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Documentary by Hans-Dieter Grabe.

People who do not have the patience or the opportunity to listen to all 86,000 operas that exist in the world need an opera guide. The opera guide is imaginary when it takes in the full force of the pain and extreme expression that are part of the utopia of opera.

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.

Almost every day, a stream of young girls queue up at the check-in at Addis Ababa International Airport and in Dhaka, the destination for Beirut. Dressed elegantly, wearing makeup, laughing and joking among themselves, they yearn for a new life abroad, with the promise of a high salary and a good job. Yet for most, this dream turns into a nightmare.

Documentary of life on bord the sailing ship Pamir

This film deals with the contrasts of the Wilhelminian era in Berlin: the splendor of the monarchy, the economic and intellectual vitality of the up-and-coming imperial capital on the one hand, and the misery of the proletarians in the tenements on the other. The documentary sets depressing images of the horrors at the front against the exhilaration of victory at the beginning of the First World War.

A short film about the airport in Frankfurt am Main. Re-released in 1973.

Short film directed by Wolfgang Kiepenheuer

Report film about sexual varieties.

A report on the demographic impact of China’s one-child policy.

In the 1960s and 70s, a young generation embarked on an adventurous journey to the East. Fleeing outdated Western conventions and values and searching for freedom and the meaning of life, they traveled via Istanbul, Tehran, and Kabul to Kathmandu and Goa—the birth of the legendary Hippie Trail. This journey not only shaped those who set out on it—the legacy of the Hippie Trail continues to this day.

Sometimes Hannelore wishes she were a Hans, because “when a woman has to deal with a lot of men, she has to summon up a lot of strength to be heard”. The mayor of the island of Ummanz off Rügen used to be a cook. Now she represents the government and demonstrates “socialist democracy in action”. Director Róza Berger-Fiedler weaves Madam Mayor’s encounters with her constituency and discussions about the office with all its responsibilities into a sensitive portrait of a dedicated person.

A portrait of Bruno S., who became famous as an actor in Werner Herzog's films The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek and was forgotten all too quickly.

In 2020, the biggest protests against the government to date formed in Belarus. The protesters were met with violence and restrictions, many of them were given draconian prison sentences. A dangerous climate that sought to nip political activism in the bud took hold. For “Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus,” Juliane Tutein filmed and researched for three years in a country that had not seen a change of elites with its supposed independence in 1991. She discovered mainly women at the forefront of the courageous protesters. This portrait is dedicated to three of them: Nina Baginskaya, in her mid-seventies and active in the fight for an open Belarus since the 1980s, Tatsyana “Tanya” Hatsura-Yavorskaya, founder of the human rights film festival “Watch Docs”, and Darya Rublevskaya, the youngest at 22, who works for the “Viasna” human rights centre founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.

Aachen Prison is both Germany’s most dangerous and most secure prison. It houses murderers, sex offenders and pedophiles. Their cells are inspected regularly. It offers space for over 700 prisoners. Who works here, who is serving what for? And how do relatives deal with the arrest of a family member? In our prison documentary we take a look behind the bars.

A documentary about bare facts. It shows how two girls get to know one another – naked in an apartment. It is a story of the beginning of a beautiful friendship, of daydreams and deep secrets.

«In actuality, National Socialism simply didn't exist: both the perpetrators and their victims remained silent about it,» says the protagonist of Mariella Santibáñez» documentary film, Mrs. Solomon. Just a few years before her father's death, she began to suspect that this optimistic man, who taught her to find joy in each day, had survived the Holocaust in his youth. Delving into family archives, Mrs. Solomon investigates her father's history, which he had never mentioned before, while simultaneously uncovering the secrets and traumas of her own past. Over the course of 18 minutes, we witness the profound transformation of the protagonist as she journeys towards self-discovery.

A documentary about the NSU (National Socialist Underground) terrorist group.

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.

35 Cows and a Kalashnikov is a joyously made triptych about warrior-farmers, colorful dandies and voodoo wrestlers in Ethiopia, Brazzaville and Kinshasa. It paints a loving and attentive portrait of African pride and beauty.

Composer and filmmaker Christian von Borries' new film Desert of the real visits these contemporary wastelands. In a rich collage of acted scenes and documentary footage, he extends the metaphor of the wasteland to today's medial reality. At the heart of so many holographic simulations and replicas, in a world custom-made for selfie and instagram tweets, he reveals emptiness and potential violence. (David Riff) The only way to trace the distinction between the semblance and the Real is, precisely, to STAGE it in a fake spectacle.

Two women remember their time as dissident artists / intellectuals in the DDR.

A six-minute DEFA short that montages lurid covers from West German sci-fi pulp—especially the Perry Rhodan series—over an electronic/musical collage (including “Glory, glory, hallelujah”) and a polemical voiceover. Framed as a warning against a U.S.-style, militarized “future,” the film critiques capitalist sci-fi imagery (spaceship battles, soldiers vs. aliens/robots) and counters with the claim that “this is not our future.”

The director’s grandparents Wilhelmine, an Austrian Catholic, and Bernard, a Jewish Czechoslovakian communist, have always been part of her life, although she never met them in person. Her uncle Hermann lives in what was once their house, with their furniture, Marx and Lenin busts, Hanukkah lamp, countless photos, letters and oil paintings. Through the film Judith Schein asks whether it is possible for a house and its interiors to narrate History.

Seven brothers, born between 1929 and 1945, tell the story of their family from Mülheim an der Ruhr in a film studio.

Erich Honecker ruled the GDR for 18 years. His fall in 1989 heralded the downfall of the state that had called itself "the better Germany" for 40 years. Nazi victim and autocrat, bourgeois and power-conscious: Honecker was an ideological hardliner who coordinated the construction of the Wall in 1961 and whose regime was known as an unjust state for Wall deaths, firing orders, the Stasi and forced adoptions. In the wake of the fall of communism, the former model socialist fell into homelessness and found himself on the run in his own country. Suffering from cancer, he managed to evade responsibility before a court by emigrating to Chile, where he died in 1994. This gripping documentary portrays the rise and fall of this contradictory German politician with an impressive array of top-class international and national contemporary witnesses. Erich Honecker would have been 100 years old on August 25, 2012.

Filmmaker Dietrich Schubert draws on photographer Chargesheimer’s famous photo book *5:30* to create a documentary film portraying the streets and squares of Cologne featured in the book.

Documentary report from a journey through Equatorial Africa.

Now threatened with extinction, the last populations have entrenched themselves in Romania, where the more traditional agriculture and the diversified landscapes give a glimpse of the nature of yesteryear in Central Europe. Like a road movie, filmmaker Jan Haft goes in search of the small daytime butterfly with golden reflections whose survival depends on the rich variety of its ecosystem.

A travelogue through Eastern Germany immediately after the first free elections in 1990.

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

The documentary presents a compelling vision: a global community whose energy supply is 100 percent renewable, accessible, affordable, and clean for all. A global restructuring that reorganizes the balance of power and distributes capital more fairly could begin now. We just have to do it!

An intimate documentary about the making of Fynn Kliemann's debut album "Nie". Without a label, without a marketing budget and excluding the charts, it became one of the best-selling albums in Germany.

An account of the Nazi background of numerous West German government officials.

An intimate quest by a son to understand the identity of his father; a look back at the Berlin of the 30s and a special group of friends who loved life and, in the darkest hours of German history, ultimately chose good over evil.

"Lesson of Unreason" a film by Dr. Uwe Jordan (Text: Dr. Thomas Hardtmuth). The rainforest is a fascinating natural paradise. But the destruction of the tropical rainforest continues to progress. In just one hour, an area the size of 8,000 football fields disappears. Intact and healthy ecosystems are lost forever, irretrievably. What remains is poverty and destruction. The film is told by two senior surgeons at the Heidenheim Clinic who traveled to the rainforest in Indonesia for the first time and brought these recordings back with them. A unique and impressive film document was created. The two surgeons accompanied the doctor and biologist, Dr. Dr. Bernhard Lohr (chairman of the association "Faszination Regenwald e.V." - www.verein-faszination-regenwald.de), on a trip to one of the last rainforests in Borneo at the foot of Mount Meratus, which is sacred to the locals.

Who knows the story of the man behind the monuments? How did Jean Monnet, a young cognac merchant, become one of the founding fathers of Europe? Beyond the figure of the "Father of Europe" lies the journey of an adventurer who rubbed shoulders with the greats and played a decisive role during both world wars.

There is the male gaze, the post-colonial gaze, and the anthropocentric gaze — but what about the gaze of youth? A diverse group of older people far over 65 re-perform stereotypical film scenes about older age: scenes of poor health, lack of mental sharpness and sexual invisibility. But do these cinematic images really correspond to their own reality? This documentary emphasizes that there is a need to challenge the dominant 'gaze of youth' and accept more multi-layered perspectives about later life.

A young girl guides through the city of Ulm.

Bebo is a documentary about the great Cuban musician Bebo Valdés, who reviews his life through his children, grandchildren and close friends, and Bebo Valdés himself from his only television interview in Sweden, in 2005, a life full of obstacles but above all commitment to music.

Picture three places. 1. A workshop in Germany where we follow the making of a prosthetic hand. 2. A traditional glove-making workshop in Millau, in the south of France. 3. A jeans factory in Istanbul, illustrating large-scale industrial production. A succession of three workplaces, but with a common viewpoint and subject: the relationship between the hand and the machine, the work and the material, all of them patiently and rigorously observed.

An institution for the terminally mentally ill. It shows "mentally ill" people who need to be restrained and artificially fed, unaware of their surroundings, incapable of useful work. "The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. Innocent themselves, broken in body and spirit, a burden to themselves and others!" People with bizarre, typically disturbed movements are shown.

Shadowed by weekly, racist demonstrations in East Germany former factory workers of the German Democratic Republic together with Syrian refugees embark on a self-taught immigration course to share the memories of their lost homelands.

A Nazi propaganda movie produced under the aegis of the Nazi party's Office of Racial Policy aimed at legitimizing the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring which allowed for sterilization.

A conversation between the filmmaker and his father, separated by the war in Syria. Now a refugee in Germany, the son reconstructs the journey of his father, who was a student there 70 years earlier.

In his first cinematic work, the painter Franz Schömbs intersperses the ever-recurring process from the nightbreak to the dawn. A short film by Franz Schömbs.

We are at a point in our evolution where our actions determine our survival and that of countless species. But what is the fundamental cause of our urge to destroy ourselves, other living beings and the earth? And - is it too late - or do we still have a chance to achieve paradise on earth?