Discover Movies

At the age of nine, twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz from Magdeburg decide to become famous. At the age of twelve, together with Gustav Schäfer and Georg Listing, they form a band, Tokio Hotel, which conquers and polarizes the world. The success is gigantic. In their early twenties, the twins fled to Los Angeles, leaving thousands of fans and a life behind protective walls behind them. They want their freedom back and don't know how or whether things will continue.

In her documentary, Aysun Bademsoy portrays five young Turkish women from Berlin Kreuzberg who used to be members of the successful Turkish women's soccer team "BSC-Agrispor". Until recently, the friends had high hopes for an independent future based on their sporting success. But now the season is coming to an end and the five young women, all in their 20s, will stop playing soccer. They don't know exactly what they want to do with their lives. Apprenticeships are rare, and without money, independence from the strict parental home is impossible. But now they are enjoying the Berlin summer together once again, wandering the streets, chasing boys, going to parties, "hanging out".

The war in Congo has caused more than six million deaths over the last twenty years. The population is suffering, but the offenders stay with impunity. Many people see this conflict as one of globalisation's crucial econimic distribution battles because the country has major deposits of many high-tech raw materials. Milo Rau, one of Europe's most acclaimed theatre directors, succeeds in gathering victims, perpetrators, observes and analysts of the conflict for a unique civil tribunal in eastern Congo. The documentary film brings these spectacular court trials to life on the big screen and creates an unvarnished portrait of the largest and bloodiest economic wars in human history.

A look at Communist musicals that strove to be ideologically correct - and entertaining, besides.

Modern classical music that speaks direct to the heart: that is the aim of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. Across the world, orchestras and choirs, soloists, conductors, and an ever growing public have discovered the emotional power of his compositions. The film follows the composer in Riga, at rehearsals, composing alone, in private and in the nature, he loves so much. A sensitive portrait of an artist, and a very special person with a special view on our world. Vasks: "I am a sad optimist".

A Super 8 film.

The Nazi concentration and extermination camps were places of incomprehensible cruelty, misery and death. But even here, creation took place. Creation as a means of survival against destruction. Art against dehumanization. On behalf of the SS, but also secretly at the risk of their lives, people drew and painted, sculptors and model makers worked, concerts were performed and theater was played. Prisoners created paintings and other works of art, which the SS henchmen sold or sent home to their families. In the Austrian Mauthausen concentration camp, inmates made sketches of the crime scenes where fellow prisoners had allegedly died while trying to escape. In the Buchenwald concentration camp, prisoners had to rehearse a camp song in the freezing cold until it sounded perfect to the ears of their tormentors. In addition to this forced art, however, there were also illegal drawings that could give the outside world an insight into actual camp life.

Anja Salomonowitz portrays three women from her family who were still almost girls during the Nazi era. They stood on different sides, present history differently today, and belong to different memory collectives: her great-aunt survived Auschwitz. Her nanny was a socialist and supported her uncle in the resistance. Her grandmother lived in Graz during the war and did what most people did: nothing. The film confronts family narratives, examines the aftermath of history and the mechanisms of its transmission. Preceded by a work by Linda Christanell – "composed of fragments of reality and assembled into a new space."

An insight into the restoration of ancient manuscripts at the Monte Oliveto monastery near Siena.

This short educational film focuses on canteen catering in larger industrial companies, presents a model company and appeals to other companies to remedy existing shortcomings and improve canteen catering for workers. The VEB Zahnradwerk Pritzwalk is presented as an exemplary company.

Super 8 (Black & White) film by Helga Fanderl

Contraception is explained as part of biology lessons in year 10. The lesson begins with the teacher explaining the hormonal mode of action of oestrogen and progestogen, whose explanations are supplemented by intermittent images of the schematic diagram on the blackboard. Prompted by questions from the pupils, the teacher then goes into the production of the corpus luteum and explains its function. She then discusses the effect of the 'pill' as an ovulation inhibitor on the female organism. She explains that the preparations absorb the hormone progestin, which prevents further follicle maturation. Further questions are asked about other contraceptive methods. The teacher first explains the Knaus-Ogino method and then talks about the mechanical contraceptive concepts of condoms and pessaries. Finally, the chemical methods and 'coitus interruptus' are discussed as further options for preventing pregnancy.

Since the summer of 2020, a battle has been raging between the European Union and Hungary: while the Fidesz party, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, seems to question certain principles, inherent to any democratic country, and harasses members of the opposition, the European Union is reluctant to contribute funds to the coffers of countries which, like Hungary itself, and Poland, in turn question the pillars of the common European policy.

Documentary about highway construction in Germany.

Edeltraut Hertel - a midwife caught between two worlds. She has been working as a midwife in a small village near Chemnitz for almost 20 years, supporting expectant mothers before, during and after the birth of their offspring. However, working as a midwife brings with it social problems such as a decline in birth rates and migration from the provinces. Competition for babies between birthing centers has become fierce, particularly in financial terms. Obstetrics in Tanzania, Africa, Edeltraud's second place of work, is completely different. Here, the midwife not only delivers babies, she also trains successors, carries out educational and development work and struggles with the country's cultural and social problems.

A group of punks is observed and interviewed on a square in Hamburg-Ottensen. In close-ups, characteristic details of the outward appearance of punks and their provocative behavior are presented. The reactions of passengers and the owners of surrounding stores are recorded; some act emphatically tolerant and understanding, others reject them...

The sirens blare out; a catastrophe is rehearsed. Hyperreal practice-runs, planning exercises and simulations give rise to the disturbing dystopia of emergency. The film of the hour: thrilling, complex and alarming.

A documentary about the German-American movie poster artist Will Williams made by his close friend Eckhard "Ecki" Baum.

Lyrical documentary about the city of Cologne.

SauAcker depicts the obstacles faced by Philipp, a young farmer determined to modernize his father's old-fashioned farm. His motto is "I'll do it my way". Philipp is fully committed and is even risking his relationship to attain his goals. The documentary paints a funny and charming picture of the two wayward heroes and presents an entertaining angle on the realities of contemporary society.

First, assembly line work in a printer's. As one, the workmen put together newspapers. Then other hands assemble, punch holes in, and attach together sometimes mysterious materials, using machines of ultimate design. Then there is no more human presence; only a ballet of automated machines. Finally, we are in a foundry, amid sparks and smoke.

Can AI play music like a human being? Can it improvise or perform complicated music with sensitivity and style? This documentary explores what happens when machines simulate creativity with two pianists, Kit Armstrong and Michael Wollny, who are both undertaking research with artificial intelligence.

This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki's role model and former teacher at the Film Academy.

A zombie outbreak documentary in two parts filmed at the Code Dead events.

HF168 - Super 8 (Color) film by Helga Fanderl

Short film about light and weather phenomena

Experiencing violence is commonplace for Syrian women but they do not discuss the prevalence of – often sexual – exploitation for fear of revenge. A collective of young women want to break the taboo with a theatre project. But how free are they themselves?

This insightful documentary tells the harrowing story of Sophie and Dominik, a homeless couple struggling to make ends meet. With a baby on the way and a prison sentence looming, they face a desperate situation. When a friend suggests escaping to France, their fate takes an unexpected turn.

Matthias and Tobias want to cycle from Germany to Vietnam. Their lack of training shows when they start their endeavor in August 2018. Against all odds and without ever losing their humor they push forward to reach that one ambitious goal.

A journey through a place of an eternal past; where the grandson of a Jewish partisan sets out to experience the dramatic events and places that shaped his grandfather's war years

A voyeuristic panorama of a specific moment in the German independent music scene.

In his documentary film, Volker Koepp portrays the picturesque Polish region of Pomerania. But although the region appears to be idyllic, its inhabitants are struggling with big problems. The villages and cities of Pomerania that traditionally live from agriculture are hit by unemployment rates of up to 75% after the meltdown of the state farms. While most of the young people leave the region, some of them take their chances and start fresh – for instance, a young couple that tries to rebuild an agricultural farm with the help of EU funding. Furthermore, older inhabitants, including a spry 90-year old retiree from the Uckermark region who grew up in Pomerania, tell stories about the region′s eventful past.

The first Hirde Dyama National Festival of Culture of the Republic of Guinea was held in March 1970 in the country's capital city of Conakry. The film features many colorful and diverse performances and highlights the protection of traditional West African cultural traditions and art forms under President Ahmed Sékou Touré.

Vom Reiche der sechs Punkte is an unusual silent film, produced far away from the film studios in Berlin and Munich. The story deals with a steel worker who looses the sight of his eyes and has to accept his fate. The film shows in unique documentary pictures the work and life in the homes for the blind in Cologne, Neuwied and Düren. The Filmmuseum Muenchen has restored the only surviving tinted and toned print of the film which was found in the collection of the Finnish Film Archive.

The experimental film explores the visual representation of the Holocaust through a montage of thousands of excerpts from fictional films and television series produced between 1938 and the present. Drawing from an extensive archive of over 3,000 narrative works the film critically examines how Holocaust imagery has been codified and reproduced in cinema across decades.

Documentary film about the 1933 Christmas party of the Reichsbahndirektion Berlin in the Sportpalast.

Two cats housed in a glass box, one of which had received a small amount of atropine in the preliminary experiment, are exposed to ether vapors with the result that only the animal which had not been pretreated began to salivate (profusely).

A street singer living on the obscure fringes of the L.A. subculture, in early 1968, Wild Man would sing anyone an original song for a dime. He offered these improvised and somewhat off-key ditties to anybody who'd listen.

A filmmaker in search of his father, who joined the MRTA rebels when he was only one year old. As an adult he sets out on his trail, a track that will take him from Berlin to Stockholm and from there to Lima. What kind of man, political agitator, terrorist, what kind of father is the prisoner Peter Cárdenas Schulte, a.k.a. "Alejandro"?

A portrait of Maria Lang's mother, which is also a family portrait of the filmmaker. The film shows an excerpt from the Lang family's everyday life. It follows the parents as they go about their daily chores and small rituals.

A visceral non-fiction portrait of hope and sacrifice in a time of global economic turmoil, filmed between a large-scale underground mine in post-war Serbia and an illegal mining collective in the tropical heat of Suriname.

Documentary about reggae in Jamaica and its history. Filmed in 1979.

Director Erich Langjahr follows several of the last remaining shepherds in Switzerland, on the cusp of the third millennium. How does one of the oldest human means of subsistence survive into the modern age? At an unhurried pace, he captures the shepherd, his sheep, his dogs and his mules as they trudge across snow-covered fields, climb mountain passes and cross highways. The sheep have to be cared for all year round and the life of a shepherd is physically demanding. Shepherds stay outdoors, or in small huts and caravans – often in places inaccessible by car. During their long periods away from home, their families expand and their children grow up. But they wouldn’t have it any other way; being a shepherd is a very conscious life choice. One of them puts it like this: “I just can’t sit still. As long as my health allows me I’ll always be on the go. No matter where in the world, I’d like to be on the go forever.”

Documentary about individual and social meanings of the word "honour".

Postmodernism also has to be seen as a system, one that is acknowledged, one with which one can create houses, locomotives, films, everything... That has nothing to do with art. That is just a parlour game. - Vlado Kristl

The film portrays the four young politicians Laura Isabelle Marisken, Aminata Touré, Gyde Jensen and Terry Reintke, who will help shape the future of Germany and the EU in the years to come. He moves back and forth between the different protagonists, draws fine lines between Brussels, Usedom, Kiel and Berlin and delivers a wide range of universal and big themes, packed in personal and intimate moments with the four strong and very different women, and shows how women’s politics works today, enthusiastic and engaged.