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Three Generations silenced by a gruesome family secret and a society refusing to see reality behind closed doors. No Lullaby tells the story of the life and death fight that a mother and her daughter must lead to break the silence.

Little Syria follows the quest of a brother, his sister and her boyfriend, trapped between a Syria from which they ran for their lives, and a Europe which seems at times to embrace them and at others to push them back. In the time of making of this film, more than 14 million Syrians have been forced to leave their homes. Syrians asked for asylum in more than 130 countries. Reem, Mohammed and Yasser try to make sense of what is left of the Syrian Revolution. Little Syria is a confidential insight into the invisible lives of Syrian refugees.

Animatronics, elephants, puppets, politicians, and more juxtaposed using three screens.

The film revolves around the development of the women's movement. Actors come together on stage and debate topics such as feminism, sexuality, gender performances, power structures, and activism, commenting on their own words. The film also provides insights behind the scenes and creates a fluid transition between the past and the present.

The film intersperses carefully framed shots of unfamiliar Hamburg cityscapes with silent, close-ups of ballerinas from the Hamburg Ballet, images reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s “Screen Tests”.

The film depicts the daily routine of a wage laborer looking for work every day, who is at the lowest social level of the worker hierarchy. The commentary partly takes up the language of the dock workers and blends wonderfully with the black and white photographs. The two together result in a precisely constructed reportage about work and leisure in the port environment and its social conditions. Three moving film sequences interrupt the photo sequence and thematize the photographic form.

Revolves around a mineral water pool in director Hristiana Raykova’s hometown of Varna in Bulgaria. Situated right by the sea, this thermal pool is lovingly called “the pit” by local residents. Sitting in the hot water, they lean back up against the pool’s edge and philosophise about their lives. Here personal and political convictions collide, and tell of both social change and stagnation at the periphery of Europe.

Dr. Ottara Kem never spoke about his Cambodian past to his German daughters. But on his deathbed he desired to be buried in Cambodia. With the fulfillment of his wish begins an intense, conciliative, and poetic journey through the story of his life.

It is a film about one of the ethnic cleansing in the Balkan Peninsula, which took place in in Bulgaria. The consequences of it are lasting till now. In the mid 80-ies the Bulgarian communist authorities started to forcefully change the Turkish names of about one million ethnic Turks into Bulgarian ones, in an attempt to resolve the ethnic problems that had been piled up for years. The film tells the stories about three women and their divided families. Each of them experienced in her own way this tragedy.

Documentary directed by Ulf von Mechow

Soon enough humankind will ascend to space. Who can join that mission? Who has to stay behind? In some places it has already started. Men and machine taking flight, leaving for the unknown future. For the endless void. That’s where they meet. The People using machines to clean machines and the people sheltered inside those machines. Destined to collide, never to engage. Welcome to Europes biggest car wash.

In Strike II, the artist and her daughter hit the camera with a pair of hammers, attacking image-making apparatus and representation.

A German Film Award winning short documentary.

The stories of Jewish cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz, and of star conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who worked with the Nazis, provide insight. The film centers around two people who represent musical culture during the Third Reich - albeit in very different ways. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a star conductor; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the infamous Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Both shared a love for the classical German music.

Douglas Sirk talks about his 1937 film 'Zu neuen Ufern'

An audio-visual film by Klaus Wyborny that focuses on various houses, their patterns and structures.

An insight into Göttingen's transportation and train system.

In the series of films about Reichsbahn sports, the film is aimed at female railway workers. According to the film, women in particular are exposed to the dangers of physical injury while on duty. German gymnastics shows the way to keep the body fresh and supple through sensibly designed rhythmic movements. In individual and group exercises, while springing, running, walking, hopping, and jumping, the body is kept in motion—every limb is trained, tension and relaxation alternate methodically, providing the basis for the proper functioning of the entire organism and creating a balance between body and soul. The film was intended to encourage female railway workers to form gymnastics groups and experience together the joy that rhythmic physical training would bring.

Nepal 1950. A mysterious, unexplored country. The Swiss geologist Toni Hagen, was the first European to pass through the "forbidden" kingdom. He doesn't discover any mineral resources there. Yet he does uncover the mysteries of life and penetrates towards a more profound truth which lends a new dimension to his life. In the spring of 1999, Hagen returns to Nepal to keep a promise of almost 50 years: At that time a Buddhist monk had presented him with the gift of a valuable and mystical ring.

From the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, France and East Germany maintained links despite the Cold War. As early as 1959, towns in the two countries were twinned and thousands of French workers' children went on holiday camps in the GDR.

Reveals how the Covid crisis has led to the near extinction of the massive cocaine production sites deep in the rainforest of the Peruvian Andes.

Documentary film about the steel entrepreneur Hermann Röchling.

Footage captures the winter storms on Heligoland’s coast, with snow-covered promenades and houses. Narrow alleys and streets are visible, leading to the Oberland. Destroyed houses and closed shops highlight the storm’s impact. Fishermen repair boats, and renovation work is underway. The Heligoland lighthouse stands in the evening, while the “Kobra” mail boat arrives twice weekly, unloading goods. Hamburg’s vibrant scenes include the harbor, St. Pauli, and train stations. The “Königin Luise” ship offers a journey from Hamburg to Heligoland, with passengers enjoying the sea. Traditional costumes and local life, including Heinz Bohle’s restaurant, add cultural depth to the island’s charm.

The Khmer word “angkar” signifies “organization”. The angkar of the Pol-Pot regime acted upon their own, unwritten laws. Records were discovered in the central interrogation and extermination camp “S21”, the former high school Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh that document the death of 20.000 people.

Berlin in February: cold and grey. For Foteini and Elena, who come from sunny Greece and Italy, it is the first winter in Germany. Being new in the big city, they are looking for what life might have to offer to them. Overwhelmed by the multitude of possibilities, they try to settle in Berlin while also attempting to connect their longing for their distant homelands with their aspirations. But the question remains: are their dreams really the same?

"Notes from the Neighbourhood" observes, over the course of two years, an inner courtyard in Berlin, in which investors erect a new residential building for resale. As the construction progresses, a woman narrates the ups and downs of her contrary life, and the stagnation of her body.

This film from the series ‘The Roads of Adolf Hitler’ documents the construction of the Reichsautobahn Berlin-Munich near Hirschberg, highlighting the efforts of 400 workers, the use of advanced construction techniques, and the camaraderie among the diverse workforce, culminating in the completion of a significant bridge structure.

Filmed through a grainy zoom lens, a succession of intimate moments unfolds as approximately 70 couples engage in tender, playful, or passionately abandoned kisses, captured in slow motion within a tightly framed composition. The focus of each scene is on the negative space between the lovers’ profiles, creating a mesmerizing visual narrative.

Short documentary directed by Günter Schlesinger

Experimental documentary about a public park.

How is it like to be forced to wait while people are drowning just a few miles away? "No News" gives an insight into the absurdity of European migration policy.

The Flying Train depicts a ride on a suspended railway. The footage is almost as impressive as the feat of engineering it captures. For many years our curators believed our Mutoscope rolls were slightly shrunken 70mm film, but they were actually shot on Biograph’s proprietary 68mm stock. Formats like Biograph’s 68mm and Fox’s 70mm Grandeur are of particular interest to researchers visiting the Film Study Center because the large image area affords stunning visual clarity and quality, especially compared to the more standard 35mm or 16mm stocks.

A city, a cinema, and a reluctant farewell. In 2017, in the city of Constance on Lake Constance, Europe’s largest chain of drugstores opened the city’s fifth branch store: more diapers, more toothpaste and more toiletries for the local residents and the consumer tourists from Switzerland. Until the year 2016, the premises were reserved for film culture, this was the location of the former “Scala Film Palace”. When Douglas Wolfsperger returns to the magical site of his cinematic socialization, the public opposition to this pending closure is in full swing. The filmmaker becomes witness to the final rebellion of a dying art house cinema, speaks to passionate film enthusiasts and matter-of-fact city administrators about loss and expansion, the increase in pleasure and trade, intransparent vested interests and advantageous business situations. Inner cities and cultural concepts change – in Constance and everywhere else. But who decides how and for whom?

A German silent documentary film that deals with the controversial and innovative work of Dr. Eugen Steinach, an Austrian physiologist and endocrinologist. The film documents Steinach's research on human biology, particularly his experimental work on the rejuvenation of aging men, which involved a surgical procedure called vasoligation.

A cinematographic attempt at a maximum of exertion and a maximum of relaxation based on the thoughts of John Cage, Chuang Tzu and others.

Far removed from the officially propagated GDR cultural sector, Christine Schlegel created her very own energetic cosmos on 8mm stock between 1977 and 1986. She painted over or scratched lines and shapes on footage of the dancer Fine Kwiatkowski. She projected painted footage on the dancing body during live performances, enveloping and re-shaping it.

The film shows a reenactment of a traditional Sorbian Catholic wedding in traditional costume.

In France and Germany, a look back at the legacy of the New Right, a radical movement whose modern incarnations are becoming increasingly visible.

A former coal miner from Bottrop talks about his youth. He focuses primarily on the cinema, the radio, and television.

At Easter 1991, when few could have imagined the xenophobic riots of the following months and years, 28-year-old black contract worker Jorge Joa Gomondai from Mozambique died in Dresden. He was attacked by a group of rioting skinheads and thrown from a moving tram. Or did he jump in panic? The trial against three perpetrators failed to answer this question. His parents in Mozambique are still waiting for an explanation or apology from the city, or for compensation.

Climate justice! OHNE KEROSIN NACH BERLIN is a campaign by the Students for Future, which is part of the Fridays for Future movement. In 2020, 60 people loudly carried the climate protest by bicycle from Cologne to Berlin. This film emerged from the movement and shows the activists' experiences up close.

A documentary of the life of German actress Sybille Schmitz (1909–1955) who rose to prominence in the German cinema of the 1930s and whose final years were used as the basis for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1982 film 'Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss'.

A documentary on young musicians from around the world who have connected to the city of Berlin.

Sultan is building a new life for himself in Saarbrücken. Here, he can flourish in a way he never could in his homeland of Oman. Since fleeing to Germany, he has been shaking up Saarland's nightlife as a drag queen. But his past keeps catching up with him. Between new beginnings and inner conflict, SULTAN tells a story of origin, identity, and the attempt to truly arrive.