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"Wings Of Desire" and "Buena Vista Social Club", "Paris, Texas" and "The State Of Things": Wim Wenders is considered one of the pioneers of New German Cinema and one of the most important and influential representatives of contemporary cinema. With never-before-shown archive material and extraordinary encounters with companions and contemporary witnesses such as Francis Ford Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Andie MacDowell, Hanns Zischler, Patti Smith, and Werner Herzog, this documentary provides unique insights into the life and work of one of the most multifaceted artists of our times. Renowned documentary filmmaker Eric Friedler ("It Must Schwing. The Blue Note Story") and his co-director Andreas Frege were given the exclusive opportunity to portray Wenders for this film. From Düsseldorf to Paris, and all the way to the desert of Texas, the film traces iconic locations and decisive moments in Wenders' work as director, producer, photographer, and author.

“Acht Geschwister” by Christoph Weinert is a tribute to sibling life, a piece of non-fictional narrative cinema. The film tells the story of two sisters and six brothers who were born between 1933 and 1943 and grew up on a farm in a small village in Pomerania. With their intertwined, very different lives, the film tells not only the story of the eight siblings and their common escape with their parents after the end of World War 2, but also a piece of recent German history, when the siblings are separated by the inner-German border for over 40 years during the Cold War. Nevertheless, the contact between them never breaks.

In times of rampant populism and increasing distrust of the elite, the filmmaker accompanies the 81-year-old founder of the controversial World Economic Forum over the period of one year in his efforts to implement his leitmotif: to improve the state of the world. Can the WEF contribute to solving global problems? Or is it rather an integral part of the problem?

West Germany in the 1970s. Many artists, journalists and intellectuals were branded as sympathizers of Baader-Meinhof's left-wing terrorism. The parents of the director, too: Margarethe von Trotta and his stepfather, Volker Schlöndorff. With extensive archive materials and film clips as well as Margarethe von Trotta's private diaries the film portrays one German family and the society of the time.

On 9 July 2021, the 422 workers at the GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio near Florence received their dismissal, by email. They immediately met in front of the factory, scared away the management's bodyguards and have been holding an open-ended meeting at the factory ever since. In June of 2022, they talk about how they are rooted in the territory, why 30,000 people demonstrated with them. They explain why they put their struggle under the slogan "Insorgiamo!" ("Let's rise up!"), the slogan of the italian partisans who liberated Florence in 1944. But they also talk about their collaboration with climate activists and what they would like to produce. But as things stand today, it is not the workers who are responsible for the ecological damage caused by production: "Nobody asked me what I would like to produce when they hired me. They hired me and that was it."

Nazi propaganda short about paratroopers

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

Documentary filmmaker Troller criss-crosses post-reunified “Transgermania” for a year, probing German identity through festivals (Carnival, Oktoberfest), films, small towns and big cities. He attends a Black–Bavarian wedding at an “animal fair,” chats with chimney sweeps, students, artists and elites (from Grass to Müller), and asks uneasy questions about unity, memory and the future - all from his outsider’s lens.

She is one of the most mysterious icons of the pop world; fame at any price was always her credo: Amanda Lear. She became Salvador Dalí's muse at an early age and had relationships with musicians such as Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and Brian Jones. She developed as a model, painter, writer, singer and androgynous disco queen. "Queen Lear" tells the story of her many lives.

Peter Lorre achieved international fame for his performance in the myth-making role in M. This character has held a peculiar fascination for generations of cinephiles. However, at the time, whilst such success meant recognition, it also weighed on the Hungarian actor as a constrictive burden. Using photographs and film extracts, Das doppelte Gesicht reconstructs the ups and downs of Lorre's career, taking into consideration the economic imperatives and workings of the film industry at the time. (Arnold Hohmann, 1984)

Udo Kier dies his way through film history. He screams, falls, lies, is cut into pieces, shot or commits suicide. Again and again his empty gaze, again and again his rigid body. In 54 years as an actor, Udo Kier played in more than 170 feature films, 120 series episodes and 50 short films. More than 70 times Udo Kier tried to give an expression to dying and death. In Staging Death, these representations of death merge into a montage of the most diverse shots, film formats, special effects and sound designs. "Directors are now thinking increasingly strained about what new ways they can kill me. […] At some point, somebody would have to make a montage of all my film deaths." Udo Kier (Interview Subway Magazine #145, December 1999)

Documentary about the audition process at an acting school in Hannover, Germany.

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

The sunday ritual at home with parents, an alumni meeting of former school colleagues who once again, and some of them as young mothers and fathers, are confronted with the world of (their) children. Shots of mentally and physically disabled people who are brought to work in a bus early in the morning: people who have remained children. Many other images about childhood and being a child.

Chaja Florentin and Mimi Frons have been best friends for 83 years. Born and raised in Berlin, they had to escape from the Nazis to Palestine with their families in 1934. They talk about their complicated relationship with Berlin in a Tel Aviv café where they meet everyday. A film about friendship, homeland and identity.

A Nazi propaganda film about the lead up to World War II and Germany's success on the Western Front. Utilizes newsreel footage of battles and fell into disfavour with propaganda minister Goebbels because of it's lack of emphasis on Adolf Hitler.

In fall 2007 the Women's Film Festival Seoul issued a call that did not promise, like the pirate queen Madame X, "gold, love, and adventure," but something as tempting as the opportunity to film a 15-minute short in Korea, which, assembled as one of six parts of an omnibus production, would open the 10th festival in 2008. I signaled my acceptance and voilà: SEOUL WOMEN HAPPINESS.

Most drugs exert their effects by changing the balance between excitatory and inhibitory signals at certain synapses. This is shown specifically using the examples of amphetamine, cocaine, LSD and heroin, while alcohol and sleeping pills serve as examples of a different mechanism of action.

Documentary about Hollywood.

Germans colonized the land of Namibia, in southern Africa, during a brief period of time, from 1840 to the end of the World War I. The story of the so-called German South West Africa (1884-1915) is hideous; a hidden and silenced account of looting and genocide.

A cineastic journey into the world of Naum Kleiman, one of the most important intellectuals in Russia today. Naum Kleiman, an internationally acclaimed Eisenstein specialist, is the director of the „Musey Kino“, Moscow’s museum of cinema. Since 1989, the „Musey Kino“, has shown previously banned classics of world cinema and Soviet films. Many saw the „Musey Kino“, as Moscow ́s most important intellectual forum. In 2005, the Moscow municipality sold the „Musey Kino’s“ building and it became homeless. In October 2014, the Russian Minister of Culture fired Naum Kleiman as director. In protest, his entire team handed in their resignations. Scenes from iconic movies and interviews with Muscovites of different ages and social backgrounds form a documentary film collage which mirrors Russian reality today.

A superb, moving and thrilling interview with American actor Sterling Hayden (1916-86), held in Besançon, France, on board a dilapidated barge, when he was 65 years old. An unparalleled portrait, in his own words and without any qualms, of a legendary Hollywood star, icon of film noir and the western, who was also a marine, an OSS agent, an anti-communist informer, a writer and a wandering sailor: the hero of his own life.

Educational short film about praying

In her documentary, director Sabine Michel revisits her own experiences during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Germany's subsequent reunification, as well as those of her four friends Claudi, Vera, Claudia and Veruscha. The five women were about 18 years old at that time, and belonged to the last school class in Dresden to graduate in the German Democratic Republic. The country and society school had prepared them for suddenly ceased to exist, thus they had to completely start anew. More than twenty years later, the five women travel to Paris together. During the train ride, they talk about their former dreams and aspirations, and how different their lives turned out to be.

Selected industrial and city settings from the three films were documented again for Usinimage and intercut with the corresponding fiction film scenes, in order to give the landscapes a new accent through artistic defamiliarization and condensation. It is an exploration of city architecture, in which the shooting location serves not just as reflective or constrastive backdrop but rather becomes itself content.

A miracle happened 50 years ago: The fairy tale "Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella" becomes the ultimate Christmas movie and turns the actors into stars overnight. Libuše Šafránková and Pavel Trávníček, fresh from drama school, took the hearts of millions of viewers by storm. The documentary answers recurring questions from fans: Why was it filmed in the freezing cold winter and not in summer, for which the costumes were tailored? How did a Czech film idea become a cooperation with DEFA? Pavel Trávníček recalls the filming 50 years ago and takes the audience to the original location of the happy ending scene. An immortal Cinderella myth is explored, told and celebrated.

"Expropriated Springer!" is the motto of the extra-parliamentary movement after the murder of Benno Ohnesorg in 1967. In many cities, demonstrators are trying to prevent the delivery of the Bild newspaper. The film documents the siege of the Springer House in Hamburg in 1968. The police reacted to the protests with unprecedented brutality, leading to a further radicalization of the movement. Like the birth of the Baader-Meinhof group.

Inspired by characters from 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'Waiting for Godot' and 'Antigone,' young Palestinian actresses deal with the military occupation and gender oppression, violence and grief, on stage and in life. Following the lead of their beloved director and peace activist, Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was murdered on April 4th, 2011 outside the Freedom Theater in the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank, they use their imagination in an unpredictably brutal environment creating an artistic rebellion; a vivid and brave portrayal of a young, active generation of Palestinians.

Hammer and compass in Mozambique. We see a GDR flag waved at a rally in Maputo, carried by "Madgermanes", contract workers who once toiled in eastern Germany. Some of them founded families there, like Eulidio. His daughter Sarah grows up with her mother in Berlin. The relationship with her "second home" is slow in growing, partly thanks to Luana, Sarah's baby, whose father, Eduardo is also from Mozambique.

The wild West Berlin of the 1980s became the creative melting pot of pop subcultures: music, art and chaos. Before the Iron Curtain fell, anything and everything seemed possible.

The film traces the history of the camera obscura, the understanding of perspective and anamorphosis, peepshows and it shows the beauty of historical shadowtheaters and shadow toys.

The Everglades of Florida abduct us into an alien world. The phenomenon of an endless, flat, water surface produces a rich and beautiful flora and fauna. The abundance of fish provides food for countless species of birds and the boss of all swamps: alligators - gigantic, primeval reptiles as neighbours of the people that live here. However, the main goal of this journey is to find the Florida manatees. They are regarded as the most serene and gentle animals in the world. Year for year, they migrate up the rivers from the Gulf of Mexico. It is only here, at the pleasantly warm springs, where one can experience this comparatively unknown and extremely threatened species first hand. They move their stately bodies astonishingly graceful, as if they were dancers in an underwater ballet. Magical light effects of the sun enable a backdrop of turquoise coloured water and roots to shine brilliantly. All in magical 3D.

This short piece for the television station Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) is highly relevant to Farocki's later work. Zwei Wege is a cheeky description of a picture; Farocki shows us an image, a religious allegory showing the 'right' and the 'wrong' path for a Christian. The one path leads to heaven, the other to hell. Farocki uses the camera in effect to dissect the picture; he shows close-ups of the paintings various motifs, which he underscores with rhymes. This method of breaking down an image with the camera reminds us of similar sequences in his essay films, namely Wie man sieht and Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges.

A cinematic time capsule with over 1,400 hours of submitted material from all regions of Switzerland gives unknown insights about the life of Swiss people in the politically and socially turbulent summer of 2019.

In 1981, Wau Holland and other hackers established the Hamburg based Chaos Computer Club (CCC). The idiosyncratic freethinkers were inspired by Californian technology visionaries and committed themselves to hacker ethics. All information must be free. Use public data, protect private data. But not everyone followed the rules. Computer technology was still in its infancy and the emerging Internet became a projection screen for social utopias. What has become of them? The story of the German hackers, told by the protagonists themselves in a montage of found video and audio material.

Sistine Chapel is an audio-visual collage of new footage and samples from Paik’s past videos, which featured many of his friends, collaborators, and public figures. It was Paik’s own way of summarizing his artistic career with video. The film installation consists of fast-paced and overlapping images that completely cover the gallery walls and ceiling—one of the most under-appreciated parts of architecture, according to Paik. With its electronic visuals and booming audio, interspersed with periods of silence, the immersive installation stands in stark contrast to the experience of its namesake.

Documentary Today German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) is famous worldwide. But during her lifetime, her unconventional painting irked her contemporaries as she radically broke taboos, anticipating both Expressionism and Modernism. This documentary portrays an artist who unwaveringly pursued her vision for art, ahead of her time and without compromises.

Follows Joana Mallwitz during two pivotal years – when she gives birth to her son and her career accelerates significantly. But whether she’s at home, at rehearsals, or in the spotlight, the German conductor strives to prove that perfection at work is just as important as finding the right rhythm in life.

The first summarizing film about the path of the class and the common stations in life. But also about the different paths in the profession, in love, marriage and family. As well as a soldier. A group chronicle, viewed from the historical distance of the 35th year of the end of the 2nd World War and after 18 years of shooting in peace, which ensured everyone the first human right: they were allowed to live.

Not a documentary in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it is a journey through the world of the artist Jonas Mekas - one of the exponents of independent U.S. movies; founder and director of the New York Anthology Film Archive.

All Creatures Welcome explores the world of hackers and nerds at the events of the Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest hacker association. The film dispels common clichés and draws a utopian picture of a possible society in the digital age.

Acquired in July 1909 by art collector Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929), director general of the Prussian Art Collections and founding director of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, now the Bode-Museum, the Bust of Flora, Roman goddess of flowers, has been the subject of controversy for more than a century.

The Entlebuch is a rural pre-alpine area of Central Switzerland, known for its backwardness and isolation. This film deals with the contemporary life of the inhabitants of the region, between tradition and modernity. The protagonists' accounts of their own lives show the wide range of attitudes and offer insight into the valley's regional identity.

Credit Suisse no longer exists despite being “too big to fail” and despite a reputation built up over a century. How did this happen?

The history of the GDR Super-8 scene—an underground art movement that produced films outside official channels in the 1980s—produced by Cornelia Klauss, herself a Super-8 artist. The Stasi (secret police) monitored this rebellious scene closely. Female artists Ramona Köppel-Welsch, Cornelia Schleime and Christine Schlegel, among others, talk about their art and films, their experiences as artists in the GDR, and how their work changed after the Wall came down.

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

Television entertainment in the southwest from 1954 to the present day: Frank Elstner recalls the best moments, the great shows and the famous stars of television entertainment from the beginnings in the 1950s of SDR, SWF and SR to today's SWR television program. The retrospective with many excerpts shows the great show hosts, such as Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, Michael Schanze and Paola and Kurt Felix. Memories of the legendary music galas such as "Bonsoir, Kathrin" with Caterina Valente, "Baden-Badener Roulette" from the Kurhaus with the world stars of the time or the various hit shows. In addition, interviews with contemporary witnesses who worked in front of or behind the scenes offer insights into one or two exciting moments in television history.

Vitaly Mansky’s intimate and insightful new documentary finds him crisscrossing Ukraine in the wake of the Maidan uprising, which has left his relatives scattered on both sides of a highly charged and dizzyingly complex political situation.

A report style film that focuses on salacious episodes of housewives engaging in infidelity.

Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?

In April of 2013, American singer Patti Smith travels to the grave of French writer Jean Genet in Larache, Morocco. She brings him three stones, which she collected for him over 30 years ago.