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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.

Nine prominent contemporary witnesses describe their experiences from their personal favorite year on WDR television! All this embedded in the political, cultural and social events of the time - from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to the controversial fashion of the 80s to the worst case scenario in Fukushima in 2011. A very personal journey through six exciting decades! For Wolfgang Niedecken it is very clear: his favorite year is 1987. That's when he tried his hand at being a solo artist for the first time alongside his "accomplices", went on tour through Nicaragua and caught a veritable jaundice there. After a few weeks of convalescence leave, which he spends on his mother's sofa in the south of Cologne, he's already on tour again: This time he and BAP are making more than 100,000 Chinese happy with rock "Made in Cologne". Oh yes,

Susanne and Dieter are 20 years old. They have just got a Baby. Family life could start now, but Dieter has to join the army. The film accompanies him the first six weeks, shows doubts, insights and hardly acceptable conditions. A little realistic view into the National People's Army shortly before the fall of the wall.

An affectionate portrait of the forgotten town of Tapoleng, where church once served as a sanctuary for its residents during the old apartheid order. Here, a new religion emerges – one tethered to a new spiritual practice, community and self-determination.

Patrick claims to be a millionaire, but can't afford the rent for his one-room apartment in Berlin-Mitte. Nevertheless, he is the founder of an indie label and a rock musician. Increasingly infected by the current Berlin euphoria, he continues to pursue his vision with unique energy.

A reportage cross-cutting film about the development of Africa from 1900-1936, using archive footage and film material from earlier African expeditions.

Short film about inuits

A documentary directed by Julian Benedikt.

A glass eye is created in a manual process.

During preperations for a stage play, four women between 70 and 90 speak about their encounters with love in their lives.

Picture postcards, travel brochures and holiday photos are all this merrily caustic collage needs to portray moods and desires between the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. In spring 1990, the first Interflug plane carrying GDR citizens touched down on Majorca. About the mediterranean colours of the island, the first-person narrator remarks in the voiceover: “We knew them from the postcards sent by our West German relatives. This was the West, this was West-West.” Ostensibly naïve, her recollections nonetheless develop an ironic undertone. However blue the sea shines in the photos, however loud the castanets play, the travel group with their East German money are never more than onlookers in this half-board paradise. Everything seems like an empty promise: the bursting oranges on the trees, the sumptuous breakfast buffet and the giant hotel pools.

Three Muscovite women taxi-drivers laugh, swear and talk their way through everyday life after Perestroika - life's full of dreams and contradictions.

Stuttgart in the mid-1930s: What did it look like in the past, what does it look like now and what will await the city in the future?

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?

Presents the human face of the immigration crisis, following four migrants from Syria, Kenya and Cameroon as they wade through Germany's rigorous immigration process and await the final verdict on their applications for asylum.

When you have to bury the dead, 'cause you can't make a living as a dairy farmer anymore and vegan hippies try to find their peace in a hidebound village, life starts to reveal its absurdity. The documentary sooner or later tells the tragicomic story of a villages' struggle for the future.

A film about the cruelty of humans towards animals.

The history and consequences of the Fatima apparitions in a small Portuguese village, which has since become a prominent place of pilgrimage.

"All Quiet On The Western Front" made the Osnabrück native world-famous in 1929. In 1930, Hollywood made a film of the novel, the Nazis defamed it as "treason against soldiers", Remarque had to flee to Switzerland...

Compilation film with 20 excerpts from Thomas Schadt's own films (1982–2000). The film often deals with competition and megalomania, with the awareness of naturally possessing the power to define. But time and again, he also portrays with great empathy the lostness of those who are not among the winners.

Composed of short films within the framework of a bedroom story, which, among other things, pleads for partner swapping as therapy against "contact difficulties in industrial society. Communards of the 1970s and the chairman of the then existing Sex Party, the former theology student Joachim Driessen, appear as key witnesses of the "new society.

Shopping, laundry, adult conversations: 10-year-old Promise doesn't often get the chance to be a child. He lives with his mother, siblings and many other refugees in a hotel in Cologne. With a camera, the boy wanders through the corridors and rooms and takes a picture of this bizarre new world.

Around 1 billion apples are harvested every year in Havelland, one of the largest fruit-growing regions in the GDR. In order to obtain this quantity in good quality, a large number of preparatory and maintenance operations are required. There are also reports on apprenticeships and practical work in the "Havelobst Central Youth Object". Impressions of the 100th Blossom Festival in Werder as well as myths and legends complete the apple theme.

In a valley in the Ukrainian Carpathian forest lies the small and forgotten town of Königsfeld. In 1775, the Habsburg Queen, Maria Theresa, sent a hundred foresters and their families here from the Austrian west of the kingdom. All that remains today of the now over two century-old timber industry are factory ruins, potholes in the valley road and an increasingly seldom heard German dialect. Only a few factories survived a flood that cut the village off from the rest of the world, and left it economically isolated. An atmosphere of farewell hangs heavy in the air.

The nine-year-old Sinti girl Brigitta shows us her world. She lives with her family in a caravan site on the outskirts of a small Bavarian town. Everybody still speaks Romani and continues to live by the customs handed down. That means that the children take part in adult life and that the very highly respected parents describe how it used to be. In this community, all age groups live together naturally. For these Sinti, `gypsy' is an insult. At school they are taught there are two cultures, two languages and two realities: that of the Sinti and that of the Germans. While German is spoken at school, the only pupils are Sinti children. Brigitta animatedly describes the material deprivations, which are mollified by the life as `one big family'. Brigitta knows all too well where she belongs.

A behind-the-scenes look at the filming of "War and Peace," from conceptual sketches and costume design to cameras rolling.

Music by Klaus Schulze.

A docu-drama about tetrachloro-dibenzo dioxin, later known as 'Sevesogift', sprayed on thousands of tons of vapor in Vietnam 'Agent Orange', and the involvement of the later Federal President, Richard Karl Weizsäcker, who was hiring manager when production was moved to another plant because of massive health problems of the workers, but claims to be unable to remember anything, in these crimes.

A visit to a West Berlin dance club.

In this film, the viewer experiences, without commentary, the everyday life of a Sennen family at the end of the 20th century. The film raises the question of identity and thus tries to raise awareness of the great dilemmas in which we all find ourselves. Who am I? What am I doing?

Documentary by Volker Koepp.

At a demonstration in Berlin against the genocide in Gaza and the German arms supplies contributing to it, protestors are violently arrested, wrestled to the ground, sprayed with pepper spray and captured on camera. This essay pauses those overwhelming moments and isolates what is happening in order to examine it. Drawing from Fanon and Butler, among others, it offers a pointed interrogation of double standards, the state’s monopoly on violence and protesting under constant surveillance.

The attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023 changed the world. It is the greatest crime against Jews since the Holocaust of the German National Socialists, committed by Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas. The documentary examines how a terrorist organization could become the strongest political force in the Gaza Strip. What are its goals and how could Hamas grow into a company with an annual turnover of several hundred million dollars? Terrorism researchers, ethnologists and contemporary witnesses analyze the history and present of Hamas, whose main goal is the destruction of the State of Israel. Documents show how children are manipulated with anti-Western and anti-Israeli propaganda through television programs and in school lessons. Images show how minors are trained to be terrorists in Hamas summer camps. In interviews, experts report how the ideology of the Hamas movement is also spilling over into Europe and bringing with it a whole new dimension of anti-Semitism.

To mark the artist Fernando Botero's 75th birthday, Peter Schamoni made a documentary film about his moving life. Fernando Botero is immediately recognizable by his colourful and exuberant works. Schamoni convinces us that, behind the cliché of the naïve, Fernando Botero is an artist who also devotes himself to serious and profound themes. Schamoni not only accompanies Botero to Tuscany, where he creates his sculptures, and to his Parisian painter's studio. The film also takes us on a journey to Colombia, where Schamoni lets the viewer take part in the world in which the artist lives and works, in the highs and lows of his life.

Shortly after their formation in Easter 1982, the Düsseldorf punk band "Die Toten Hosen" lead the Stasi around by the nose: the musicians Campino, Andi, Breiti, Kuddel and Trini give a secret concert in a church, in the middle of what was then East Germany. In "Auswärtsspiel - Die Toten Hosen in Ost-Berlin" this unique event is now comprehensively told for the first time.

On October 3, 1976, left-wing activists founded the "Progressive Swiss Football Association" in Zurich's Cooperativo restaurant. After the failure of the political revolution, they wanted to implement their progressive ideals at least on the football pitch. Women into the storm! The right to strike for footballers! The game put a spanner in the works.

A sister shares an apartment with her heroin-addicted brother. Over the course of twelve years, she records the constant struggle and the constant losing.

From August 1989 to March 1990, Heiner Müller and the Deutsches Theater ensemble develop “Hamlet/Maschine” amid East Germany’s peaceful uprising. Actors help organize the November 4, 1989 Alexanderplatz demonstration. After the wall falls, artists split between a “third way” and reunification.

On April 20, 1945, twenty Jewish children were hanged at the Hamburg school on Bullenhuser Damm. SS doctor Heißmeier had previously conducted "medical" experiments on the children. To conceal this crime from the advancing British forces, the SS, under the command of Obersturmführer Arnold Strippel, killed the children, two prisoner nurses, two prisoner doctors, and 24 Soviet prisoners of war. One of the children's murderers, Arnold Strippel, who now lives in Frankfurt, has been under investigation by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office since 1979, but so far without any results. The film documents the children's story through eyewitness accounts. It conveys impressions of Nazi propaganda through "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" (The German Weekly Newsreel) and shows the dangers of neo-fascism in the Federal Republic of Germany. In April 1980, a few days after a memorial service for the children, neo-Nazis planted a bomb in the school on Bullenhuser Damm...

A documentary about the lives and history of Turkish immigrants in three centuries of Berlin history.

A person travels to a place and performs a recurring ritual there while being accompanied by a film student, who documents the process.

With his company Palantir, businessman Alex Karp created a powerful piece of data analysis software. It provides intelligence services, the military, and police investigative authorities with information that can be used to solve crimes or kill people. But what drives the creator of the software – ethical fundamentals or a thirst for power? Is he a Faust, a Mephisto, or both at the same time? An investigative journey in search of one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive CEOs.

Documentary directed by Sylvio Heufelder

Actuality scenes of Berlin circa 1910.

About three women in search of a home return to South Korea after an absence of more than thirty years. In the 1970s, they left everything behind in order to go to Germany as "guest workers." Although assimilated in their new country, they long for the old one. Now they are able to realize their dream of returning with their German husbands to Dogil Maeul, the German village that has been created for people like them. Situated in a picturesque bay, the village is indeed more German than Germany--there is even whole meal bread and Frankfurter sausages. This is the new-old home to which their sixty something husbands Armin, Willi and Ludwig have come in the hope of spending their remaining years. However, there is still something missing for the three women as they discover it is not so easy to pick up where they left off.