Discover Movies

The American actor Tony Curtis talks about his career.

While working on a television movie project about Franz Kafka, German actor Hanns Zischler discovered a series of passionate writings in Kafka's journals about his own moviegoing. Zischler, who also wrote a book of the same title, spent the next twenty-five years combing through archives and libraries to locate many of the now-extinct films cited by Kafka in his journals. The result is a witty conjecture on the Czech writer's fascination with film and Zischler's fascination with Kafka.

The history of agriculture must have begun 10,000 years ago with hemp, also known by its Latin name cannabis. This assumption scientists conclude from finds made in the territory of modern China. In a way, hemp has also helped write the history of mankind, in religions, wars and revolutions the plant has never been absent. This film gives an interesting insight into the tradition, cultivation and processing of this universally usable plant.

The night of July 15, 2016 changed the history of Turkey. On that day there were coordinated attacks by parts of the Turkish army, among others in Istanbul. The aim of the military: a coup against the government. The decisive confrontation occurred on the Bosporus Bridge. While President Erdogan was still on vacation, live at TV he called on the people who were devoted to him to stand against the military. As an enemy for the masses, he presented his adversary Fethullah Gülen, whom he branded as the coup leader. He also urged the imams of the country's mosques to condition the population to resist. And so it happens that at night thousands of agitated people take to the streets to oppose the armed insurgents. The death toll was high. 352 people died across Turkey during the attempted coup. The consequences are even more serious: Erdogan used this gift, as he called it himself, to undermine democracy, to arrange mass arrests of dissidents and to transform Turkey into a dictatorship.

The film highlights the connection between the Reichsbahn and forestry, showcasing lumberjacks, foresters, and wood transport using horse-drawn carts and forest railways. It features wood processing in sawmills, modern plywood production, and various wood uses like furniture, paper, and railroad ties. The Reichsbahn’s role in transporting wood is emphasized, along with its consumption in carriage factories and coal mines. Wood is also used in highway construction, house building, and a wooden radio tower, symbolizing German culture and spirit.

Simone Müller puts on her self-made traditional Cheyenne outfit. She tells us about her longing to visit the Western United States. We join her in a get-together with fellow hobbyists as they gather around the fireplace of a tipi in their suburb garden to get lost in play. Yara, an internationally successful western rider from the Ruhr, dresses in her sequined golden show outfit before training with her appaloosa mare Casey. She tells us about her passion for Texas, where everything seems to be a little larger than life. We sit beside Kevin Derwahl, better known by his nickname “Johnson”, as he rides his wartime Jeep through the Belgian Ardennes and pay visit to a stretch of forest that saw heavy fighting during of the Battle of the Bulge. What they all share, beside their passion for America, is the notion that all this is not necessarily about a worldly place…

A reunion with Mendel Szajnfeld 27 years after Grabe's first encounter with the Holocaust survivor.

DEFA documentary about various summer workers in Siberia.

Hunting men, gathering women — that is the picture of prehistory as many of us know it. The man as a hunter was long regarded as the main breadwinner of the family and is said to have been at the top of society from the very beginning of human history. Wrong, say many researchers today.

Pan lives two lives. During the day he is the son of a traditional Hong Kong family. But at night he transforms into the unapologetic drag queen Pansze Diva entertaining the underground of the city. Ultimately looking for acceptance by their parents, what does a death in the family change?

This documentary is the film record of one of the first Nazi war crimes trials, conducted while the war was still raging. The concentration and extermination camp Majdanek, near Lublin, erected in 1941, was liberated in July 1944. When the Soviet and Polish troops drove the Nazis out of the region, they uncovered the evidence of Nazi genocide. One month later, a joint Soviet-Polish commission heard evidence from survivors and witnesses as to the atrocities that took place, and their testimony is preserved in this film.

Nonon is an orphan who left Mali and the Kaye region at the age of 14 to go to Europe, and who is today, after crossing the desert, in transit in the mountains of Morocco. We discover his terrible living conditions in the forests surrounding Nador, his daily life as well as that of sub-Saharans, the different paths they can take to get around the ban on entering the city of Nador, to escape the multiple roundups, the destruction of the camps in the mountains... Finally, we see the barrier crossed...

In the family of photographer-turned-filmmaker Misha Vallejo no one ever talks about his grandfather. He only hears about him for the first time as an adult, thanks to an abandoned photo collection. Who was this shadow? And what legacy looms over the family? In his debut film Light Memories, Vallejo shows how the effects of neglect can persist across generations.

One of the most significant cases in European archaeology is the grave of the shaman woman of Bad Dürrenberg, a key finding of the last hunter-gatherer groups. From a time when there were no written records, this site was first researched by the Nazis, who saw a physically strong male warrior from an ‘original Aryan race’ in the buried person. It was, in fact, the most powerful woman of her time. The latest research shows that she was dark-skinned, had physical deformities, and was a spiritual leader. The documentary – using high-end CGI and motion capture – compares the researchers of the Nazi era, who misrepresented and instrumentalised their findings, to today’s researchers, who meticulously compile findings and evidence, and use cross- disciplinary methods to examine and evaluate them. It also substantiates the theory of the powerful roles women played in prehistoric times. The story of this woman, buried with a baby in her arms, still fascinates us 9,000 years after her death.

Documentary about kookaburras

Emil is an elderly circus director. His pleasant and all-too-frequent duty is to greet people from every village in the land. Again and again the tired old fighter refuses to stop and wonder whether it is worthwhile - though this is the question foremost in his mind.

Arktis is a poetic approach to the bizarre landscape of ice, rock, and water; a journey to the arctic ocean and surroundings, with images and sounds. Seventy one-second scenes of the arctic serve as the original material, which is then transformed in its texture, time lapse, color and light qualities to create a material reminiscent of landscape painting. The sound collage uses fragments from sounds of nature and samples from a piece of music for violin and song, which are also transformed in a manner similar to that of the visual pictures. (Jürgen Reble)

A New York film and at the same time the study of a young man suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Berlin filmmaker Oliver Sechting (37) and his co-director Max Taubert (23) travel to New York with the idea of documenting the art scene there. However, the project is quickly overshadowed by Oliver's OCD, and the two directors fall prey to a conflict that becomes the central theme of their film. Encounters with such artists as film directors Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On), and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) or the transmedia artist Phoebe Legere seem more and more to resemble therapy sessions. At last, Andy Warhol-Superstar Ultra Violet succeeds in opening a new door for Oliver.

TV documentary about a criminal case from 1969. The case went down in German criminal history under the title "The Soldier Murder of Lebach". It happened on January 20, 1969 and was considered one of the most brutal crimes after World War II. 5 guards at an ammunition depot were attacked in their sleep at night. 4 were killed and 1 was seriously injured. 50 years after this crime, the relatives and comrades of the victims remember the crime and the time afterwards.

Burn-out and depression are not individual phenomena but collective ones. The film is an invitation to rest through images and listening, so as to transform individual exhaustion into shared power to act.

Another war in the Middle East - another attack on Israel - another death of innocents. The battle for Palestine has been raging for decades, with Israel's enemies denying the country its right to exist.

Gardi Deppe’s film follows women completing a six-week course of treatment in a health clinic (unique in West Germany at the time) for ‘working girls and women between the ages of 15 and 21.’ The film shows striking differences between the perception of the patients and the approach of the clinic and its exclusively male doctors. The women attribute their health problems to social and labour policies. The health clinic responds with medication, sports programs and occupational therapy. The film underlines the need for self-organization and ends with the realization that these women must develop their own strategies.

Peter Märthesheimer was a producer at Cologne’s public TV station, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, when he met Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1972. He later worked with Fassbinder on DESPAIR and BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, and, with psychologist Pea Fröhlich, wrote the scripts for LOLA and the other films in THE BRD TRILOGY. This interview was conducted in 2003.

Saleswomen in a supermarket discover that they are paid less than their male colleagues who do the same work. They decide to take action. The band Ton Steine Scherben sings along that “Everything changes if you change it / But you can't win as long as you're alone!” With a lay cast, the film fulfils the demand for solidarity that it preaches – “this film was made by saleswomen and housewives. They came up with the story and acted themselves. The film students helped them”

'Old People' deals with a subject which was to preoccupy filmmaker Ulrich Seidl over many years and across a number of films: it portrays old people both at home and in nursing homes. This TV-report was produced as part of the 3-Sat series "Inter City" and deploys a typical TV commentary, a device Seidl has almost never used but which at the time was mandatory with this TV company.

German documentary film about the resistance of a village against a nuclear power plant.

The documentary tells the story of the Berlin luxury hotel, which was built by the director's great-grandfather and fell victim to a fire shortly after the end of the Second World War.

Wayne Lo is intellectually gifted, did well at school and plays the violin superbly. At Simon's Rock College in Massachusetts he shot dead two men unprovoked, injured many others and is now serving a life sentence. Troller draws a bold portrait that centres around one question: why?

Lars Barthel asks his Jamaican wife Antoinette why she often wears hair extensions. This personal curiosity leads Lars and his film to some complex and politically-charged questions. What is the relationship between hair and racism? And where do the hair extensions actually come from?

Wernher von Braun has been given many superlatives: "Columbus of space", "most important rocket scientist", "father of the moon flight". But fame as a space pioneer is only one side of his biography. Wernher von Braun (born in 1912) made a pact with the Nazi regime. During Hitler's war of annihilation, he built the V2 rocket for the dictator. Just 33 years old at the end of the war in 1945, he was able to continue his career seamlessly in the USA.

Short educational film about masculinity.

A Docudrama about the history of Prostitution in Europe.

documentary about the mysterious death of german hacker Karl Koch aka hagbard.

3,700 km of coastline, a Fiat 1100, and an old travel diary, those are the ingredients for Pepe Danquart’s documentary. Following the footsteps of the great Italian thinker Pier Paolo Pasolini, the filmmaker gains a deep insight into the social reality of present-day Italy. The country is massively affected by globalization, migration and the phenomenon of mass tourism, which, more than ever, is characterised by the same hedonistic conformity that Pasolini lamented more than fifty years ago. Ahead of me the South is a poetic contemporary document, a kaleidoscopic picture of the Italy of today.

The start of a long-term observation of the Bronnmann family from Cologne, who have seven children - what are their concerns, plans, and dreams?

Documentary by Eckhart Schmidt.

Iceland is not only a geologically stunning country filled with geysers, fjords, volcanoes and waterfalls, but it also has the happiest people in the world.

This documentary questions the consequences of the German colonial war at the beginning of the 20th Century in South West Africa, and explores how the relationships between the descendants of colonists and colonial rulers and the descendants of the colonised and exploited people are shaped today.

An interview about an alien abduction experience.

Documentary by Hans-Dieter Grabe.

An insight into the now antiquated craft of pine soot burning, charcoal burning and resin making.

A handful of quarrymen in the Reinhardtsdorf open cast mine near Bad Schandau dig out the coveted Elbe natural stone. Gabriele Denecke’s approach to the men, who are of different ages, is almost trance-like, the movement to and from the stones marks the transition to another world. We hear about the merciless working conditions of the past, about alcohol, people worn out before their time. Today, digging out the massive rocks in the midst of nature also constitutes a degree of freedom. Open cast miners share a special mindset. And: Once you’ve worn out your first pair of wooden shoes, you’ll stay – probably forever.

This documentary examines the mysterious practice of mummifying animals in ancient Egypt as researchers explore the labyrinth of Tuna el-Gebel.

Heinrich Hauser, born 1901 in Prussia, filmed Chicago long before Hollywood discovered the authentic showplace. He went there at the height of the Great Depression, in 1931. It was only him and his camera. He manages without stars. He is not interested in the world of make-believe: no impressionist images, no experimental city poem, no travelogue or image film, no posed footage, certainly not one of the usual culture fi lms. The city was all that counted: the Naked City and the people living here. Hauser was obliged to Neue Sachlichkeit: New Objectivity – and to his aspirations and ambition as an artist.

Documentary about the major strike in the metal industry in November/December 1971 in North Württemberg-North Baden. The IG Metall strike is regarded as the biggest strike in Germany since the Weimar Republic. The aim of the collective bargaining was a wage increase of 11%; in the end, 7.5% was agreed.

Her own family history from a female perspective, told as a fragmentary, personal stream of memories. Great-grandma, grandma and mother have to come to terms with the conditions of their time, the difficult prospects for a self-determined life in the working class. Some dreams are shattered, but love for each other catches them all. Collecting shells, summer in the garden, cuddling together. The big is in the small.