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For more than thirty years, film director Heinz Peter Schwerfel has been observing the German-born painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz in interviews and studio visits. This film was his first television appearance, where the nonconformist artist gives a well-prepared performance with provocative statements and surprising explanations of his work: the rejection of the abstract painting of the 1950s, the reversal of his portraits, which are painted upside down, and his sculptures, which are influenced by the primitivism of African art. Today, Baselitz has become one of the most famous and praised contemporary artists.

Putin had been preparing his country for the big war long before it started. Since 2012, a series of repressive laws were passed, labelling everyone who publicly disagreed with the official narrative as „foreign agent“. In these circumstances, a group of independent Russian media and activists are trying to resist and continue their work. Right after the invasion their work becomes virtually impossible. Shot during one decisive year, before and after the invasion, the new film by fearless filmmaker Askold Kurov (The Trial - The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov) portrays the last defenders of democracy in Russia and gives a glimpse of hope for another future.

A cinematic retreat about The Lord’s flock in the year 2005. With encounters from Marktl am Inn, the new pope’s birthplace, on the weekend of his inauguration, including scenes from Rome, eleven days earlier, where hundreds of thousands huddled towards St. Peter’s Square, to bid the deceased pope farewell with applause.

In a long-term observation, filmmakers Christian Lehmann-Feddersen & Alf Schreiber document the socio-political aftermath of the G20 summit in Hamburg. While activists are exposed to the legal repercussions, the capitalist system and resistance are regrouping in the shadow of the summit.

Documentary about kookaburras

Documentary by Eckhart Schmidt.

Erich Langjahr portrays two of his close friends, internationally renowned artists, Gottfried Honegger and Kurt Sigrist. Though the personalities of the two artists are as different as night and day, Langjahr discovered one thing that connects them: their expression of and fascination with imagery.

A first hand account of one of the biggest cases of human trafficking during the Cold War. A story of greed, courage, hope and remorse.

Featuring unprecedented access to Michael Nyman's working life, this film shows one of the great composers of our time in all his diversity and endless energy. From London to Berlin, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, and Portugal the film is also a journey through the musical world today. It shows Michael Nyman, the musician, in his concerts with The Michael Nyman Band and live collaborations with other internationally known musicians and orchestras. But throughout his journeys, this film discovers Nyman's increasing passion for filming and photography.

My mother lights 80 candles and becomes visible. When I set to work, it turned into an intense confrontation between mother and son. I finally learned the unvarnished story of my mother's life and began to understand why we both became who we are. I interwove the film image with two layers of sound: the Suite in C minor for violoncello, Bach, and dialogical texts spoken by mother and son, based on our conversations and describing how she gave birth to her seven children during the years of Hitler's fascism. I will continue to work on my mother's biography.

Blast furnaces, winding towers, processing plants – now largely destroyed evidence of industrial development – live on in the photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher. In the documentary film 'The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher', the now deceased artist couple talk about their life, work and influence, which was devoted to photographing industrial buildings for four decades. The portrait of the renowned photographers is complemented by contemporary witnesses such as their son Max Becher and former students of the Düsseldorf Art Academy, including Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff and others.

On the banks of the Cauvery River in southern India, wildlife filmmaker Sugandhi Gadadhar studies the behavior of Asian otters. On one of the subcontinent's most dynamic waterways, a conflict has arisen between these small carnivorous mammals and fishermen, whose livelihoods also depend on the river's resources.

Featurette about the filming of Durchs wilde Kurdistan and Der Schut

A train ride through the magical world of strawberries, potatos and beet root.

The mysterious parallel story of Italian painters Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431-1506) and Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1435-1516), brothers-in-law, public rivals and masters of the early Renaissance.

In 1980, a company in Berlin-Kreuzberg sold its factory premises to 30 alternative projects that wanted to try out self-management and alternative forms of work. The documentary film attempts to show the extent to which these aspirations were realized; it describes the problems and forms of self-management and the initial difficulties that Mehringhof had, particularly with its financial backers.

This Documentary follows the ambitious project of building a cloister town with only the tools that where present in the middle ages.

Volker Koepp's video essay honoring the German poet Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965).

What are we looking for when we travel? What kind of pictures do we take and what kind of images do we get? Three people in three different times travel through the same regions.

TV movie about dance rites in the Philippines

Documentary about migrant teens in Germany

On December 6, 1917, Finland declared its independence from Russia. A detailed chronicle of the major events in the history of this young European nation.

Documentary by Hans-Dieter Grabe.

Short documentary about the Arctic

The past is ghosts we left at home. The past is what we always carry with us. "nonplace" attempts to document a place that now exists only in dreams and memories, aiming to connect the ever-changing present with the encapsulated past.

The film tells the story of rapist and murderer Willi Kimmritz, who terrorized the forests around Berlin between 1946 and 1948.

Documentary about Santa Clauses in Berlin on Christmas Eve.

Documentary on the techno music scene. A journey through the world of electronic music. This film is a compilation of different live sets and concert-parts of some electronic music artists.

Two queer Brazilians go skinny dipping in a lake where they talk about love, sex, colonialism and migration, on a pandemic summer afternoon in Berlin.

Documentary about viruses, both real and metaphorical ones.

A cheerful take on the lives of school children in a Swiss rural environment. Young pupils recite short essays they have written on subjects such as the long walk to school, the distribution of milk during breaks, and a brawl in the courtyard.

A semi-documentary account of the author Thomas Wolfe's trip to Berlin in the summer of 1936.

Rublyovka Road is the traffic artery connecting the powerhouse Moscow with the Russian outback. Tell-tale signs of the past and gross excesses of Russian cutthroat capitalism have created a bizarre microcosm that does not have a parallel elsewhere in this giant empire.

I live in Saarland. The place is surrounded by forests and I find it very beautiful and exotic. Almost like a Bob Ross painting. But while hiking I came across a bunker and realized that there were beasts lurking behind the happy trees. A short essay film about war and forest.

His buildings and sculptures still attract attention today, but their creator is almost forgotten: the sculptor and architect Bernhard Hoetger. The 90-minute film by Gabriele Rose tells the fate of this idiosyncratic artist. Hoetger is portrayed by the actor Moritz Führmann. Starring alongside him are Florian Lukas as Heinrich Vogeler, Katharina Stark as Paula Modersohn-Becker and Ulrich Gebauer as Ludwig Roselius.

A film about cosmetic surgeries.

In Los Angeles and Tokyo, the film invites people to live out unfulfilled desires as strangers from their city embody those they long for. The film explores loneliness and emotional life in late-capitalist cities, all while celebrating the transformative power of imagination.

Vele is 17 years old and all she wants is to learn how to read and write - to keep up with her seven year old daughter. After endless years of the Liberian civil war her ability to sign in her own name means the next big step towards independence - away from the painful past, into a brighter future.

The remarkable story of Dr. Mohamed Helmy, the Muslim Egyptian doctor who became the only Arab recognized by Israel as a ‘Righteous Among the Nations.’ A proud humanist who freely criticized the Nazi regime, Helmy risked his life to save Anna Boros, a Jewish girl he knew, by dressing her in a hijab and pretending she was his niece. Shot on location in Berlin, the film incorporates rare photographs and archival footage of Berlin in the 1930s and ‘40s.

Dresden is famous for its attempt to meticulously reconstruct its once bombed-out historical center and bring the colorful baroque settings of the 18th century back to life. It’s infamous for the right-wing-surge that has since 2015 swept the city and made it a center of far-right activity in Germany and Europe. This film is an exploration of where the two intersect.

Jörg Adolph’s playful On-the-road documentary follows the face-off of two bands that are both quite fond of experimentation. The Notwist and the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra ignore genre boundaries as they hop from style to style, channeling their way through polymorphic soundscapes, wild and beautiful. From the recording of Notwist’s “The Devil, You + Me” album, via collective rehearsals in Berlin, to concerts in Hamburg, Amsterdam and Munich: these kindred spirits always try to improve, try to refine the patterns and arrangements. It seems as if the musicians main concern is to keep the songs in constant motion – Music Not Music.

Over 10,000 years ago, humans settled down. Is there still something like a nomadic gene in us? After numerous expeditions to parts of the world far from Europe, this question arises for the artist group Mangan25. Among other places, they followed in the footsteps of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt in Australia and North America. Their encounters with indigenous peoples in these regions also reveal traumatic events and colonial upheavals.

In the Syrian mountains of Al Ghalamoun, overlooking the vast desert, stands the ancient Christian monastery of Mar Musa—a beacon of interfaith dialogue and radical hospitality in a fractured land. The film follows the monks and nuns through intimate, observational storytelling as they navigate postwar devastation—working towards peace, even in the face of grave personal loss. Poetic imagery and an hypnotic score accompany "Mar Musa" emerging as a profound metaphor for Syria itself.