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In the summer of 1959, as a magazine correspondent, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963, he documented the sexual behavior of the Italians. In the winter of 1970-71, he witnessed the hardships of the most impoverished Italian population suffering from the boot of state power. After these three trips, he came to the conclusion that Italian society had changed drastically for the worse over the years.

Short by Bernhard Dörries, Edgar Reitz and Stefan Meuschel.

Occupied Estonia on its way to freedom. Demonstrations, public discussions, a "singing revolution". Goal: more self-determination and autonomy. At a time when almost 50% of the population is Russian, Estonians are fighting to rediscover their nationality. There are protests against Russian paternalism, Estonian is to become the national language again. Relations between the peoples shall normalize in order to enable peaceful coexistence.

The rise of artificially lit, industrial greenhouses in the French region of Bretagne brings dire consequences for the region's biodiversity as well as disruptions of time and perception for living creatures in their vicinity.

At night, a convoy of tractor crawlers rattle through the snow to groom the ski slopes. Just under 3000 metres in altitude, excavators dig into the ground using dynamite to build a reservoir for the preparation of artificial snow. Concrete blocks of apartments are springing up everywhere, while elsewhere in the mountains, young people have long since moved away and old people talk about how their hometown no longer has a future. Too many regions in the Alps have become dependent on hopelessly commercialized skiing. In PEAK, Hannes Lang observes the invasion and hostile takeover of the Alps by ski tourism and introduces us to the people affected: winners and losers, enthusiasts, sceptics and lost souls.

The Scorpions were one of the first rock bands from Germany, which also gained international fame. This documentary covers the history of the band.

Spotted hyenas are known to not have the best reputation. Sociobiologically, spotted hyenas are extremely interesting animals. They live in tightly organized packs, clans of related females with their young and immigrant males. The rules of their hierarchy seem brutal to us, but hyenas have good reasons to submit to these harsh rules

Out of love for Huskies, nature and cold winters Dave and Kristen Olesen moved from Minnesota to the North West Territories in Canada 25 years ago to create their own little universe on the magnificent East arm of Great Slave Lake. With their two daughters Annika 15 and Liv 12 and their 37 dogs, the Olesens enjoy a unique lifestyle in the wide open wilderness far away from civilization. One winter they all leave their self-built homestead with ten dogs on a two and a half thousand mile family expedition allowing Annika to run the Junior Iditarod in Alaska. As unexpected obstacles all along the trip culminate in three heavily injured dogs the whole endeavor is at risk. Optimism, love and loyalty prevail on this exciting epic family voyage.

This documentary shows how the Berliner workers lived in 1930. The director Slatan Dudow shows through images: a) the workers leaving the factory; b) the raise of the rents; c) the "unpleasant" guest, meaning the justice officer that brings the eviction notice; d) the fight of classes of the houses of capitalists and working classes; e) the parks of the working class; f) the houses of the working class, origin of the tuberculosis and the victims; g) the playground of the working class; h) the swimming pool for the working class, ironically called the "Baltic Sea" of the working class; i) the effects of humidity of basement where a family lives, with one member deaf; j) one working class family having dinner while the capitalist baths his dog; k) the eviction notice received from an unemployed family and their eviction.

How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.

A life-time after the Shoah: Forgetting is not an option and memory only goes so far. When prayers are not enough, music can keep us going. It's not too late to mourn, And not too soon to replenish. In Redemption Blues, a feature-length documentary shot in New York, Vienna, Oswiecim, and Bethlehem, director Peter Stastny engages with several outspoken Holocaust survivors whose lives have been shaped by their experiences from more than 70 years ago. As the director's personal narrative guides us along, we watch these humorous, wise, hardened and joyful individuals rise above the despair and loss. A rich emotional landscape comes to life, containing some of the deep questions with which the world is still grappling today. In the end, we see these people as leaders and visionaries in moments of homecoming, renewal and progression, not merely as captives of their past.

A documentary comprising a thirteen 360° panning shots that gradually reveal the environments and conditions in which wood is transported from Austria to Brazil.

They come from Romanian villages and the slums of Skopje: legendary Roma orchestras from Eastern Europe, singers and brass bands from the Balkans.

They do not earn millions, yet they are happy nonetheless: Maria Meissner (87), Josef “Sepp” Schmid (74), and Rudi Egerer (65) have spent most of their lives working for FC Bayern. Maria still cleanses the trophies nowadays, Sepp still washes and prepares the jerseys of the players in the basement, and Rudi is still the bus driver. They are simple people who may have access to the glamorous world of the big stars, but who never wanted to adapt to the ‘modern times’ unconditionally. They have remained side characters and experience their club from a special angle: Being witnesses of the development from a people’s sport to star cult and commercialisation.

Henri unravels the infrastructure of the LGBTQIA+ Community as we take a stroll through his daily life and get a grasp of what it truly means being different while trying to live an honest life in a world ruled by politics and religion.

Report on the Waldeck district.

We want cheap fruit and veg, all year. No problem. The Pickers deliver, but they are paying the price for us: Exploited migrants harvest our oranges, strawberries, olives, blueberries and other fruit and vegetables in Greece, Spain, Italy or Portugal.

Contemporary witnesses from several European countries provide impressive insights into how the Iron Curtain shaped life across the continent.

The whole world is confident that bears walk the streets in Russia, and the entire population from young to old is drinking vodka from morning to evening. In fairness, we note that Russian people themselves recognize the reputation of inveterate drunkards and are proud of it somewhere. Russian Russian documentarian Alexey Khanyutin made an attempt to analyze the role of vodka in the life of a Russian person.

Documentary film about a slum community on the outskirts of Recife, a major city in northeastern Brazil. A portrait of life in extreme poverty and lawlessness: men without work, hopeless women, hungry and sick children.

The courageous female wrestlers of Ciudad Juárez, a city known for its high murder rate against women - who fight in the ring and in their daily lives to redefine the image of what it means to be a woman in Mexico.

A look at the career of experimental music master Oskar Sala.

On January 10th, the investigative editorial team of CORRECTIV published research into a secret meeting of right-wing extremists, which no one was supposed to know about and which led to demonstrations and protests all over Germany. AfD politicians, CDU politicians, members of the WerteUnion, neo-Nazis and financially strong entrepreneurs came together in November 2023 in a hotel near Potsdam near the Villa on Wannsee, where the “final solution to the Jewish question” was once decided. They met to debate to expel millions of people from Germany, including non-German citizens with a migration background, as well as German citizens with a migration background and German citizens without a migration background who do not want to adapt to the ideological worldviews of those present. On January 17, 2024, the research premiered in the Berliner Ensemble as a staged reading with a political satirical character.

Documentary film.

Florian Hartung and Dirk Pohlmann have reconstructed a previously unknown dimension of the collaboration between Nazis and the CIA in the Cold War. Drawing upon recently released documents, the film exposes for the first time a perfidious, worldwide net that reaches deep into the power structures of the Federal Republic of Germany. Lending their authority to the fact-finders’ mission are high-ranking statesmen, journalists and historians.

"Remote Area" is a "Heimatfilm" about a strange world in front of our own doorstep. Only 20 minutes away from the Cologne Cathedral into the foothills by tram – one of those areas you drive through in order to spend some time somewhere else. Squeezed in between Cologne and Bonn, neither urban nor rural – unsightly, faceless, arbitrary.

Sixty years after the signing of the Élysée Treaty, which opened an unprecedented era of cooperation between the two countries, how is the Franco-German tandem doing? An enlightening assessment, at a time when the war in Ukraine is shaking the world order.

In a fitting tribute to the murder of scores of Jewish artists and performers, the filmmakers meticulously matched audio from pre-war recordings with films and still photographs taken by the Nazis in Westerbork, Theresienstadt, Dachau, and Auschwitz, resurrecting, if only for a brief time, the lives and art of some of Europe¹s best known performers, including Willy Rosen, Max Ehrlich, Kurt Gerron, Die Ghetto-Swingers, Johnny and Jones, Fritz Grünbaum, and Lisl Frank. Dance of Death reveals the underlying pathos of the artists, who lived to perform (and owed their lives to performing), yet were forced to watch as others were lead to their death.

In 1973, Wolf Vostell, an artist associated with Fluxus, made a happening in which participants were required to perform a series of ritual, obsessive actions, such as “go to the trunk of your vehicle, there open and close the trunk 750 times and 375 times put a white plate in it and take it out 375 times.” Described by Ottinger as a documentation of what Vostell called “dé-coll/age-happening”, the film is an illustration of her creative method, a surrealist act, a separate work of art, and a strange object. She would later describe her method as “fragments of reality assembled in an unusual manner”.

You may not recognize the name Ralf König, but you probably recognize his art. One of the most commercially successful German comic book creators, he is best known for books like “SchwulComix (GayComix)” that offer a twisted take on queer culture. Equal parts Tom of Finland and R. Crumb, König’s comics are sexually charged and often politically incorrect, portraying daily routines of gay life alongside serious subjects like AIDS. King of Comics is a touching portrait of a cutting-edge artist with a wicked sense of humor. All hail the king! —Jimmy Radosta

After escaping Egypt following the 2011 revolution, an activist finds himself in Berlin, hoping to start a new life and find safety and freedom. However, he ends up living in a refugee camp located in an area where far-right groups frequently hold anti-refugee protests. Caught between the hostility of his new home and the nostalgia for his past life, he begins to question his life choices and what it means to walk down a queer path. By exploring his memories archives, he develops a new understanding of what it means to be in exile. He also forms new friendships with those around him and redefines the concept of "home" in Berlin.

Children of alcoholic parents have been fighting for a precarious normality within their family since early childhood. They look after the addicted mother or father and try to stop them from drinking. They are always afraid that someone might find out and put them in a home. They feel guilty or become aggressive, cause problems at school or become addicted themselves - another single and often misunderstood cry for help in a social environment characterized by helplessness, looking away and silence.

Before there were home video formats and the internet, the “Bahnhofskinos” (“Train station cinemas”) in West Germany regularly showed trash and erotica movies. Various filmmakers and especially contemporary witnesses recount in the documentary “Cinema Perverso – the wonderful and broken world of Bahnhofskino” their experiences and impressions.

Where are you, João Gilberto? sets out in the footsteps of German writer Marc Fischer who obsessively searched for the legendary founding father of Bossa Nova and last great musical legend of our time, Brazilian musician João Gilberto, who has not been seen in public for decades. Fischer described his journey in a book, Hobalala, but committed suicide one week before it was published. By taking up Marc Fischer's quest, following his steps one by one, thanks to all the clues he left us, we pursue João Gilberto to understand the history, the very soul and essence of Bossa Nova. But who can tell whether we will meet him or not?

The Dutch director Bob Rooyens shows Berlin as it pleases young people in particular. His self-chosen "Miss Berlin" takes the viewer on a spectacular tour of the Berlin of the 70s. The film impresses with its innovative camera work, rapid cuts, confused by surreal stagings, in short: fireworks of imagery.

Featuring excerpts from diaries and letters written by local residents and soldiers from both sides, the documentary tells the story of the Battle of Stalingrad through the voices of those who lived it.

Impressions from the wedding of two young Chileans in the German Democratic Republic.

Jewish and Christian music merge in this film about one of the oldest choirs in Germany, the choir in Magdeburg Cathedral, which has been performing together with the head cantor of the Jewish community in West Berlin, Estrongo Nachama, since 1980. The choir already existed when Walther von der Vogelweide celebrated Christmas here; the cathedral has survived devastation and wars, most recently the bombing of Magdeburg in January 1945. The choir sings "Oh, how the city lies so desolate, which was full of people". The choir now rehearses and sings together with Estrongo Nachama.

Snow, sweat, testosterone and the sound of chainsaws. Every four years, over a period of three months in winter, wood is being cut in a steep mountain, high above Lake Ägeri, and prepared for log rafting. Neither economic change nor technology has been able to replace this traditional and sustainable craft in Switzerland.

My mother will die. Jutta interprets the diagnosis of an incurable cancer as a spiritual crisis. Accompanied by Rainer Langhans, to whom she has a deep friendship since over 40 years, Jutta travels to India and goes on the search for a healing experience from within.

In today's culture, the “Wild West” is perceived as a bygone era of adventure featuring cowboys and the like. However, the reality of the “Wild West” today is quite different. It can be found in the abandoned gold mining sites, the ghost towns of Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Documentary observes lessons in a ballet school. Between the fun of dance and the discipline and perseverance that each of the dancers brings to it, the film shows different age groups in their practice process. Because behind the graceful perfection on the theater stage lies a long and arduous path.

The most important mountain range in Europe is more than a holiday destination for sports and relaxation. The Alps are not just an unpredictable force of nature against which humans have to assert themselves again and again, or an area steeped in history, but also a landscape that enchants. The documentary takes a foray through the history and geography of the Alps.

The automated workflow at a cargo container terminal becomes a lively, mesmerising mechanical ballet.

Reencounter with a myth. 40 years since Georg Stefan Troller reported from his adopted home in "Pariser Journal," he returns to his old haunts. A journey through time in a city of contradictions that is always reinventing itself.

This experimental film is constructed from still photos of the violent protests in response to then-US President Ronald Reagan’s visit to (West) Berlin in 1982 and illustrations by the French artist Gustave Doré.

Vividly reflects the attitudes and everyday life of the 1.2 million people who lived in East Berlin: Idealists, Social Climbers and Non-Conformists.

The fight for democracy in Hong Kong has long been a battle of systems, as well as a brutal game of economic dependencies. With a collage of found footage, interviews with experts and sketches of the thoughts of young activists, the filmmaker paints a picture of a city between wild hope for change and resignation to the Chinese regime.

Song of Ceylon was commissioned for the short-lived German TV-series Telekritik and broadcasted in 1975. In Telekritik documentary approaches were analysed and made available for a critique of contemporary TV, its aesthetics and modes of production. Other authors for the series include Hartmut Bitomsky, Rainer Gansera and Klaus Wildenhahn.In the 30-minute movie, Farocki shows and comments on excerpts from the film Song of Ceylon by Basil Wright (and a short segment of Eisenstein's Mexico-fragments). Farocki's voice-over describes part of the movie, focussing on details and montage. He also uses didactic and descriptive drawings and intertitles to confront the classic documentary and its stylistic approaches with contemporary TV.

The Swiss painter Paul Klee (1879-1940), who believed his ancestors came from North Africa, traveled to Egypt in 1928. He visited Tunesia in 1914, together with August Macke. The light and colors there influenced him a lot. German documentary filmmaker Rüdiger Sünner travels through Egypt with Klee's diary in his luggage. This film essay shows Klee's paintings, sepia toned filmed sequences of early 1990s Egypt, and tells of old Egyptian myths (Osiris and his adventures in the underworld) from the Book of the Dead, stories that deeply inspired Paul Klee.

An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

The film accompanies Linda and Gallier in their everyday lives and gives them space for self-representation: at school, at the family table, at the disco, or in conversations with friends. The racism of the majority society, the pressure to assimilate, and the counterarguments of the two young people and their community members are omnipresent. The parents and grandparents are survivors. Linda summarizes that experiences of persecution and oppression have shaped the strong sense of belonging among the Sinti.

The story of the legendary Berlin club and its founder, a woman whose life is inextricably interwoven with the bright and dark sides of a hedonistic lifestyle.