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What is behind the huge hype behind Eurovision and why is Stefan Raab so involved in finding our contestant?

On the occasion of Hape Kerkeling's 50th birthday, the "Gala Film" tells the story of the adventurous preparations in Berlin's Friedrichstadt-Palast for a lavish gala show that will, of course, never take place. Barbara Schöneberger takes on the role of the presenter and Hape himself appears as the chaotic director of the supposed "show", as his incompetent manager and as a pushy journalist.

A report on the concrete pavement to be constructed for the Reichsautobahn.

Europe’s most successful public cultural radio station is struggling. The film follows the passionate radio crew over a period two years as they attempt to reinvent their program. Just when the station begins to regain listeners the right-wing government starts to threaten its independence.

Documentary film.

The almost exclusively female hands that used to glue scenes together in the film laboratory according to the director’s instructions were not recognised in a film’s credits. In a series of interviews, eight former film laboratory employees and their friends remember this challenging and little-acknowledged work from the early days of the analogue film age.

The life and struggles of Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria of Habsburg-Lorraine (1832-1867), emperor of the Second Mexican Empire as Maximilian I of Mexico from 1864 to 1867 (under the wing of Emperor Napoleon III and the French Empire), his tragic confrontation with Mexican leader Benito Juárez, the defeat of the will and the end of a dream.

Crew and cast members talk about the making of the 1962 film 'Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Koffer'.

The story of two artists, endowed with love and talent, trying to live in personal and artistic freedom in a totalitarian regime.

Documentary by Tillmann Scholl

We all share the same kind of brain yet everybody has a different view of the world around us. As a very intriguing example, Carlotta vividly explains how a world without faces does look like. She suffers from the miswiring of a tiny brain region that makes it impossible for her to see and remember faces as a complete construct, called prosopagnosia or face blindness.

The life of wild horses in a nature reserve in Westphalia.

“The Bauhaus was never a myth for me. It was a piece of GDR childhood,“ says filmmaker Anne Berrini, who grew up in Dessau, in her partly autobiographical documentary. In 2005, she went in search of photographers Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola, who once met at the Bauhaus. She followed their traces from Germany to Argentina to New York and interviewed friends, relatives, artists and scientists. Whether Buenos Aires, the female psyche or marginalized indigenous peoples – the view of the artist couple was new, avant-garde, provocative. From the role model of women to emigration from Europe to the New World – on her journey, the filmmaker questions perspectives of the past and the present.

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.

Two of Pina Bausch’s most famous works are rehearsed in Germany and Senegal, championing the choreographer’s legacy through a younger generation of dancers.

A German documentary about the poor conditions of psychiatric hospitals in West Germany.

A documentary exploring the aftermath of the Berlin Wall's fall, the film features interviews in English and German with long-time residents and foreign visitors/residents from both sides of the former divide.

Chernivtsi, an out-of-the-way city in the middle of Europe. It was once part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy as the capital of the crown province of Bukowina. People of many different nationalities, languages, and cultures lived here together: Ukrainians, Romanians, Germans, Poles, Huzulians. Almost half of the population of Chernivtsi, once amounting to 150,000 inhabitants, were Jews. The southern part of Bukowina is now part of Romania, the north, with Czernowitz/Chernivtsi, belongs to the Ukraine. Six years ago Volker Koepp made his film Herr Zwilling und Frau Zuckermann there. Dieses Jahr in Chernivtsi returns there with emigrants and their descendants.

Alexander Kluge’s News from Ideological Antiquity begins with Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s ambitious but unrealized plan to combine Karl Marx’s Capital and James Joyce’s Ulysses. For over nine hours, the film expands in concentric circles as Kluge, his guests, interlocutors and monologists make associative links on a range of topics that starts from a filmic discussion of Eisenstein’s notes.

Portrait of Rolf Ewald, a flight obsessive, who recounts his experiences as a pilot and manager at Düsseldorf Airport in an impressive way.

What happens to the food we digest after it leaves our body? Is it waste that is thrown away or a resource that can be reused? In search of answers, director Rubén Abruña embarks on an investigative and entertaining search through 16 cities on four continents. He follows the trail of feces from the long sewers of Paris to a huge sewage treatment plant in Chicago.

Collectors, counters, surveyors, "self-optimisers" - they all believe in the explainability of the world. It always comes down to giving order to chaos - sometimes through something as simple as the recording of empty bottles that have been collected.

The animated short film tells the moving story of the resistance and bravery of Alfreda Noncia Markowska, a young Roma woman from Poland who saved the lives of around fifty children and young adults during the Second World War.

The documentary film Chinafrika.mobile is tracking the life cycle of a mobile phone. From its birth in the mines in the Kolwezi, DR Congo, to its manufacturing in Chinese factories in the Pearl River Delta to its use and death in the markets and recycling dumps in Lagos, Nigeria, the mobile phone camera sends images of its global journey to the viewer's mobile phone display.

A young German Jesus-like figure journeys somewhat aimlessly through the poverty of Glasgow's Gorbals, New York, and Calcutta, encountering eccentrics and misfits as he travels, before reaching some sort of peace in Hawaii.

HF032 - Super 8 (Color) film by Helga Fanderl

The film depicts scenes of everyday life in East Berlin and does not feature a narrator throughout its entire runtime. In a few instances, text panels appear to provide explanations of the images shown. The scenes are accompanied by interviews, speeches, and radio broadcasts, though these do not always correspond to the images on screen.

"For some time now I wanted to shoot a short film about Albert Knoll's tireless self-organized historical work and ask him why he has dedicated a large part of his life to commemorating the crimes against humanity committed during the Nazi dictatorship and what this archival work has done to him. A special focus is on oral history, as I am interested in how, as a conversational partner, one preserves their knowledge and experiences in a certain way after the death of the contemporary witnesses. After Albert Knoll has done so many contemporary witness interviews the last thirty years and was the one who asked the questions, I reversed the situation in the short film and interviewed him." - Gufler

The story sounds like a gripping thriller: almost 400 years after its publication, a previously unknown copy of Galileo Galilei's "Sidereus Nuncius", the "Starry Messenger", has appeared on the international book market. Unlike in the known copies, Galileo allegedly drew the moons himself. Who is behind the forgery?

Thomas Harlan, filmmaker, author and revolutionary was born in 1929 in Germany. His father was the infamous propaganda filmmaker Veit Harlan, director of Jew Suess. During his childhood, as a result of his father’s closeness to the Nazi Party, the little Thomas came face to face with Hitler and Goebbels. Now an old frail man, Harlan lives in a respiratory clinic in Berchtesgaden. It is in this clinic in South Germany that he, along with documentary filmmaker Christoph Hübner, examines fragments of his past.

The film shows a red fox looking for food in the wild. The fox is stalking across a forest meadow. Then it stops, undecided, to scent and secure its food. On its way, it carefully examines every track...

Designed as an exciting hybrid between documentary and fiction, this film offers a special look at the nuclear resistance in Gorleben in the years 1981-1985 in Germany. A fictional acceptance researcher tries to mediate between the fronts of the anti-nuclear movement and the police. With his sociological lectures, the committed scientist often contrasts the political utopia of the opponents of nuclear power with the given political reality in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Exciting ironic-self-critical nuances in the documentary material, which shows the turbulent events in the Wendland in the 1980s.

MY WONDERFUL WEST BERLIN recounts the lives and struggles of gay men in West-Berlin. Through present-day scenes and never before seen archival footage, a fascinating picture emerges of a city, that today characterizes itself as a dream destination and place of refuge for gays.

In 1960, 600,000 Greeks immigrated to Germany to live as workers - the so-called Gastarbeiters. Descendants of this migration stream, Teo, Aglaia, and Vasso, allow us a glimpse of their daily lives and reveal the effects of that migration on their present and future: The film captures the encounter of two cultures and their interaction in contemporary socio-political developments.

August Klar has a dream. He’s trying to make a movie, that has never been done before. His ambitions are high, his methods are unconventional and to some extendeds even absurd - But his biggest obstacle is: August has no clue how to make a movie. The Documentary „How to Poetry Film“ follows the young Slam Poet through the Development process of his first shortfilm and dares to take a look at what lies between Euphoria and Rock Bottom while portraying the mind of wild creative that struggles to catch up with his ideas...

In northern Germany, the Teutoburg Forest is home to many Germanic legends. Since the end of the 19th century, the statue of Hermann – known in Latin as Arminius –, hero of the Germanic people of the Cheruscans, has watched over the vast Teutoburg Forest. Did this warlord really allow the Germans to repel the Romans two thousand years ago? A few kilometers from the statue stands an impressive rock formation called Externsteine. Have these steep cliffs kept traces of ancient Germanic civilizations?

Experience an action-packed urban mountain bike adventure with extreme sports athlete Fabio Wibmer. Why does he keep pushing his limits and expose himself to high risks of injury? Find out what's going on in his mind and witness how they conquer the craziest urban spots in France - including security & police, as well as spectacular crashes. His videos have millions of clicks but is it really worth the risk?

In 1988, 20-year-old Kirsi Marie Liimatainen travels from Finland to the GDR, to study Marxism-Leninism at the International Youth Academy. In summer of´89 the course ends and the students spread out over the world. Afew months later, the Berlin Wall falls. 24 years later Kirsi, sets out on a cinematic journey to Nicaragua, South Africa, Chile, Bolivia, Lebanon, Germany and Finland to meet up once more with her former fellow students. What remains of their dream of the liberation of the oppressed?

Documentary about the "Kampfgemeinschaft für Rote Sporteinheit", a communist workers' sports association in the final phase of the Weimar Republic.

Nana Xu travels to the place built by her father as a prisoner during the Cultural Revolution: first a work camp, later a prison, fruit farm and treatment centre. Conversations with last remaining witnesses, where home is still shaped by a repressed past.

This documentary, intended to inspire new home filmmakers, tells the stories of ordinary people who learned how to make their own films by renting inexpensive AK 8 cameras. A young couple documents their vacation on the Baltic Sea, a garden plot community celebrates a party, and comrades from a sports club even film themselves playing cards underwater. The film's sarcastically humerous commentary on everyday life plays with clichés and taboos.

Documentary about antisemitic pogroms in Nazi Germany.

The potato farmer couple's fresh relationship is based on openness and honesty. Petri, a fifty-something man who has come to terms with his bisexuality, is learning to be true to himself and honest with his partner. Petri's desire to fulfill his own passions raises new questions for Anu about her own desires and demands in their relationship. Beneath the empty landscapes of the north lies a world of men that they have tried to keep secret from their spouses, the surrounding community, and, to some extent, even themselves.

Isabell Šuba's film follows a young Venezuelan girl’s preparations to be celebrated as a "princess" on her fifteenth birthday. However, in a country with the highest incidence of cosmetic surgery and "Miss Universe" winners, hers is a rocky road indeed.