Discover Movies

A short documentary in the form of a mock-info-travelogue of Hitler’s mountain retreats Berghof and the Eagle’s Nest at Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden.

Educational film about the importance of beeing a helpful car driver.

A trip to Norderney by sea and land. From Bremerhaven, the steamboat journey passes the Rotesand lighthouse and Heligoland. The land route begins with the train in Bremen, continues via Oldenburg, and connects in Norddeich to the mudflat steamer, which maintains the connection to the East Frisian Islands even at low tide.

This short silent film was made by the German 'völkisch' photographer Hans Retzlaff for the 'Institut für Deutsche Volkskunde der Universität Tübingen' in 1937/8. It demonstrates the process of preparation of the headdress of this traditional costume from the Lausitz as well as some footage of confirmands and a bride from Hoyersweda in her traditional costume.

This documentary follows the conflict around a lake in central Africa with a methane deposit worth billions, but which could kill millions of people.

Germany’s infrastructure is falling apart. Countless buildings, bridges and roads are crumbling and need to be torn down. These demolition experts have a true giant at their side. Our documentary accompanies the men of Bavarian demolition teams as they live out what is probably every little boy's greatest dream.

Haymon Maria Buttinger, a legendary Austrian prop master, singer and actor. A showman in front of the camera and his great dream of being Macbeth, Quasimodo and Jeckyll-Hyde just once. The portrait of a friend.

The Impossibility of Showing What Should Never Have Happened examines the persistent impact of National Socialist child rearing ideals in post-war Germany. Specifically, it focuses on how the parenting book "The German Mother and Her First Child" by Johanna Haarer, infused with Nazi ideology, remained in publication, demonstrating the enduring influence of these ideas. The work investigates the continued existence of these harmful practices in a society supposedly moving beyond them.

A young refugee is stabbed to death in Celle in northern Germany. The police question, interrogate, perform an autopsy, search, take evidence, record: 1,700 pages. An approach to structural racism via files, soccer and growing up.

Fantastic, supposedly inconspicuous animal observations with the help of sophisticated special techniques about the causes and scientific connections of the regenerative ability from the point of view of cell biology, explained using the example of freshwater polyps. The short film was awarded an honorary diploma at the International Festival of Scientific and Technical Film in Belgrade in 1962.

A documentary film in the style of Direct Cinema about the legendary Oberammergau Passion Play. From the preparations in 2008 to the last performance in the fall of 2010, the focus is on Christian Stückl, an obsessed theater maker who struggles with a centuries-old tradition and the challenges of the reality of a Bavarian village. The film shows the life behind the façade of the biblical spectacle in the field of tension between commerce and art, the provinces and the wider world, God and people.

Documentation on a protest campaign against urban displacement, organized by neighbors from Kreuzberg, Berlin.

Machines work the countryside, birds fly over the fields and robots imitate human movements. Ornithologists and cutting-edge robotics make for an unlikely yet fruitful encounter, as the artist Sandra Schäfer questions post-humanist modes of production. What will the relationship between nature and culture look like in the future?

A film about two apocalyptic sissies between Bogota, Berlin and Cartagena. One is a dancer, the other a Filmmaker. What starts as a documentary about a dancer, transforms slowly into a performance for film. The performances they create play with the in-between, male female, and the appropriation of spaces and expectations projected onto them.

Lina’s plan was simple. She wanted to become a camerawoman. She liked filming details of life and people around her, mainly during a bright sunny day in Damascus. But with the uprising in Syria, Lina was slowly absorbed into documenting the impact on people’s lives. It didn’t take long before events escalated, and arrests, torture, and potentially life-threatening situations became a reality for Lina to negotiate on a daily basis. She had to adapt. She invented personas and aliases. They each helped her navigate life under a new norm. What was a simple plan, turned into a complex web of identities, which seemed then a small price in exchange for her liberty to continue to hold the camera.

A traditional men's festival called "Hahnbeer," which has been celebrated every year since 1841 at the end of February.

Is 2012 threatening the end of the world? Are unforeseen disasters coming? Do ancient prophecies come true? Are the earthquakes, hurricanes, financial crises, uprisings and wars of our day the heralds of the end?

Documentary about the punk subculture in Hamburg, Germany.

After fascination coral reef now follows fascination Amazon, an exciting, turned in the best Real 3D journey into one of the most interesting corners of the globe. The Amazon is next to the Nile, the longest river in the world. It measures approximately 6448 meters and shares with his two source rivers Maranon and Ucayali almost the entire northern half of South America. About 300 kilometers south of the Equator, it crosses the west of the Andes and embossed framed by tropical rainforest Amazon basin to the Atlantic. The Amazon irrigate a total of 5.5 million square kilometers. 3.9 million of them in Brazil. He is also the most water power in the world. Over 10,000 inflows lead to such gigantic proportions.Become a witness of this exciting hunts and learn a lot more to know about the amazing Amazon. This beautiful, but also threatened natural beauty, in the past some of the people live, who have never come into contact with the globalized world.

Short film about the Swabian Alb

A telephone conversation between father and son.

This one is a collage of Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s, filmed directly from the television set. The constantly recurring motifs of suspense and clichés of plot make it possible to move seamlessly among scenes from different films with different protagonists: uneasy sleep, getting up, listening at the door, turning on the lights, being startled, etc. In the montage, the movements and gestures of the actresses – stars like Lana Turner, Tippi Hedren, and Grace Kelly– seem choreographed and planned for each other. The soundtrack supports this effect with connecting passages of sound that imitate the stereotypes of the genre. The treatment concentrates the dramatic shift from the familiar to the eerie and shows how women become the victims of the voyeuristic glance of film.

Two filmmakers explore the history of South Korean guest workers in West Germany.

Lothar König is an original. The long-term youth pastor from Jena doesn’t fit into any system. In the GDR he was under state surveillance, after reunification he was one of the most tireless warning voices against the growing right-wing radicalism. To this day, he takes to the barricades against the extreme right, often on the frontline. Nevertheless, this film portrait by his son Tilman is not an homage but a critical tribute to an outspoken character forced by retirement to re-invent himself.

Lutz schelhorn is an artist and photographer. He also happens to be the president of the Stuttgart hells angels charter.

Education about the railroad. Model railroad footage is combined with real railroad footage.

Jürgen Leppert, also known as "Der Dreher" or "der Kreisel" is a graduate engineer, speaker inventor, 360 degree dancer, gifted Frisbee player and thoroughbred 68er. Everything revolves around the Karlsruher legend, and not just on the dance floor. A declaration of love to music, dancing and rebellion. A portrait of a tough person who still swims against the stream and the living proof that 81 years is far from too old for hard raves.

On the foothills of Uummannaq mountain, four cybergoth teens are fighting depression. Water contamination spreads throughout the village pipelines and one cybergoth finds herself laying on a hospital bed. The film is a visual poem narrated by a group of young inuit women, reflecting on ongoing suicide attempts and the separation from their families. The cybergoths remind us of a post-apocalypse future, that is to say, the apocalyptic qualities of the present; a fragile reality where national, communal, environmental, and mental stability is at risk.

A documentary about the left revolution in Munich and Bavaria as well as the republic following governing for several months. The movie consists mostly of eye witness interviews of the peaceful change of government.

A portrait of documentary filmmaker Hans-Dieter Grabe.

"Since the beginning of history women have also been perpetrators. They have been as courageous and brave as men. They can be equally brutal and criminal and of course just as horny. Nevertheless, to this day, there exists the feminine ideal of "non-aggressiveness – peacefulness – asexuality“ with which women have been surpessed for centuries. This film shows women as soldiers, partisans, watchmen, criminals, as well as child-bearing, drunk, masturbating strong femals but also as circumsized, dismembered victims, who must pay for the fear that women cause within men. Scenes from old and recent documentaries, from trivial films and my own stagend sequences are mounted to a collage of images. These are sup-plemented by a collage of sounds and a montage of quotes and my own texts. It’s also about me about my fears and my fighting to be able to live my own strength." - Birgit Hein

Documentary short by Romuald Karmakar.

In 1979, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, revolution broke out in Iran and overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This event marks the end of a two and a half thousand year old monarchy. This documentary retraces the lives of these two enemies who clashed for more than thirty years, from the Shah's rise to power in the 1940s until his fall.

This film is the last in a series of four films about European history. The film describes the apparent goal of European history: the blessed state of the social democratic paradise.

The saga of fitness, which exploded in the 1980s and contributed, in its own way, to liberating women's bodies.

A documentary project about the collapse of the USSR.

Documentary about the problem district of Gropiusstadt in Berlin.

Documentary by Eckhart Schmidt.

How do people look back on a life that was torn from their hands by arbitrariness, secret police, and the justice system? Gisela Tuchtenhagen and Margot Neubert-Maric portray three former prisoners whose experiences in prison in the GDR left lifelong scars. They fell into the clutches of the GDR justice system at a young age.

Documentary film.

The extraordinary work of the American artist Philip Guston is a milestone in modern painting. Guston is one of the most discussed painters of his time and today a star of the younger generation of contemporary artists. ARTE is showing the documentary on the occasion of the major Guston retrospective at the Tate Modern in London.

Two women, a mother and her daughter, one of whom immigrated to Germany from Turkey and the other grew up in Germany, describe life between two cultures. The mother came as a guest worker, while her daughter had a painful arranged marriage.

Laura Ludwig's and Kira Walkenhorst's journey to the 2016 Rio Olympics. Despite setbacks in their preparation the team keeps pushing themselves to reach their ultimate goal - the Beach Volleyball Goldmedal.

Food vouchers, fingerprints, waiting stamps and the discussions with two "individual decision-makers at the Federal Office for the Recognition of Foreign Refugees", their language regulations and the "selection modules" in the office's computer program.

About a young woman from East Berlin that is forced to go to Norway to regain her health.

In May 1989, just a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first "Miss Leipzig" contest was held in Leipzig, a competition that required not only beauty but also knowledge of the city and its history. Leipzig photographer Gerhard Gäbler won 20 of the candidates for a double portrait that showed them at work and in their private lives. 18 years later, the filmmaker and the photographer sought out the now 40-year-olds and asked them about their motivation at the time. The film documents resolute, ambitious, intelligent and self-confident women who are representative of a generation that was often able to make more of the opportunities offered by the "turnaround" than those ten or twelve years older.

Following his acting debut as the fictitious DJ Ikarus in the modern cult classic Berlin Calling, musician and producer Paul Kalkbrenner offers a glimpse into his real-life touring adventures.

History in a hurry: Namibia becomes independent in March 1990, in July the Publicly Owned Enterprise DEFA becomes a GmbH, in October GDR becomes FRG East, in August a West and an East German filmmaker record one of the last GDR inconsistencies for DEFA. The state in pre-retirement sends 425 Namibian children, whom it had rescued from Angolan camps eleven years earlier, “home.” Hastily. But why? When Grote, Kunert and the children arrive, a Namibian minister explains that the East German supporters of these colonial war victims are now out of power. The new powers had no interest … In the Leipzig festival selection in 1990, and again in 1991, this film about German-Namibian foreignness and alienation cannot be found. The Retrospective 2024 makes up for this strange omission.

When Jan Peters' girlfriend accidentally takes his wallet on a trip to foreign climes, she leaves the filmmaker standing in Frankfurt Airport without a penny to his name. The only capital he possesses is a group ticket for the public transport system. After hearing about people who supplement their inadequate incomes by 'escorting' groups of tourists across the city, Mr Peters decides to apply the same method to his own situation. The filmmaker starts a business as an 'independent travel escort' and enters an obscure world of supplementary jobs and adventurous business models.