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Peter Baumgartner talks about his life and work as a DoP for Erwin C. Dietrich and Jess Franco.

In a remote village, whose name roughly means “a cold place”, this film looks for warmth in encounters. The Ukrainian village of Stuzhytsya is situated in the Carpathian Mountains in the border triangle between Poland and Slovakia. The three elderly female protagonists – a farmer, a post office clerk and a biologist – are firmly rooted in a place where hardly any young people are left in 2019, the year of Zelensky’s election victory. Over time, the film crew also becomes, at least temporarily, a valued part of the village community.

Documentary about the "chief Indian" of DEFA, the actor Gojko Mitić. The popular actor talks about his life. The camera accompanies him as he goes shopping in Berlin: we get to know a young, dynamic and extremely likeable man. The viewer learns interesting facts about his work at DEFA and Gojko's attitude towards the Indians he portrays in the film. In Romania, the main filming location for "Ulzana", test shots were made which show that Gojko does not allow himself to be doubled and how hard he has to train for it. The film ends with the summer film festival in Schkölen, the subsequent sporting activities and conversations with young pioneers. Afterwards, Gojko barbecues for the children before picking up his guitar to sing with the Young Pioneers around the campfire.

The story of the most popular piece of furniture of all times: the monobloc chair, sold over a billion times across the globe.

The documentary sketches the essence and impact, history and present of the Berlin drama school "Ernst Busch". It takes the move of the school in 2018 as an opportunity to capture the contradictions between artistic and economic interests in post-reunification Berlin and in the present. After the end of the GDR, the school was threatened with extinction: the building was dilapidated, Berlin was broke, the search for a new location threatened to fail. The students themselves finally fought their way to the new location under the motto "Bitte nach Mitte!" ("Let’s move to the center").

In Iceland, volcanoes line up like pearls on a string. In the mountains and valleys the ground boils. It smokes, hisses and bubbles. Although rising from the sea as a bare lava island, life thrives on Iceland's volcanic slopes. Whether in icy heights or abysmal crevasses that tell of the fact that the earth is tearing apart here, between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates - Iceland is a natural paradise. Magical Iceland: Living on the World's Largest Volcanic Island is a testament to the island's unexpected biodiversity and spectacular landscapes, both above and below the water.

A documentary about the Hunsrück (an area in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany) and its people.

In Race Symphony (1928), Richter documents and celebrates a typical day at the German races, where a sophisticated people turn up in droves to gape, gasp, place a bet, and celebrate a well-deserved win.

The images of the condemnation and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day in 1989 are etched deeply in the collective unconscious of several generations of television viewers. Exactly 20 years after its occurrence, the famous show trial was re-enacted in a historically reproduced setting. The film interweaves the stage production with interviews conducted with eyewitnesses and archive material, and takes a look backstage in the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest.

From Stag Beetle to Swastika narrates in a richly detailed, associative montage the boundless possibilities of manipulating images and using images to seduce.

One ball. One world. One bus. A small group of activists sets off in a minibus across 18 countries in Europe and the Middle East towards the World Cup.

A German Film Award winning docu-drama about a woman who works in a school for deaf children.

The film focuses on the exciting life journey of Swiss writer Katharina Zimmermann. She follows her husband on a mission to the jungle in Indonesia where she raises their four children and five foster children and lives through the military coup. Back in Switzerland Katharina discovers her voice and finds her path. Now, at eighty, she is writing her life story. Yet suddenly she faces another battle because her publisher is threatening to let her go.

Women workers in East Germany.

Behind the scenes of the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg - a special world, a country within a country during a single performance.

A photo film about the living situations of Turkish workers and their families in Germany.

At the beginning of 1979, after more than 30 years of collective repression, a dramatized and emotional US television miniseries ensured that the German population was suddenly reminded of the terrible Nazi crimes against the Jews. What is now expressed with the hitherto unknown word Holocaust, hits many millions of people in the heart. The unexpected echo and the audience reactions were fierce. Even before the TV broadcast neo-Nazis blasted in vain transmitting towers in Germany to prevent this. From the creation and the shooting over the broadcast to the tremendous reactions, documentary filmmaker Alice Agneskirchner tells the story of this emotional television event, which led to a paradigm shift in the perception of German Nazi crimes.

In 1929, Dziga Vertov shot the revolutionary film “Donbass Symphony”. Churches are destroyed amid applause, crosses and domes toppled, icons burned. Flags are hoisted. High-voltage pylons instead of crosses, coal mines, steelworks, dynamically assembled. The new faith is directed at the visible and is ingeniously and passionately established with all the means of the new art of film. It is the first Soviet sound film, a masterpiece and a classic. But the Donbass, the much-sung Soviet myth, is a British creation, namely that of the Welshman John Hughes, who arrived in 1870 with over 100 British engineers and a concession from the Tsar, developed the coal deposits and built up the steel industry in the Donetsk Basin.

In 1981 establishing a women's national team was of no interest to the German Football Association. Therefore an invitation to the Women's World Cup in Taipei went to the reigning club champions from the small town of Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. In the film the former players talk about the absurd conditions in which they had to fight for their great dream of playing football. Accompanied by historical footage - testimonies of a men's world that today seem all the more anachronistic - the film tells a story that is about much more than sporting success, namely equality and recognition.

Our planet is running out of drinking water. Only a vanishingly small proportion of the world's water is available as usable fresh water. This precious resource is beginning to shrink at an alarming rate, as natural water reservoirs are out of balance due to climate change. The documentary accompanies research projects that offer hope.

Stefan Paul in search of the myth of Rio Reiser.

A small indigenous Mexican village is slowly turning into a ghost town as many of its inhabitants emigrate. To survive this, they start simulating an experience they all know: crossing the border to the US illegally. The residents of the village slip into the roles of border guards, human traffickers and drug smugglers to reenact the crossing for paying tourists so they can put themselves into the position of a migrant for one night. A story of empowerment or a village stuck in the loop of their traumatic experiences?

Non-binary film maker Toni Karat invited queer and sex-positive people of the ‘Berlin porn bubble’ for this impressive documentary about narcissism and self-love. In authentic and touching self-reflective interviews ten protagonists who are as diverse as possible – lesbian, gay, queer, trans, non-binary and often over 50 – tell their sexual stories and contemplate their personal journeys and struggles. It’s an almost philosophical little masterpiece with a lot of honesty and authenticity on both sides of the camera.

A documentary directed by Oliver Schwehm.

From the 1950s onwards, Erika and Ulrich Gregor brought countless film historical milestones to Berlin and shaped cinema discourse in post-war Germany. A look at the life and work of the couple without whom Arsenal and the Forum wouldn’t exist.

This documentary re-examines the story of the Red Orchestra: the most important resistance network in Nazi Germany, whose operations extended from Berlin and Brussels to Paris.

Documentary short about the Malik-Verlag (1916-1947).

A young woman's voice drifts among friends at a lakeside, where sunlight, water, and memory merge as she meditates on intimacy, desire, and the quiet urge to be free.

20 short films about human rights.

"Die Thomaner" is one of the most prestigious youth choirs in the world. This documentary follows these promising talented choristers for over a year during their demanding artistic life full of pressure and success.

Soberly and with restraint, the director reconstructs the attempted femicide she survived fourteen years before. Intense conversations with people from her past provide an external perspective on an act subjectively and objectively impossible to grasp.

Thatta Kedona is a remarkable village in rural Pakistan. Since 1991 36 volunteers from Western countries have visited and coached the village people in a help to self help project. Dolls and tin toys reflecting regional cultures of Pakistan are products which generate cash income for the farming families through the local cooperative-like NGO. On the other side those volunteers from Western countries are also having their fun by working in a rural village of Islamic society with strong overlays by the traditional culture of Indus Valley, the Mogul period, Hindu culture and the influences of British-India. Hence the playfulness of a "toy village" is on both sides. For the villagers by producing toys for cash in a not-yet industrialized region avoiding rural exodus to the big cites (and thus avoiding the poverty slums that are generated by migration). And joy for Western people being confronted by their own history stages in present time within a foreign context.

The film takes place in three nations: in Switzerland, Cuba and Bosnia. In each of these three countries we accompany persons who dream of a better life elsewhere.

A grisly horror story about a mad scientist is mixed with documentary about the German band "Kreator".

Documentary filmed on a Cadus Search & Rescue Mission in the Mediterranean Sea in the summer 2016.

After touring Scandinavia and Germany last year, the Cayenne crew invites you to join them on their trip to Athens! Carson Starnes, Chris Smith, David Sizemore, Richie Eisler, Scott Quinn, Josh Glowicki, and Chris Farmer welcome Dominik Wagner and Joe Atkinson to the family for three incredible weeks of skating, traveling, and kicking it with the boys!

Bette Davis is the most disturbing film diva Hollywood has ever seen. Her life and her roles reflect the fractures in the American image of women. She was dominant, intelligent, sometimes heartless and yet above all she wanted to be loved. This did not work out in her private life. She was too strong for the men. But the public always loved her!

Why do migratory birds take on the hardships of a long flight year after year? The documentary accompanies migratory birds with breathtaking aerial images of their journeys from a "bird's eye view" in the service of science. The camera helicopter crosses the dangerous Strait of Gibraltar together with storks and accompanies them in the air all the way to Tanzania and Kenya.

Every year many thousands of people visit the mighty Nanjing Yangtze Bridge. Every year dozens of them have no intention of leaving the bridge alive. But there is one person determined not to see them plummet to their deaths: Chen Si. For some 13 years now he has sacrificed every free weekend to patrol back and forth across the bridge on his motorcycle.

The five acting students have not seen each other for 36 years. Now they face each other again and look back on the past together. What experiences have they had? What were their successes? What would they rather have done without?

The Austrian architect Karl Schwanzer (1918-1975) was already considered a legend in his field during his lifetime - and is now world-famous above all for the BMW headquarters he designed in Munich. Max Gruber's semi-documentary portrait film shows Schwanzer as a pioneer and visionary who understood architecture as "materialized poetry" and as an instrument to make people happy. Nicholas Ofczarek slips into the role of Schwanzer and plays the architect as a dazzling personality, passionate artistic soul and eternal seeker, who sometimes worked to the point of self-abandonment to solve problems.

As one of Germany’s beauties, the river was the gem of German landscape. But with industrialization it became the country’s hardest working river and like everything that has been overworked, it lost it magnificence and charm. Due to tender love and care, the river is now a reigning example of one of the most successful and outstanding renaturation projects in the country.

Short documentary on Vilnius

The traditional and modest life in deep rural Crete. A film on the verge of traditional documentary film and an attempt to find a new direction in terms of what documentary film could be. An envious look at contemporary works by his fellow filmmakers from the British Free Cinema, obviously spurred on director Pitt Koch’s ambition.

The documentary tells the life story of the boxer Norbert Grupe, who was known by his fighting name Prince of Homburg.

Documentary about Otfried Preußler.

In the run-up, everything actually spoke against the Chinese capital as the host of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games: Beijing is neither a winter sports region nor are human rights respected in China. The IOC obviously didn't care. Topics such as sustainability, freedom of expression and climate protection were also pushed aside. It's about power and profit instead of the Olympic idea and its values. But more and more athletes are speaking up and calling for a reform of the Olympic Games. A pioneer in this matter is ARD Olympic expert Felix Neureuther, a former alpine skier, who sucked up the Olympic spirit with his mother's milk, because his parents are alpine ski legend Rosi Mittermaier, double gold medalist at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, and father Christian, a ski racer, who took part three times at the Olympics. Based on interviews with athletes, experts, IOC officials and persecuted Uyghurs, Felix gets a glimpse behind the scenes of the Olympic system.