walk her home. Next morning, upon returning home, Judith refuses at first to accept that she’s a rape victim, but in the end decides to go to a doctor and press charges - which prove inadequate to have the rapist convicted. Under the influence of sweeping bodily and mainly psychological oscillations, Judith decides she has to follow an unorthodox path in order to prove the perpetrator’s guilt.
Also Directed by Andres Veiel
Documentary about a Jewish-Palestinian theater group in Israel.
The Ernst Busch Academy is one of Germany's best respected acting schools, and every year hundreds of would-be thespians apply in hopes that they'll be chosen for their rigorous program of study. Filmmaker Andres Veiel chose four students at random as they were accepted at the Busch Academy, and in the documentary Die Spielwuetigen, he allows us to eavesdrop on them as they spend four years learning their craft and growing from callow youngsters to adults in search of their big break.
In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house whose first publication is, paradoxically to many, a controversial past work of Bernward's ostracized father, an infamous Nazi author. Bernward defends his father's writing ability, even if he is haunted by his father's suspicious past.
A documentary about the 20th century German sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys.
Black Box BRD steps back into German history, showing the Federal Republic of Germany of the 70s and 80s. The country is polarized due to the power struggle of the German state and the "Red Army Faction". Society is torn, the fronts are irreconcilable. The life stories of both Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen are tragically linked to this era. Grams is the one who takes up arms for moral rigor; Herrhausen however seizes power and dies when powerful.
Also Directed by Roland May
In 1938 an airfield was built at the northeastern-most end of America, the descent went slowly but incessantly through the Cold War. This is the story of how its inhabitants gradually moved away from the great world stage and had to reinvent themselves as well as their home town.
Shortly before Christmas 1987, three masked men kidnapped the two children of the drugstore king Anton Schlecker and extort 9.6 million marks, formerly 20 million, the highest ransom money paid in the history of the Federal Republic. The crime could only be solved eleven years later, more or less by accident in the course of another big crime. The public was amazed: the three perpetrators were of retirement age and for years had hidden many serious crimes behind the façade of honest men. The documentary tells the story of a spectacular criminal case and an (almost) perfect disguise.
"Witch Hunt" - the mechanics of mass hysteria. Over 50,000 people in Europe fell victim to a witch pogrom between the end of the 15th century and the late 18th century-fueled by a detailed guide called "Malleus Maleficarum".
Also Directed by Corinna Belz
In the sixties, Peter Handke was one of the first to show how the business works: the writer as angry young man and pop star of the literary scene. As soon as he was on the bestseller lists, he turned his back on the hype. For many years, he has lived and worked in his house in a Parisian suburb, more quietly and more hospitably. Peter Handke's precise, free gaze becomes perceptible in his texts, his conversations, the cosmos of his notebooks.
500 rooms and thousands of daily visitors: the Medici’s treasure chamber containing icons from antiquity to the late Baroque period is a place full of (art) history. It survived two world wars but must now reinvent itself in order to remain an enduring audience magnet.
Der Film portraitiert eine Gruppe von Microsoft-Aussteigern: im Ruhestand mit 32, Multimillionäre und ohne die geringste Idee, was sie mit dem Rest ihres Leben anstellen sollen. Ihre Jahre im Unternehmen, der Hype des Goldrausches und das Adrenalin des Erfolges hat sie ausgebrannt und doch sind sie entschlossen mehr aus ihrem Leben zu machen - vor allem Sinn und Bedeutung in der wirklichen Welt zu finden.
One of the world's greatest living painters, the German artist Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. The first glimpse inside his studio in decades, Gerhard Richter Painting is exactly that: a thrilling document of the 79-year-old's creative process, juxtaposed with rare archival footage and intimate conversations with his critics and collaborators.
Also Directed by Regina Schilling
Documentary about actor Josef Bierbichler.
With the search for her roots her constant companion, actress Adriana Altaras goes on a journey to find a country which no longer exists - and along the way discovers a whole lot more.
Der Film portraitiert eine Gruppe von Microsoft-Aussteigern: im Ruhestand mit 32, Multimillionäre und ohne die geringste Idee, was sie mit dem Rest ihres Leben anstellen sollen. Ihre Jahre im Unternehmen, der Hype des Goldrausches und das Adrenalin des Erfolges hat sie ausgebrannt und doch sind sie entschlossen mehr aus ihrem Leben zu machen - vor allem Sinn und Bedeutung in der wirklichen Welt zu finden.
Essay film about German family life in the postwar decades, refracted through TV quiz shows and their hosts' biographies.
Also Directed by Matthias Luthardt
The film shows the apparently intact world of a middle class family, whose harmonious facade crumbles due to the unexpected visit of their relative Paul, a young man of 16 years. Paul arrives looking for love and support after the suicide of his father.
Summer, 1918. Two young women, Luise and Elsa live alone on a secluded farm in Alsace. As young German deserter Hermann comes along, a new relationship forms between the three, filled with love, competition and hate.
Also Directed by Florian Opitz
The new hard-hitting documentary, The Big Sellout, challenges current economic orthodoxy in contending that the dogmatic claims of the international business establishment for neo-liberal development policies are not supported by modern economic science. More importantly, it dramatically demonstrates how the implementation of these policies is having disastrous consequences for millions of ordinary people around the globe.
It’s a paradox. Never before in history we have worked more efficiently. Never before we have saved time with more sophisticated technologies. Anyway, nearly all of us are feeling an increasing pressure of time. It seems that the same technology that has been invented to make our life better and easier, is now enslaving us. Why?
Melting glaciers, gullied seas, the financial markets are about to collapse. Spectacular images of how growth continues to be blinding. Outside you can hardly see anything because of the smog and the smoke screen.
Also Directed by Stefan Schwietert
What Swiss director Stefan Schweitert did for accordion music and for yodeling (Accordion Tribe, Cinequest, 2005; Echoes of Home, Cinequest 2008) he now does for traditional Balkan music. This wonderful film is also a love story – and a door into a world of musical wonders.
The retired life in Florida rescued, the Epstein brothers do again what they do best and have practiced for a lifetime music. A Tickle in the Heart captures the past, present, and future of the remarkable Epstein brothers - Max, Julie and Willie - Klezmer music legends on a joyous international comeback tour. This is a cinematic party with three of the funniest men in the show business. The Epsteins are natural performers, and their sense of life, music and family as they tour through places they love.
What does a baby's cry have in common with the echo of a mountain yodler, and what connects the head tone of a Tuvin nomad with the stage show of a vocal artist? The answer is: THE VOICE. Against a background of powerful alpine vistas and modern city landscapes, "heimatklänge" enters the wondrous sonic world of three exceptional Swiss vocal artists. Their universe of sound extends far beyond what we would describe as singing. In their engagement with local and foreign traditions, the powerful mountain landscape becomes a stage as do the landscapes and sonic backdrops of modern life.
This film illuminates the way in which the cultural climate of "Red Vienna" affected the subsequent years leading up to the present and examines the mark left on the lives of Jura Soyfer's contemporaries.
Five highly original musicians from different countries form the Accordion Tribe. Together they aim to reinforce the original power of the long disdained instrument. The film follows the energetic soundscapes and their performers on a journey through Europe. An extraordinarily intensive documentary on the communicative, connecting power of music.
Imagine waking up tomorrow and all music has disappeared. Just like that. What will remain when it is all gone: CDs, iPods, instruments?
Also Directed by Thomas Heise
Documentary about a juvenile prison in Mexico City.
Documentary film on the memories of four children from Eisenhüttenstadt who were all born at the same time the Berlin wall was built.
documentary
Heise's first work produced specifically for television: a small film, the portrait of a pub on Rosenthaler Straße in Berlin Mitte, an homage to a kind of proletarian feeling of belonging together.
Thomas Heise, noted documentary filmmaker from the former GDR, takes a trip to France to visit his brother Andreas. His brother lives there in a rather unusual situation.
CONSEQUENCE tracks the tiring working day between Christmas Eve and New Year at a small German crematorium operating 24/7.
Documentary by Thomas Heise.
"Pictures from the late eighties in the GDR on up to the immediate present in the year 2008 in Germany. What has been left over besieges my mind. All these pictures keep reassembling themselves to make up something which they were originally not made for. They are still in motion. They are becoming history." (Thomas Heise)
Documentary by Thomas Heise.
Thomas Heise documents the everyday life of the "People's Police Force" in Berlin Mitte.
Also Directed by Gerd Conradt
Twenty-five years after the death of Holger Meins, filmmaker and former student friend of the deceased, Gerd Conradt takes an in-depth look at the helmsman of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Who was Holger Meins? What led him into the underground? What circumstances resulted in his death, a death which made him the declared symbol of the radical opposition in Germany? What remains of his legacy?
The composer Frederic Rzewski ordered a film from Gerd Conradt for his piece “Selfportrait”. The film was supposed to be shown while he was playing his piece of music, he didn't want to be seen. The film shows Frederic Rzewski sitting down at the table in the Trattoria Carlone in the Trastevere district of Rome from a bird's eye view. He orders wine, salad and a portion of spaghetti. We watch as he eats, pays, gets up and walks out of the picture. All in one setting.
This film has no story - one could be born at any moment. His characters are the composition of the composition that, in the time they live in, is the composition of the time in which they live. The situations are exemplary, they come from the reality of dreams, a movement takes on several dimensions, gives the impression of simultaneity, the passage of time is not perceived.
The capital Berlin is heavily in debt. Annually it takes 16 billion euros, but gives out 20 billion. The minus is covered by loans, which in turn attract interest.
Gerd Conradt films men carrying a red flag in a relay race through Berlin, to hoist it on the balcony of the current Mayor’s seat.
In VIDEO VERTOV, director Gerd Conradt tells his grandson stories from more than forty years of his eventful life - based on film and video documents. The film tells the life story of the video pioneer: love and revolution, red flag and meditation - expeditions to distant countries. For his grandson, Gerd Conradt spreads his film and video treasures on the big screen and leaves behind an "electronic" testament to his 50-year career as a film artist. The first love. Economic Miracle Berlin. Marriage and birth of daughter in Rome. Student at the dffb in Berlin. A life between adaptation and provocation. A life in search of knowledge, always interested in the extreme.
Documents a one-week meeting of radical leftist activists known as "Knastkamp" (Prison battle), which took place in July 1969 in Ebrach, Bamberg.
Film announcing the November 4, 1968 demonstration and urging demonstrators to be prepared to fight.
Also Directed by Volker Koepp
The film tells the story of the East Prussian landscape and its inhabitants. At one time Germans, Poles, Lithuanians and Jews lived here alongside and with one another. After World War II and the expulsion of Germans by Stalin, the Prussian province turned into a Russian enclave. Volker Koepp’s fourth film about the Kaliningrad region is dedicated to the generation, born in the '90s, and familiar with the Soviet Union and East Prussia only from school books. Parents and grandparents who were forcefully resettled to where they are now have never really felt at home. In the meantime they have hopelessly succumbed to unemployment and alcohol. Their children can only rely on themselves. Older siblings look after the younger ones, they play with what lies around, and the girl Ljuda can’t wait to finally turn eighteen, to be able to take her brothers home from the orphanage. The film has much confidence in the children. But what will become of them?
The "Curonian Spit" is a 98 kilometre long sand dune peninsula that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. The width of the spit between the lagoon′s beach and the beach of the Baltic Sea often amounts to no more than several hundred metres. In this film, documentary filmmaker Volker Koepp portrays this unique region that in its history was again and again subjected to shifting borders and the resulting social upheavals due to its geographical location between Germany and Russia.
In his documentary film, Volker Koepp portrays the picturesque Polish region of Pomerania. But although the region appears to be idyllic, its inhabitants are struggling with big problems. The villages and cities of Pomerania that traditionally live from agriculture are hit by unemployment rates of up to 75% after the meltdown of the state farms. While most of the young people leave the region, some of them take their chances and start fresh – for instance, a young couple that tries to rebuild an agricultural farm with the help of EU funding. Furthermore, older inhabitants, including a spry 90-year old retiree from the Uckermark region who grew up in Pomerania, tell stories about the region′s eventful past.
Seventh and last Wittstock film.
Volker Koepp documents life in the Dorotheenstadt in Berlin-Mitte, which was called "Feuerland" in the 19th century.
Documentary filmmaker Volker Koepp visits a brick factory in Zehdenick, East Germany.
Third Wittstock film.
Volker Koepp's second Wittstock film.
Documentary about the German poet Erich Weinert.
Also Directed by Elfi Mikesch
A portrait of five St. Petersburgians and their connection to The Hermitage.
It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.
Blue Distance is set in a train compartment. An androgynous woman thinks of letters a lady wrote to a gentleman about the necessity of separation and the desire for a casual encounter in the future. Another woman, a mirror image of the first, disrupts her reverie. After she leaves it is unknown whether the first woman's wish was about the man with whom an encounter will never take place or about the woman with whom it has just happened.
A woman reflects on her romantic relationship with a young moroccan years ago. Her daughter travels to Morocco, attempting to relive her mother's past.
Documentary about Austrian city Judenburg and its art scene.
Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.
A young woman in New York.
Wanda is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in a building on the Hamburg waterfront, where audiences pay for the privilege of watching her humiliate her slaves. She is a business woman who smashes sexual stereotypes and social taboos with icy self-possession and an enigmatic smile. As artist she specializes in the staging of elaborate BDSM fantasies and her affairs transgress the usual boundaries of personal and professional life. Along the way she leaves her German lesbian lover, a shoe fetishist, for an American "trainee," and does more than step on the toes of the male performer who has broken the rules of the master-slave relationship by falling in love with her.
A German short film
"I Often Think of Hawaii" should be a film for the living room, in which the daily fantasies and daily things have unique value.
Also Directed by Andreas Pichler
How would you feel if the state sold the mountain above your village to a big multinational, your country's beautiful islands, its beaches or your great monuments? Strangled by debt, governments and public administrations all over Europe act like any indebted family: they try not only to reduce costs, but attempt to replenish their coffers by putting their most valued family possessions on the market. More often than not, this includes part of the countries' historical and natural heritage: castles, islands, mountains, beaches, palaces, ancient arenas and archaeological sites. But who really owns these properties? Aren't they our common heritage, our history that will end up in private or corporate hands and will no longer be accessible to all? Or is the private sector more efficient in managing these properties? And if so, who decides on the best deal? Are there democratic proceedings for the sale of our common good? The people of Europe want accountability.
The story of Europe’s stay-behind network with names like GLADIO in Italy or SDRA8 in Belgium is one of the most powerfully hidden secrets of recent American and European history. NATO’S SECRET ARMIES examines three major terror attacks: The Brabant massacres in Belgium, The Oktoberfest bombing in Germany and the Piazza Fontana killings in Italy. Through the testimony of former terrorists, Gladio, ex-CIA agents, diplomats, prosecutors and police investigators the film pieces together the disturbing trail of influence behind each of the attacks and considers whether hundreds may have died at the hands of state sponsored terrorism. More chillingly, it asks whether the strategy of tension might still be in use today.
Alcohol: No substance in the world seems so familiar to us and is so incredibly diverse in its effect. Alcohol is available everywhere and this particular molecule has the power to affect all 200 billion neurons of our human brain in completely different ways. But hardly anyone calls alcohol a drug despite its psychoactive and cell-destroying effect. Why do we tolerate the death of three million people every year? Have we turned a blind eye to the dangers and risks for thousands of years? What role does the powerful alcohol industry play with an annual turnover of 1.2 trillion euros in this on-going concealment? The author, who himself enjoys having a drink, looks into the question why we drink at all, what alcohol does to us and to what extent the alcohol industry influences society and politics.
A documentary about the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Few intellectuals have experienced as much admiration and hatred as Antonio Negri. His international best-selling book, Empire, a critical analysis of the new global economy coauthored with Michael Hardt, was hailed as a new manifesto for the 21st century, and turned Negri into a leading spokesperson for the international anti-globalization movement. Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends profiles the controversial life and times of this important moral and political philosopher, militant, prisoner, refugee, and so-called "enemy of the state." It traces his roots in the radical left-wing movements in Italy during the 60s and 70s, illustrated through incredible archival footage of strikes, factory occupations, terrorist actions, violent street confrontations, and government trials of dissidents. During these tumultuous decades Negri spent ten years in prison and fourteen years in Parisian exile, where he contributed to philosophical debates with authors such as Gilles Deleuze.
Silvio, One of us, shows the current political mood in Italy and through some portraits investigates the phenomenon of how far Berlusconi and his politics mirror Italy.
Milk is Big Business. Behind the innocent appearances of the white stuff lies a multi-billion euro industry, which perhaps isn't so innocent…
Tourism takes its toll on the inhabitability of Venice.
Also Directed by Maja Classen
The film features people from Berlin's electronic dance music scenes (primarily house music and techno, but especially their “minimal” sub-scenes). The majority of the film consists of footage of individual interviews, cut and interpolated together to create narratives around certain themes, such as music, drugs, love, addiction, friendship, and sexuality. Among the interviewees were DJs, bouncers, bartenders, and partygoers.
Documentary about a jail for young people.
Also Directed by Tamara Trampe
Documentary short by Tamara Trampe.
Lullabies are our first connection to the world – a universal experience we all share, yet it remains deeply personal. "Can you recall a song that your mother would sing for you to fall asleep?" is the question Tamara Trampe and Johann Feindt ask people they meet in the streets of Berlin.
Documentary about the war in Chechnya.
1942, and a spectacular wartime birth in the depths of winter: a young russian nurse unexpectedly goes into labour and, all alone and in freezing temperatures, gives birth to her daughter Tamara in a field on the banks of the Volga. The most personal film to date from co-directors Tamara Trampe and Johann Feindt is dedicated to Tamara's own family history. The search for her unknown father who, as a russian officer, made the young nurse pregnant, is complicated by the fact that her mother has never come to terms with her wartime trauma and worn family photos only seem to show happy-go-lucky life before the war. But the director won't give up so easily and, through a mixture of personal childhood recollections and conversations with relatives and former nurses who were on the front in Ukraine, she puts together the pieces of the puzzle.
Documentary film.
Also Directed by Hubertus Siegert
Three different countries and one case of deadly violence each. Three men who have killed and three families who have lost a beloved one. In the common idea of guilt and punishment this makes three who get punished and three who are meant to forget. Unthinkable to imagine the two sides will ever get closer. The film tells three times the impossible story: To meet your enemy - in thoughts, in messages, in real life. A film that challenges our ideas of guilt and punishment.
Twelve years after they went to school together, six children from Berlin with and without disabilities are interviewed on the topic of inclusion in the German school system.
A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Also Directed by Karin Jurschick
What do Dietrich Oepke, former GDR model plane champion, Dave Anthony, developer of “Call of Duty” and James Gimzewski, Professor of Nanoarchitecture have in common? They are all players. Concrete or virtual, with quadcopters, futuristic weapons or experiments with an artificial brain, they play with human and technical possibilities. How real are their visions of the future? What do they have in common with developers of unmanned war machines and drone pilots? A cinematic journey.
Witness firsthand the struggle of the charismatic and controversial US attorney who, since 9/11, has been charged with the impossible task of assigning a dollar value to life when compensating victims of America’s most tragic events.
Documentary film.
Also Directed by Susanna Salonen
German family Schroeder is spending their Christmas holidays on the Thai island, Phuket. Of all the things, deep within the sleazy tourist bars and alleys of Patong, the youngest son Felix falls in love with a gorgeous Thai girl Fai who in return appears to mutually attracted to him.
Four neighbors, one boss, and a fateful party. The harmony between the friendly couples Bianca/Oliver and Dila/Simon is put in danger when Oliver's boss Lars invites himself to a barbecue party. With dangerous charm and amusing intrepidity, Lars pushes the situation to such an extent that the two couples begin to question the foundations of their lives and fall into actionism. Until the pressure turns into counter-pressure and Lars himself becomes a target.
Also Directed by Hanna Doose
A suburban German family which, at first glance, appears quite typical. There’s the hardworking parents with little time for their off-spring. Twelve-year-old Marcus and his annoying little sister, as children will do, both strive for the attention of their parents. One night, Marcus makes a terrible discovery that shatters his innocence and forever changes his relationship with his father.
Kathi is 30 years old, a single mother and a luckless actress who is regularly turned down at auditions. While Kathi doesn't know how to get her life on track, her mother Chris is a successful psychoanalyst. Chris doesn't take her daughter's career choices seriously, and constantly tries to give her good advice on everything. One day, Kathi's father suddenly appears after 15 years of absence and wants to reunite the family. Confronted with the past, Kathi gets the unexpected chance to address the ongoing conflict with her mother and to set new goals for her future.
Years ago, three best friends were making a stir in Berlin’s arts scene and nightlife: Maria, a director; Laura, a young actress; and Jan, a DJ. Now they all meet up on a farm in the Black Forest where Laura and Jan had moved to fulfill their dream of a rural life. The illusions they’d all once had have given way to a life that is anything but glamorous.
Also Directed by Nathalie Steinbart
Also Directed by Dirk Laabs
"Operation OPEC - Terror Attack in Vienna" - On December 21, 1975, six terrorists including the Germans Gabriele Tiedemann and Hans-Joachim Klein, led by Venezuelan top terrorist Carlos, attack the participants of the OPEC conference in Vienna and take eleven oil ministers and dozens of employees hostage. The action kills three people. The lavishly researched film reveals the background of the spectacular attack and establishes connections. The investigators, former hostages and some of the terrorists involved are heard.
A documentary about the NSU (National Socialist Underground) terrorist group.
Also Directed by Heidi Specogna
Documentary about about asyl politics in Germany.
Documentary film.
Directed by Heidi Specogna
A look behind the heroic story of a Guatamalan immigrant who became the first U.S. soldier to die in the American-led war in Iraq.
Short film involving smuggling.
José “Pepe” Mujica, the president of Uruguay from 2010-2015, is nothing like your regular politician. He drives a VW Beetle, lives on a farm and donates 70% of his earnings to charity. He is considered one of the most charismatic politicians in Latin America. Old and young believe in him thanks to his humble lifestyle and his unconventional manners, especially where political protocol is concerned. Now in his 80s, Mujica, a former guerrilla fighter who was imprisoned for 13 years for fighting with the Tupamaros against the dictatorial regime in Uruguay in the 1970s, believes in democracy, socialism, women’s rights and the legalization of cannabis. An inspiration to thousands of people all over the world, he grows flowers in his garden and defines life as his religion.
It all started with a small exercise book. Its page were checkered with the courageous testimonies of 300 Central African women, girls and men. They reveal what Congolese mercenaries did to them. On their own initiative, they gathered together their testimonies in this book.
Also Directed by Neelesha Barthel
Kishori, unmarried and mother to a daughter, and her sister Sonal live in a house in Berlin. The house and a cafe on the ground floor are led by Kishori. All of a sudden, her strict and traditional grandmother comes for a visit from India. She wants to sell the house unless Kishori agrees to marry the father of her daughter, Robert. As Kishori feels obliged to all the befriended inhabitants of the house, including Robert, to keep the house, Kishori und Robert prepare to have a traditional Indian wedding.
The unorthodox millionaire's wife Eva Klüber raves when her husband Rainer divorces her and she should keep according to the marriage contract nothing of the common assets. Eva fictitiously her own kidnapping, in order to come to what they see as more than earned money. But her perfect plan is backfiring in several ways.
Also Directed by Andreas Voigt
Portrait of a group of skinheads, some politically left wing, others extremely right wing. One feels the cold atmosphere of the society. The film was controversial. It was praised by some for its inside into the skinhead scene, but attacked by others for giving these radicals a platform for their arguments. Even more confusing were the images in its brilliant black-and-white cinematography.
18 years after the last film, Andreas Voigt returns to the protagonists of his Leipzig films.
A film about five refugees living illegaly in five European countries.
Continuation of Andreas Voigt's Leipzig films.
Voigt, Kroske and Richter were among the first filmmakers who documented the events of the historic 9th of October 1989. Their “material” reflects them from different angles: protesters, workers, opposition members, policemen, street sweepers and functionaries. THE document of the “peaceful revolution”.
Short biographical documentary about the life of Alfred Florstedt and his life as a progressive communist from the Weimar Republic to his death in 1985.
Documentary on a nomad people from Siberia, the Komis.
Also Directed by Knut Beulich
TV documentary on sexual abuse in families
Also Directed by Hakan Savas Mican
Short film about a visit gone wrong.
Also Directed by Britt Beyer
Also Directed by Calle Overweg
Documentary about a group of pupils starting their first year in middle school.
Documentary about "Berlin's hardest Karate teacher"
Also Directed by Susanne Binninger
Also Directed by Thorsten Trimpop
In 1987, Suse's boyfriend Matthias flees the GDR with her best friend Susanne. The escape fails. They fall into the hands of the secret police, who try to break their will. It's not until sixteen years later that the three of them meet again. Before the reunion they visit the sites of their youth, their escape, and their imprisonment. They begin to recall their collective past - the only remnant that connects their lives today.
A small town in Japan's exclusion zone searches for normalcy in the five years following the greatest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.
Also Directed by Hans Rombach
A feature-lengh documentary, shoot on super-8-footage, about the "Umweltfest", a six week long, alternative environmental festival in West Berlin in 1978.
Also Directed by Konrad Kästner
The city of Ordos, in the middle of China, was build for a million people yet remains completely empty. Ordos is not so much a place but a symbol of babylonic hype. But nothing will change - as long as people believe.
Also Directed by Sebastian Heidinger
Documentary film.
Aileen is a 16 year old drug addict and prostitute. Like her friends Angel and Daniel she leads a seemingly "normal" life. They dream some quiet dreams, while drifting from client to client, from shelter to shot. A new generation of the children from the legendary Zoo train station in Berlin.
Also Directed by Döndü Kiliç
Istanbul - the city between East and West - is considered among insiders to be the gay Mecca of Europe. Although European lifestyles have been adopted easily and often in Istanbul, today the city and her residents face a growing number of conservative, traditional forces. Within the tension between the old and the new, between the traditional and the revolutionary, and between stagnancy and change, we find our protagonists: gays and transsexuals from every walk of life. The Other Side of Istanbul is a film that follows these young men as they come to terms with their "otherness," and traces their struggles with the authorities, with the military, with society, with their families and, of course, with themselves. Theirs is a fight for human rights, for freedom, for a self-determined life, and with each success and failure they experience, we are offered a glimpse at The Other Side of Istanbul.
Also Directed by Alice Agneskirchner
From the 1950s onwards, Erika and Ulrich Gregor brought countless film historical milestones to Berlin and shaped cinema discourse in post-war Germany. A look at the life and work of the couple without whom Arsenal and the Forum wouldn’t exist.
This film accompanies five children of the young ensemble of the Friedrichstadt-Palast during the creation of the new children's play from the castings to the rehearsals to the grand premiere evening in front of 2,000 spectators.
Also Directed by Eva Stotz
Also Directed by Caroline Goldie
In 1929 Nell Logan took part in a youth peace conference in Moscow. More than 50 years later she was among the women fighting against Cruise missiles at Greenham Common.
Also Directed by Silvia Chiogna
Also Directed by Volker Heise
In August 1988, two armed bank robbers keep German police at bay for 54 hours during a hostage-taking drama that ends in a shootout and three deaths.
Journey back in time to Berlin's most fateful year - 1945 - through the eyes and voices of those who experienced it - ordinary German people and the Allies who entered the city.
Also Directed by Caterina Klusemann
Ima is a story about four women and three generations: grandmother, mother and two daughters... one of them Caterina Klusemann.
Also Directed by Mirko Dreiling
Also Directed by Oliver Rauch
Young children play their favorite classroom game: their chairs in a circle, Miriam whispers something in the ear of the child to her right, who whispers what she hears to the child on her right, and so on around the circle to the originator.
Also Directed by Jo Goll
Also Directed by Judith Beuth
In a collage of clips, the Mattima collective spins a network of movements, filmed in solitude and under simple conditions. Together they create a collective dance performance and images of community in a time of social distancing. The film is part of the Norwegian project Tidskapsel, initiated by Filmfond Nord and Nordnorsk Filmsenter together with Tromsø International Film Festival.
Also Directed by Ilka Franzmann
Also Directed by Mechthild Gassner
Nina, Edith and Ronald are sexual assistants. Their clients are people with disabilities, their job: to satisfy their desire for physical contact. Is this a form of prostitution? A study of a taboo subject.
Also Directed by Heike Hartung
Also Directed by Sissi Hüetlin
Also Directed by Jette Miller
For Jules and Mia time seems to be standing still. Again and again they are trying to reinvent themselves and escape the still image, which keeps them hostage. But as soon as they dive into denial and seem to get hold of a glimpse of intimacy, reality catches up with them and throws them back onto their self-imposed struggle. "Oysters Without a Shell" is the semi-fictional portrait of two women, their dreams and fears, their dysfunctional generation, and Berlin, the city they live in that has — just like them — not found its identity yet.