Discover Movies

On the last day of Ramadan, we accompany six individuals of Eastern origins living in German towns and villages as they face the challenges of fasting in a non-Islamic environment and interact with a society different from their own. Clinging deeply to their identity and the spirituality of the holy month.

Short film about dodecaphony aka. twelve-tone music

A documentary in which Valentin Thurn follows five people on their path to self-realization. Among them is a lesbian couple who emigrate to Portugal with their seven children so that they can all develop freely and without compulsory education.

Documentary about a Roma settlement on the edge of a landfill site in Romania.

A “filmic re-reading” of Max Frisch's novella Montauk (1974) and of excerpts from his published diaries. It is neither a biographical portrait of Frisch – who was one of the greatest 20th century Swiss writers – nor a filmed adaptation of the novel. Instead, Dindo returns to the locations the author describes in his texts, searching for traces of past events that may turn out to have been more imagined than real.

Footage of the model aircraft competition in Frankfurt am Main, probably the event organized by the Frankfurt Model Aircraft Association (at that time the presiding association of the German Model Aircraft Association) from May 17 to 21, 1914. The competition took place at the end of a model aircraft exhibition lasting several days at the Rebstock airfield. Various homemade model aircraft can be seen being examined and flown by male participants of different ages.

Four kayakers (ab)use rafting as a means to catch fish on Slovenia’s chalk stream called Krka. Casting flies amongst castles and cattails, this became the arena for a gruelling competition that applied pressure of all kinds.

Views and pronouncements from inside Germany, filtered and condensed from TV and home video from 1992 to 1994. At times dreamy and sunny: black brown is the hazelnut and so is our rough-haired dachshund. Or bloodcurdling: the somnambulistic speeches of the former Minister of the Interior of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the hair-raising excuses of his police director, the shrill remarks of the residents. Little by little, they draw ever tighter circles around the common (security) topic: shit. Where was Hitler born, where did he become German and who did he marry? Which laxative is actually rifle-cleaning oil? What really happened on August 24, 1992 in Rostock-Lichtenhagen? The Color Brown premiered under the title Pfui–Fornication and Order in Germany (Pfui–Fornication and Order in Germany) at the 25th International Forum of Young Cinema in 1995.

Fifty years after Tanzania gained independence from Great Britain, the East African country is still searching for a common identity.

Set in Munich's petty-bourgeois Westend, film documents life at home with former Fassbinder actor, Warhol collaborator, and horror movie director Ulli Lommel. Rather than a straight documentary portrait of this bohemian household, the camera prefers to follow the narrative impulses of the family members. Lost in serious play, the kids improvise hypnotic death scenes while their mother claims to come from a planet where everything is "ethereal and incorporeal." As parent-child relations are unscripted and re-scripted on the fly, the dilated time of a collective daydream is punctuated by the ordinary sounds of an electric toothbrush, vacuum cleaner, and piano.

Modern agriculture would be inconceivable without them: Huge harvesting machines such as beet and potato harvesters, tractors weighing tons and high-horsepower foragers. Agricultural technology made in Germany is at the forefront of the world market. How do the powerful harvest giants work? Where are they made? In our documentation we take a look around the agricultural technology fair Agritechnica in Hanover, we are present at a harvesting mission in Western Pomerania and show the effort with which the XXL machines are transported.

Documentary about Jewish entrepreneur and art collector Max Emden and his grandson's fight for restitution and compensation for losses suffered during the Nazi era.

The Kurdish director Yüksel Yavuz tells in an autobiographical documentary about the life of his father, who worked as a so-called guest worker at a Hamburg shipyard from 1968 to 1984. Never really at home, he only knew the way to work, the fish market and the coffee house. Yavuz succeeds in creating a touching contemporary document in which he traces the personal life story of his father and connects it with a piece of the social history of the FRG.

They live on the edge of the known world - far from civilization but affected by its consequences nonetheless. The photographer Markus Mauthe visited these last indigenous peoples to capture the inherent beauty of their cultures, before they too fall victim to ever-advancing globalisation. The journey leads from South Sudan and Ethiopia to Malay sea nomads and Brazilian Indians in Mato Grosso, who have started to defend themselves against the destruction of their natural habitat. The result is a film that captures intimate and unadulterated encounters with sumptuous photography – while also serving as an appeal for the preservation of indigenous cultures, which will surely perish unless we rethink and act accordingly.

Super 8 (Color) film by Helga Fanderl

Elke Marhöfer's observational essay takes its title from a Korean Pansori song. One of three musical interludes performed in the film, this song tells the story of a turtle locked in a futile circle of evasion with a hungry tiger. Marhöfer's film is concerned with the formal attributes of Pansori music – its traditions of storytelling and the transmittance of an alternative knowledge. The film journeys through natural landscapes, small town streets, forested mountains and busy shipping channels as it looks at the divide between the traditional and the modern. Shot in 16mm, this measured and lyrical film is an exploration into the boundaries between humans, animals and things.

An insight into the watchmaking craft.

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was a highly significant German king and Holy Roman emperor. Raised in Sicily, he was a sponsor of science, a reformer, perhaps even the first modern ruler. But Frederick could also be a brutal tyrant. He had his son Heinrich rot in the dungeon, for his imperial honour went before everything else.

A journey by camera through Berlin.

The Bavarian district town of Dachau gained worldwide fame as the first Nazi concentration camp and has long since become a tourist attraction. In his directorial debut, cameraman Bernd Fischer, who was born and grew up in Dachau, documents the not-so-ordinary everyday life in his home town, life with the burden of the past and the various mechanisms of repression used by the locals. The result is a documentary tragicomedy about a place and a subject that none of those affected can escape.

A documentary about young people just starting their higher education and their professional life.

Documentary about the process of building tanks in Germany during the early days of World War II.

Rain on a window pane, a fire truck, a tomcat with innumerable offspring: it is an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters, for stories and memories - leads that Ruth Beckermann follows across Europe and the Mediterranean. Nigerian asylum seekers in Sicily, an Arab musician in Galilee, nationalists drunk on beer in Vienna, the Capitoline Wolf, and three veiled young women trying for minutes to cross a busy road in Alexandria. Threads, cloth and textiles pop up like book marks in a fabric of movement, of traveling or seeking refuge.

The Yoruba people in particular have always had a strong connection to spirituality. The fact that a mysterious white woman shared their belief in the animistic nature of the world restored the Yoruba people's cultural self-esteem.

Documentation about the successful football season 2023/2024 of VfB Stuttgart.

In her film “A day and An Eternity”, Anna Hepp takes a look back over the last days of her grandmother’s 94-year life. The old woman lived alone, and Hepp accompanied her everyday life in the cramped confines of her apartment. In this place, the same gestures and the same routine, which had established themselves over the years, took place every day. Anna Hepp’s black-and-white pictures document the traces of age without impinging upon the old woman’s dignity and independence. The traces are engraved in the sagging skin, the shakiness in her hands and the tiredness in her eyes. The camera concentrates on Dorothea’s body whose movements determine the rhythm of the pictures. In long shots, Hepp makes space so that the apparent triviality of the moment can develop into an entire life story.

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 the cult figure of German science fiction literature, Perry Rhodan, as well as its creators and lovers.

A documentary film about a "village of huts" that was erected in a section of forest near Frankfurt am Main in 1980 to demonstrate against the planned construction of Runway West. It was built by a large number of Frankfurt citizens together with various citizens' movements.

In lots of myth, a hero must undergo a "Nachtmeerfahrt" in which he encounter mysterious creatures and dangerous events. The psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), himself made such an expedition to survey the world of symbols and archetypes, asking about their relevance for our lives. How do "Nachtmeerfahrten" appear today? Are they dangerous in some ways and which potential do they have? What are our spirits ("anima") and shadows telling us thereby? Does the imagines of our subconsciousness contain spiritual messages? This is a filmic journey to the biography of C. G. Jung and to the mighty world of myths, dreams and symbols.

The Main River flows through a charming region featuring vineyards, old towns, and historical sites, with scenes of happiness, good wine, and picturesque landscapes, culminating in the city of Würzburg, known as the pearl of the Main, with its iconic Marienburg Fortress and vibrant cultural life.

Argentina, 1977: The country is oppressed by a military dictatorship. Thousands of critics of the regime are abducted, tortured and killed. Elisabeth K., a German student living in Buenos Aires, also disappears under mysterious circumstances. Her parents turn to the German Foreign Office, but the West German government refrains from any intervention one year before the World Cup. Why does the German government continue to deny any responsibility to this day? And: How apolitical can sport be?

Three demonstrations that overlapped and escalated shortly before Christmas 2013. The conflict over the Rote Flora, the right of residence for Lampedusa refugees, and the rescue of the Esso houses. In "Gefahrengebiete und andere Hamburgensien" (Danger Zones and Other Hamburg Trivia), director Rasmus Gerlach documented three sources of conflict in the city at that time: a pillow fight on Spielbudenplatz and the toilet brush as a symbol of resistance. The protests by Hamburg's citizens were creative and colorful when the police declared the districts of St. Pauli, Sternschanze, and large areas of Altona to be "danger zones." The highly controversial measure lasted only nine days before it was criticized and is now back in the spotlight—because although it has been declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, the Hamburg police are sticking to the danger zones in St. Georg and St. Pauli.

In the 19th century, Baden-Baden was the summer capital of Europe. The city is particularly attractive to Russians. With Dostoyevsky and Turgenev come two authors who share a deep dislike for each other: Turgenev loves the West; Dostoyevsky hates him. He is passionate about playing roulette, a game that is banned in his homeland...

Observations through a slowly gliding camera on the canals of Thailand reveal the living quarters and open lifestyles of people living right on the waterfront. A uniquely filmic spatial illusion is created, accented by an outstanding soundscape.

The documentary BREVET follows three participants of 2015's randonneuring (long distance cycling) event (brevet) Paris-Brest-Paris on their 1230 km long ride.

A performance of Hermann Nitsch's "7th Abreaction Action", which was initially banned by police, is put on the following morning instead. The action consists of gutting a lamb, pouring the innards over a recumbent woman, mating with a dildo, crucifixion and a concluding scuffle. The action is accompanied by electric organ, percussion and recorded music.