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In Germany the Kriegsmarine played no role for many centuries. It was not until Kaiser Wilhelm II built a fleet of his own to protect the German colonies and defend against a British naval blockade. Being hopelessly under the British navy, the Imperial Admiralty preferred the use of submarines to achieve the greatest possible military effect with relatively small means. In the Second World War, too, the German submarines played a central role in the naval war until the Allied oversight and new detection systems hunted the hunters. Of the 40,000 U-boat men of the German war marines, 30,000 did not return home. The film tells the exciting story of the German U-boat arm from the early beginnings to the surrender in May 1945. In addition to the 66-minute feature film, the DVD features 117 minutes interviews with important German U-boat commanders: Erich Topp, Otto Kretschmer , Rolf Thomsen, Gerd Kelbling and Reinhard Hardegen.

At the age of seventeen, Irina Chistyakova looks back at an international concert career spanning ten years. Irina is the youngest of the four protagonists of the film Russia's Wonder Children made in 2000. By now seventeen years old, she is going through a drama that many prodigies experience: while they were children, they were able to stun audiences with the contrast of their delicate appearances and precocious talents. Like Irina, Nikita Mndoyants (18), Dmitry Krutogolovy (19), and Elena Kolesnichenko (25), are still showered with praise and distinction. But what price did they have to pay for it?

In the macho world of Mariachi music, very few women can hold their own. Just like the songs they play, this film is a snapshot of life, death and the things in between - seen from a bird's-eye perspective.

In the 1990s, the German film critic Peter Buchka made some essay films about the filmmakers of the German New Wave. In this one, he talks with Wim Wenders.

Chimpanzees are kept in a large enclosure at the Arnhem Research Station. There, some experiments are carried out to test the intelligence of the chimpanzees.

A documentary film that interweaves the lives of two main characters: Sergey and Anna. Sergey is an entrepreneur who provides military tours to foreigners. His story is about the rise of his small empire, from a small company made with the help of friends to a huge money machine that becomes the most successful firm for extreme tourism in Ukraine. Anna is a volunteer who had to escape from Donetsk (her hometown) at the beginning of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. She teaches art and games to children and often travels to Donbas to provide them dresses and toys. This life gives her meaning and fulfillment, but after meeting Alex on a night train, she falls in love with him and abandons her ideals. Unfortunately, Alex leaves her when she gets pregnant with his baby. She's alone in Kyiv with no money and no place to live, facing an uncertain fate. Will their paths cross? What do their stories tell us about modern Ukraine?

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) traveled around Berlin as a journalist for decades. His books “Walks through the Mark Brandenburg” contain very rich and remote cultural, historical, ethnographic and biographical sources. Bernhard Sallmann takes passages from it that he confronts with the current shape of the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

The film documents the work of an anti-authoritarian and self-organized school store in Witzlebenstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg, which emerged as a critique of the development of children's stores. The film shows how the teachers discuss the conversion of open spaces into playgrounds with the children and how the children jointly prepare the publication of their newspaper "Radau". The concept of the children's stores was developed by the Action Council for the Liberation of Women, which emerged from the Socialist German Student Union (SDS), at the Free University of Berlin (FU) and was organized as self-help from January 1968. Helke Sander was one of the co-founders of the Action Council.

In 1998, a German documentary filmmaker named Daniela Schulz made a film about Joris Ivens’s dynamic partner, Bride of the Wind (Windsbraut), as a tribute to their decades of work together. Calling her friend Marceline “the second part of this legend [of Joris Ivens]”, she pays tribute to her as one who, after losing her “beloved and symbiotic partner, has kept her dynamism and liveliness as a person and a filmmaker”. The cinematic portrait illustrates how Loridan was in fact much more than a shadow at Ivens’s side.

A sequence of nine individual biographical sketches with a prologue and epilogue on Golzow and the long-term observation. Deepening of the preceding chronicle. The Golzow people in the present, from which retrospective views of the previous life and the life conflicts of the individual are given.

Cats are the most popular pet in Europe. Around 14 million house pets live in German households alone. But hardly anything is known about the nature of cats - their emotional life has been little studied by science. Until now! Scientists all over the world have begun to explore the secret nature of cats.

Documentary about the 1983 terrorist attack in West Berlin’s Maison de France.

Travelogue style documentary about a journey through Africa.

Demolition West, reconstruction Far East: After only eight years of operation, the hypermodern Kaiserstuhl coking plant, which cost DM 1.3 billion, is shut down. 400 Chinese workers dismantle it in the Ruhr area and ship it back home. The last Dortmund cokers have to help the Chinese dismantle their own workplace. For a year and a half, filmmakers Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken followed the dismantling of a gigantic industrial plant and documented stories along the way: how the cokers in the Ruhr region experience the arrival and working methods of the Chinese and what they feel when they see their pride disappear along with the world's most modern coking plant.

Buttenhausen, a village: 1933 - 1942 Television journalist Lea Rosh interviews residents and Jewish visitors in Buttenhausen about their memories of the coexistence of Christians and Jews in this village in the Swabian Alb. Her reports on everyday life under National Socialism shed light on the situation of the people at that time.

Moby, the electronic music icon, goes classical with Reprise on Deutsche Grammophon. Featuring tracks from his 30-year career – including “Go,” “Porcelain,” “Extreme Ways,” and “Natural Blues” – reimagined in orchestral and acoustic arrangements along with a moving cover of Bowie’s “Heroes.” This special edition Blu-ray/CD features the full album in Dolby 5.1 + Dolby Atmos and over 2h 40min of video content including the full `Moby Doc’ documentary and exclusive material. Limited Edition.

Klaus Wyborny’s STUDIEN ZUM UNTERGANG DES ABENDLANDS had its premiere at the Viennale in 2010, where it got rave reviews. Afterwards it was shown at several film festivals where Wyborny documented the cinema situations with a video camera. Out of that he made DAS LICHT DER WELT. In a letter to Harun Farocki he wrote about the result: “It’s a strange 86-minute film, partly in the form of a superimposition of seven image-layers. It has the same music (played sevenfold) and the same light-structure as STUDIES FOR THE DECAY OF THE WEST, but it takes place in seven different locations simultaneously, in front of competely different audiences. So one can see how the film was brought to the DAS LICHT DER WELT, and how the observed viewers are in some sense illuminated by the very light, that exposed my original films between 1979 and 1993. Quite a haunting prospect.”

Four kayakers (ab)use rafting as a means to catch fish on Slovenia’s chalk stream called Krka. Casting flies amongst castles and cattails, this became the arena for a gruelling competition that applied pressure of all kinds.

A film about five refugees living illegaly in five European countries.

Basically, 'Herakles' is an omnium-gatherum of film clips depicting images of machismo. Some of those images are explicitly macho: we see various body-builders flexing their biceps and triceps. Other images seen here are not macho in the literal sense, but are indirectly related to testosterone or cojones on some level: we see military aircraft making bombing raids, and footage of car crashes.

When Henry Ernst toured Romania in 1996, he came across a wedding band who called themselves Fanfare Ciocarlia. This is the story of that meeting, and how Ernst introduced the band to the world.

His buildings and sculptures still attract attention today, but their creator is almost forgotten: the sculptor and architect Bernhard Hoetger. The 90-minute film by Gabriele Rose tells the fate of this idiosyncratic artist. Hoetger is portrayed by the actor Moritz Führmann. Starring alongside him are Florian Lukas as Heinrich Vogeler, Katharina Stark as Paula Modersohn-Becker and Ulrich Gebauer as Ludwig Roselius.

The story of Ivory Coast artist, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, who created four hundred pictograms, based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété, to help people in the Bété community learn to read more quickly.

The people of Cape Verde are suffering from a lack of rain. In some parts of Praia, there are only water stations with a few taps, which are open just once a day for three hours to serve 3,000 residents. There are always arguments. Those who arrive first always take more than their fair share. Those at the end of the line often go without water. An elderly blind woman named Balila makes a living selling water. She regularly brings water to the homes of the better-off and sells it to them. The film follows Balila’s life as it might unfold over the course of a single day.

Iran, 16 September 2022. Mahsa Amini dies after being beaten by the morality police. Demonstrations follow, bringing together thousands of women severely repressed by the regime. Narges Kahlor explores the videos of these revolts published on social media, paying tribute to these defenders of the people armed with telephones.

In the 1970s, the Munich Group set about revolutionizing German film with low budgets and an excess of creativity. The Bungalow bar next to the Türkendolch theater was their meeting place, who were inspired by the French New Wave and New Hollywood. Munich Group star Iris Berben takes us on a journey back through time, a wild trip full of film clips and interviews with major figures of an unforgettable era.

Eighteen-year-old Shahnura is about to graduate from high school. Her mother spends hours at the dining table while Shahnura is at school, wondering if her mother, sister, and brother are still alive. Living in Germany without a passport or nationality, she listens to the harrowing stories of her mother and two friends who have experienced imprisonment and re-education camps in China. These accounts reveal the suffering, human rights abuses, forced adoptions, and the grim reality of the camps where the predominantly Muslim Turkic Uyghurs are tortured and mistreated.

The fight for democracy in Hong Kong has long been a battle of systems, as well as a brutal game of economic dependencies. With a collage of found footage, interviews with experts and sketches of the thoughts of young activists, the filmmaker paints a picture of a city between wild hope for change and resignation to the Chinese regime.

This multimedia collage, which includes performances by pantomime artist and dancer Fine Kwiatkowski, painter and filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck and musician Robert Linke, is a reflection on the medium of film and its elements: sound, light and movement. Dammbeck’s goal is to cleanse these elements of ideology and commerce and compose a new film out of them. The process is played out in the space in real time.

In «The battle of Morgarten» we see how Morgarten – a symbol of freedom – is celebrated and interpreted today. First part of a trilogy on Swiss traditions.

"Où en êtes-vous ?" (Where do you stand today?) is a project initiated by the Centre Pompidou, which commissions its guest filmmakers to make a free-form film in response to a question simultaneously retrospective, introspective and focused on their future ideas and projects. Here Christian Petzold is joined by Christoph Hochhäusler as they analyze a sequence from Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956) through a series of photograms. With this tribute to Harun Farocki, who died in 2014, Christian Petzold endeavors to revive and perpetuate the spirit, taste and methods of his former teacher and friend.

A window into Russia, unknown to Western man, and even to many Russians. "Russia - the largest country in the world. In many of its parts, it remains unknown world full of wonders. Let the world and will continue for the generations that come after us".

A comprehensive documentary that delves into the rich history of one of motorsport's most iconic vehicles. The film chronicles the Porsche 917's journey from its inception and 1969 debut to its triumphant moments in racing history.

In this interview with contemporary witnesses, painter and director Jürgen Böttcher talks about some stages of his professional career. This also includes his path to film art and his work at Deutsche Film AG (DEFA) in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He also tells of his experiences during the shooting of films such as "Barfuß und ohne Hut", "Rangierer" and the documentary film "Jahrgang 45", once banned but finally re-released at the Berlinale 2015. During the conversation, questions about the difference and similarities between painting and film, the significance of music in film, Böttcher's preference for black and white, and his criteria for choosing topics for documentary film projects will be discussed.

This NDR programme provides insight into the work of a Turkish women's group at the second Hamburg Women's Week, a political education programme organised by the Hamburg University of Economics and Politics under the motto "Women learning together". The programme, the first to be produced by an all-female television team, impressively documents the suspicion and Islamophobic clichés faced by women of Turkish origin in the West German women's movement, attempting to break down prejudices and fight discrimination.

Documentary about stuntman Rémy Julienne.

Bruno S., musician and actor in several films by Werner Herzog (Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek), leads us round along the former front lines in Berlin. A film about the division of a city.

The wildlife of the tundra on Alaska's north coast is particularly threatened by climate change.

Ulrich Seidl applies his characteristically gentle eye to the wonderful people of his hometown of Horn, documented making fools of themselves during an annual student ball.

The documentary provides a comprehensive exploration of the topic of nuclear energy.

This film portrait shows Ulrich Tukur on the stage of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, where his career began, on the stage of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall and on his Tuscan farm. This is where he retreats when he needs peace and quiet. This private approach provides a very personal view of the actor, musician and writer Ulrich Tukur.

A film critic with philosophical interests, played by the film critic Roger Koza, wonders about the nature of Nature. And he obsessively tries to capture it with his phone camera. Other experts—filmmakers from different countries, art historians, a scenographer in charge of a natural science museum, and members of the human species from a distant future—think about ways of representating nature. A kaleidoscopic, playful collage, sometimes fiction, sometimes documentary, the film cannot help but wonder about the nature of cinema itself.

Documentary about Carl Theodor Dreyer and his film Gertrud.

Filmmaker Stella Traub accompanies her little brother during his last four weeks in their former home village. He wants to go to Berlin, catch up on his A-levels, study - while he spends his last summer days with the friends he will leave behind, the filmmaker wonders whether she herself has ever arrived. A suitcase, ships on the Neckar and the question of whether and how one can leave a precarious social background behind.