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Jag Mandir is a quiet and often overlooked film in the vast oeuvre of Werner Herzog. Apparently, 20 hours of footage was shot that covered the whole fest and the film hardly presents us a twentieth of that. A native walking into the film in between may well fail to immediately realize that it is his country that is being shown and these are figures from the mythology of various sections of his nation. The bulk of the film consists of footage of an elaborate theatrical performance for the Maharana Arvind Singh Mewar at the City Palace of Udaipur, Rajasthan staged by André Heller.

Documentary reports on the annual icing of the Oder in the 160-kilometer border area between the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland. Icebreakers from both countries with experienced skippers join forces to make the international waterway between Frankfurt and Szczecin navigable again. Everyone works hard as a team and even a broken-down ship cannot stop them from achieving their goal. A look back at the winter of 1947 with its flooding shows what the freezing of the river and the subsequent thaw can do if the ice floes are not drained into the Baltic Sea via Lake Dammsch in good time. The skippers from both countries have known each other for years and trust each other; the camaraderie that has developed on the Oder unites the people, they control the river in winter for the common benefit of all.

A woman from a big city moves to a small village near the former border zone between East and West Germany. What is she looking for? What will she encounter? Rural life in the era of globa­li­sa­tion turns into an adven­ture. History lives in objects, stories and customs here since it was first recorded 800 years ago. Wars and famines have left their traces, just as churches, poli­tical parties and various forms of govern­ment. The change of the times, struc­tured by tele­vi­sion, has almost obscu­rely changed the old rhythms of life; super­market offers changed eating habits and food stock economy. Is it folk­lore nost­algia or a matter of preser­ving one’s way and quality of life to keep the old customs and habits, such as preser­ving old types of plants and boiling down cucum­bers? The village - a mutual exch­ange of expe­ri­ences and garden products. The village is like an onion: it shows ever new surpri­sing layers and leads us deep into unwritten pasts.

This documentary movie shows riscs and dangers of gene manipulation on plants. It uses the example of so-called BT-Cotton in India.

What Really Matters – Our Season. Our Story After three years in the 3. Liga, the Sportgemeinschaft Dynamo Dresden has achieved promotion again. Highlights from the 2024/25 season, exclusive behind-the-scenes looks, and previously unpublished interview material bring the Black and Yellow emotions of this passionate season to the big screen.

Featurette starring actor Rolf Eden.

2-channel film installation 'Die Last meines Namens', wherein Heydt deals with an unpleasant part of his own family history. Heydt’s great-grandfather was a member of the NSDAP and mayor of the small town of Haselünne in Emsland for almost 10 years during the Third Reich. Based on interviews with his grandfather and research in various archives, Heydt develops a personal perspective on the subject. The film deals with how we construct identity from oral retellings, how we process family histories, and how we can find current and personal points of access to German remembrance culture. At the heart of the work are two conversations with his grandfather Heinrich Heydt, recorded at different points in the research process. In them, the grandfather describes his memories of his father, the time, and the two reflect on the subject and the results of the research.

Young people are discovering pornography at an increasingly early age. How does this early exposure affect them? Filmed in Europe and the United States, this is a comprehensive and nuanced scientific overview of a massive phenomenon.

A documentary about a proposed military training area in Rothenthurm, Central Switzerland, and the village's resistance to those plans.

The children of Golzow, six or seven years old, in kindergarten. Their enrollment in school together, the first days of school. Playfully learning the first letter. Conflicts between wanting and having to.

In Brussels, Belgium, the Royal Museum of Central Africa is undertaking a radical renovation, both physical and ethical, to show with sincerity, crudeness and open-mindedness the reality of the atrocities perpetrated against the inhabitants of the Belgian colonies in Africa, still haunted and traumatized by the ghost of King Leopold II of Belgium, a racist and genocidal tyrant.

Who was Helene Weigel? Using impressive archive material, the film follows the convinced communist, acting icon, and free spirit from her early days in theater to her escape from the Nazi regime to the founding and management of the Berliner Ensemble. The result is a powerful portrait that finally puts the “woman at Brecht's side” in the spotlight.

Featurette about and with italian actress Nicoletta Elmi, known for her works in italian genre cinema during the early 70s to the mid 80s.

An account of the short life and the astonishing and provocative work of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918), seen through the peculiar point of view and the critic voices of the women who defined the paramount milestones of his existence: Gerti, his sister; Wally, his main model and lover; and Edith, his wife. A brief story of love, hate, betrayal and misfortune.

Helga is a documentary film that deals with the physical aspects of human anatomy and reproduction. From the earliest stages of pregnancy, to birth, the camera follows Helga through all, until she has her baby. This semi-documentary-styled film relies heavily on medical and educational information. The actual birth is filmed in remarkable close-up sequences.

Articles of former East Germany from household items to flags are thrown away at a garbage dump outside of East Berlin, serving as a reminder of a state that no longer exists. In this gesture of breaking ties with the past, the film captures the dumping ground as the last burial site of a society and the absurdity of time and existence.

Works, legend and murders of Carlo Gesualdo, a notorious Italian composer and murderer from 16th century.

Around the year 2000, I was looking for a house in the countryside around Berlin. After two years, I found a former farmhouse and started renovating it. In the centers of the surrounding villages, enamel signs from socialist times were attached to walls and pedestals: “Death March April 1945” - with a red concentration camp triangle, a simple map with the route and a slightly abstract row of shaven-headed prisoners. Sometimes flowers were planted in front of them.

The global plastic crisis is dismantled and reassembled in a well-researched, cinematic film that not only points to the problems, but also to possible solutions. Probably the most important climate film of the year, with an attentive eye on greenwashing and climate racism.

Twenty-five years after the death of Holger Meins, filmmaker and former student friend of the deceased, Gerd Conradt takes an in-depth look at the helmsman of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Who was Holger Meins? What led him into the underground? What circumstances resulted in his death, a death which made him the declared symbol of the radical opposition in Germany? What remains of his legacy?

Elfi Mikesch accompanies Werner Schroeter in staging a tribute to Lautréamont in Berlin.

What venture capital or VC for short actually means is explained in the film itself. Banks only lend money against collateral. Those who have none have to turn to VC companies and pay interest of 40%.

Composed in 1824, Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" will celebrate its bicentennial in 2024. With its famous finale based on Schiller's poem "An die Freude" (Ode to Joy), this colossal work is now one of the symbols of European unity. How was this symphony created? And how has it survived two centuries of history?

A glittery nightclub in 1920s Berlin becomes a haven for the queer community in this documentary exploring the freedoms lost amid Hitler’s rise to power.

1981: for the first time, contemporary witnesses of the Holocaust speak on German television in the two-part documentary "Witnesses - Testimonies to the Murder of a People" - at prime time on the first channel. Only 36 years after the Second World War, Bremen filmmaker Karl Fruchtmann has created a counter-design to the US drama series "Holocaust". While there are hardly any people left today who can personally recount their experiences of the Holocaust, there were still many contemporary witnesses in the early 1980s for whom the murder of the European Jews was still very present. Karl Fruchtmann interviewed 60 survivors of the Nazi concentration camps in Israel and Poland, the tapes are in the archives of Radio Bremen, almost 80 hours of interviews, a historical legacy! Only a small part of them has been published so far.

A detailed, historical documentary about the construction and capabilities of the United States military's B-52 bomber.

In her feature-length debut director Paula Ďurinová sets out to wander among varied rock formations in order to try and come to terms with the loss of her grandparents.

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

At Hotel Astoria, the former hotspot of Leipzig, guests were served champagne and turtle soup while the Stasi listened in. Animated memories from times gone by.

An experimental short about the nature of humans and how we experience ourselves as part or seperate from it.

The annual production conference, speeches by functionaries and silence of the workers while they are waiting to descent into the pit. Talking of the unimportant, what really should be said remains unspoken of. A suffocating closeness to reality conserved a part of history that remains ageless though impressive images.

Football Inside dives deep into football culture – and makes the locker room its stage. As soon as they put on their jerseys, pros, women, and juniors all take on different roles, with one thing in common: Their love for the game.

After 20 years of separation, brothers Adrian and Valentin spend a week together. 32-year old Adrian lives with their parents and benefits from a disability pension. Valentin, barely older, seems to have found his autonomy. Brothers - A Family Film is a dizzying dive into a relationship as impossible as it is established, where violence and tenderness are one and the same.

In his second feature film, Leandro Listorti establishes a parallel between two worlds he seems to know well: that of plants and that of cinema. This delicate cinematographic work, full of beautiful images—both archival and current—gives an account of the immense work of classification and preservation, and generously invites us to think about forms of representation and memory.

It follows Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta as he celebrates the end of the autocrats. Cheerful farewell rituals accompany others facing political persecution on their way to fly home.

Born into a Bavarian bourgeois family, Heinrich Himmler became the driving force behind the indescribable crimes that made the Nazi regime so unique in modern history.

This documentary tells the story of great love, bitter disappointments and self-doubts - but most of all of courage. The courage to take risks, try something new and be yourself - no matter what age. The film dives deeply into the exceptional and heart-warming stories of a group of transsexuals and drag queens in their sixties and seventies, who summon up their bravery to take to the stage one last time. For two years they have been touring in five continents, basking in the success of a spectacular show called "Gardenia", directed by Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke. Now, as the show comes to a close, the glamorous aging performers must leave the limelight and go home to the quiet lives they left behind.

Sabine Lidl presents Siri Hustvedt’s journey from her first novel to being a leading voice in contemporary literature – a film about feminist perspectives, Hustvedt’s soulmate Paul Auster, and the power of thought.

Handel (1685-1759) is the first "pop titan" in history. His hits such as the "Hallelujah", the "Sarabande" or the coronation chorus "Zadok the priest", which was reworked as the Champions League anthem, are well-known catchy tunes. He was also successful as an entrepreneur.

Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. A group of friends get together to make a film about their experiences growing up in suburban Switzerland.

A curator and a visitor walk through an imaginary museum of recent German history. The focal plane follows the scenario of a tour in that the (subjective) camera simulates a stroll through a museum: in an open field, however.

Documentary about German soccer manager Rudi Assauer, who'd shaped an era at Schalke 04 Football Club by achieving athletic success as well as saving the license to compete in the Bundesliga in economically difficult times.

At the bottom of the world is a place of wild isolation. Antarctica. Its vastness and extremes defy description. From volcanoes to glaciers... and peaks that scrape the sky, its geography is like nothing else in the world. Its wildlife embraces harsh, alien landscapes. And the people that make their home there for part of the year survive amidst unbelievable conditions, thanks to some of the most creative problem-solving on the planet. Filmed principally in the Sub-Antarctic and Ross Sea region as a series of vignettes - each based around one astonishing location after another - viewers will explore one of the most remote, and least-visited parts of the continent; less than 500 tourists make the journey to this region each year. Few places on earth capture the imagination like the great white continent. Now see it as it’s never been viewed before.

Documentary about the making of Ferdinando Baldi's rape-and-revenge thriller "Terror Express".

The German documentary is dedicated to an influential figure of the 20th century: Petra Kelly spent her life campaigning for feminism, environmental activism, human rights and peace. She was a political co-founder of the Green Party in the 1970s and 80s and protested against nuclear missiles in West Germany at the height of the Cold War. Above all, however, she believed that one person could very well change the world and thus rose to become an icon of the peace movement.

It is the world's most mysterious manuscript. A book, written by an unknown author, illustrated with pictures that are as bizarre as they are puzzling - and written in a language that even the best cryptographers have been unable to decode.

Ghost hunters are on the trail of a supernatural phenomenon and legendary figures in Scotland. The forest of Duffus Castle - long one of Scotland's most powerful fortresses - is as much the scene of eerie encounters as Kilneuair Cemetery or Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull. Let the blue mist of eerie Scottish nights waft into your living room and experience the fascinating 3-D effects up close!

Short film about the profession geologist