Discover Movies

Exploring the mechanisms of the Nazi seizure of power and focusing on forgotten sites in Saxony and Thuringia, the film investigates early "wild" concentration camps established after 1933 for the suppression of political opponents.

A painter, a naked woman, and a camera. In this triple constellation we explore the power of the gaze and the roles it imposes on us. An artist's studio turns into the setting for questions about how we look at and perceive women. The naked skin of the model becomes the canvas for an audiovisual exploration of the ways in which seeing and being seen anchors us in our body. And how this body shapes our experience of the world and our role in it.

Wanjugu Kimathi is the daughter of Dedan Kimathi, legendary leader of the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army, or Mau Mau. This resistance group fought the British colonial regime from 1952 to 1960 to stop it from confiscating land, a conflict known as the Mau Mau Rebellion. In 1957, the British authorities hanged Dedan for possession of firearms, and then dumped his body at an unknown location.

A series of 32 short scenes, uniformly set in West German instructional and training classes, that show various tasks among the citizenry being done solely as the result of exhaustive preparation - everything from women preparing to give birth, to strippers stripping, to policemen making arrests. Farocki uses the material to savagely dissect the West German mode of life.

How do you deal with right-wing extremists in the neighborhood? Exclude, tolerate or involve? Rural regions in particular are prone to infiltration by nationalist settlers. Right-wing extremists systematically penetrate village structures, pretending to be nice neighbors, committed citizens and problem solvers in a completely non-ideological way. Local volunteer fire brigades and football clubs are infiltrated by Nazis. Done among others in the village of Groß Krams in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where two right-wing extremists seem to be part of everyday village life. One of them works as a firefighter. In Appen, Schleswig-Holstein, the state chairman of the Hamburg NPD wanted to join the village's football club. But the club's management refused when they found out about the political background. The documentary by Hans Jakob Rausch illuminates the infiltration strategies of the extreme right and the difficult balance between tolerance and engagement against right-wing radicalism.

The present, past and future of the conquest of the city known as Buenos Aires.

On November 25, 1915, Einstein presents his famous General Theory of Relativity. Just a few years later, his revolutionary ideas about space and time are confirmed during a solar eclipse. Overnight, Einstein became a scientific superstar. Einstein skillfully uses his popularity to give a war-torn world what it longs for: his genius, his humanitarian ideals, his unconventional appearance, his civil courage. Einstein's judgment was soon in demand far beyond the field of physics.

The experimental animated film Song of the Flies (El Canto de las Moscas), translates the desolation caused by the violence of the Colombian armed conflict through the poetic voice of Maria Mercedes Carranza (1945–2003) and the audiovisual dialogue between 9 Colombian women. In 24 places, as a transit over the course of a day (Morning, Day, Night) a map of terror is drawn where massacres took place in Colombia in the 1990s. Archival images, the artists’ personal memories and the use of loops and analogue materials bring to life the landscapes ravaged by violence and build a polyphony of memory and mourning, a universal song of pain.

In order to expand coal mining, the traditional town of Most in the Czech Republic was razed to the ground. Old buildings were demolished, a Gothic church was relocated, nature was poisoned, people were forced out of their environment. Only in the minds of the elderly does the town live on.

At the beginning of the 1980s, a group of Germans ventured into a social experiment: in the remote hills of Umbria, they founded a self-sufficient community beyond consumerism and bland gainful employment. After 40 years, the rural commune still exists. Not all the plans have come to fruition over the years. How are the dropouts doing today?

From the diaries of a German official in occupied Poland 1940-42.

A portrait of American actress Uma Thurman, muse of legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and courageous voice for the many victims of despotic producer Harvey Weinstein.

Solar System is a film about disappearance. It is a portrait of daily life in the indigenous community of the Kollas in Tinkunaku in the mountains of northern Argentina.

Documentary about Hans Zimmer.

Grossglockner is Austria’s highest peak and the eastern Alps’ most impressive summit. Rising to a height of almost 3900 meters, the ‘BLACK MOUNTAIN’ towers over an Alpine natural paradise, the Hohe Tauern National Park, where ibex and chamoix roam the cliffs, wild flowers grow in amazing profusion and golden eagles soar above the valleys.Georg Riha presents dizzying perspectives of the glaciers, sheer cliffs and steep ravines that shape the face of this rocky giant and continue to attract and challenge a steady stream of mountaineers.

The film follows the life of a couple of singers from Münster who became known for covering the most prominent voices of distinct eras of Schlager music. While Markus got recognition through youtube tributes to Udo Jürgens (known for introducing French Chanson in 1970’s Schlager) Steffi often performs the repertoire of Helene Fischer, a contemporary Schlager icon who opened the genre to a Global Pop standard.

The glorious and tragic story of American athlete and actor Johnny Weissmuller (1904-84), Olympic swimmer, water polo player and the only true Tarzan, an archetypal character and myth of cinema, that of the original Hollywood blockbusters (1932-48).

Eva Ries – alias Evil-E – was for many years the marketing manager of the Wu-Tang Clan. A woman from the Baden provinces who held her own in the male-dominated world of US hip-hop and became a key figure in a global cultural phenomenon. The documentary tells the story of an unusual career between metal, grunge, and rap, of family dynamics, chaos on tour, and cultural misunderstandings – but also of loyalty, empowerment, and the question of how a woman can claim her place in a world full of alpha males.

Even high Nazi leaders like Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring were almost contemptuous of this party comrad, and yet he was one of the most influential figures in the Third Reich: Julius Streicher, publisher of the anti-Semitic weekly "Der Stürmer", responsible for the worst propaganda and infamous for his corrupt and violent regime as Gauleiter of Franconia. By the Allies he was considered a symbol of Nazi hatred of the Jews. In 1946 he was sentenced to death in Nuremberg and executed.

In 1897, Arctic explorer Robert Peary, commissioned by Franz Boas, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, brought indigenous inhabitants of Greenland back from his expedition. It was a sensation. But only little Minik survived. The rest of his group died within a few months. Minik's father died of tuberculosis; his skeleton was added to the museum's anthropological collection. Minik, adopted by museum staff, remained in America for another twelve years before returning to Greenland. But there he had become a stranger. Robert Peary, on the other hand, was celebrated in America for his North Pole expeditions. Minik could not let go of his past, so he returned to the US.

Butterflies are certainly the most popular of all insects. Hardly anyone can resist the grace and beauty of these colorful jugglers as they fly from flower to flower. But butterflies offer even more surprises: There is hardly any other group of animals with such a variety of shapes and colors as butterflies.

Hans Schomburgk reflects on his life as a researcher. He recounts experiences, adventures, and insights he has gathered over the course of 60 years between Cape Town and Congo. The film shows the changes that Africa has undergone in terms of nature and culture during this period, comparing yesterday and today.

Hard, harder, hardest! This film orders you from the start to turn up the volume and pay attention. "Look out! We're Coming to Get You!" is a flood of images driven by a tempest of guitars. The film's creators jam 20 years of German music history into 120 minutes of film. Musicians from BLIND PASSENGERS, DIE SKEPTIKER, SANDOW and other bands explode their way through the film. Fans of the DEFA documentary "Flüstern und Schreien" ("Whisper and Shout") already know the stars of that film, Aljoscha, Paul and Flake of the band Feeling B. Here they have a chance to see how these musicians survived the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the "escalation of possibilities" that came with it. And you're allowed to laugh, too!

Thinking in Loop: Three videos on iconoclasm, ritual and immortality. Combining theoretical texts and film footage, the topic of these videos is, actually, video as a medium: the use of the image within the video, the analogy between video and essay, the difference between private and public use of the video, the video running in loop as a contemporary form of ritual. The film footage is not used here as a mere illustration to make the text more comprehensible, or to make certain theoretical positions more evident. Rather, these video lectures thematize the gap between what we hear and what we see, and reflect on the relationship between image and word in our media driven world.

In the middle of the German cultural landscape lies a mysterious water wilderness, a hub for bird migration and home to an amazing range of animals. The documentary shows the European reserve Rieselfelder: majestic landscapes, hidden habitats and unique animal behavior. It tells the extraordinary story of a natural paradise made by humans.

Portrait of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos.

A series of filmed interviews with Rebecca Horn, performance artist, filmmaker and sculptress whose work explores the themes of sexuality, human vulnerability and emotional fragility.

In conversations with her parents Yıldız and Mustafa as well as her brothers Taner and Onur, she goes on a painful journey into the past. Political persecution of the Alevi-Kurdish family in Turkey, the flight to Europe in 1989, several racist attacks, depression and excessive demands on the parents – the effects on the three siblings are different. Dealing with the experiences and strokes of fate causes different reactions in them. Bektaş quickly realizes that the uncertainty about Taner’s fate in Turkey is only a reflection of her life experience as a family in exile.

Every Monday, Peter and a few friends meet in the Oberwelt club, a small storeroom in the middle of Stuttgart. There they painstakingly reenact well-known Hollywood movies. It quickly takes a few years to complete a film reenactment. In addition, the actors change constantly, so that sometimes more than 500 people are involved in a film.

Two aspiring filmmakers walk through Hamburg with a camera operator and a sound operator. From the time they get out bed to their encounter with a production manager, they are harassed by an intermittent white dot.

The portrait of someone who came into the class as a dropout and, as far as travel is concerned, later went the farthest of all. The career of a carpenter, enterprising go-getter and incorrigible optimist who always made the best of the changing situations in his life.

This compilation film focuses on the contents of Nazi propaganda shorts such as "The Beauty of Work" (1934), "We Have No Problems" (1933), or "The Will To Live" (1944) that preceded the feature films in German movie theaters between 1933 and 1945. The shorts reveal that men and women workers were idealized, uniformity was stressed, optimism in the face of adversity was the goal, and, in general, all the classic lies that dictatorships use to control and mold their citizens are featured.

Animals are true superheroes. They have superpowers that we humans can only dream of. Some grow back their limbs after they have lost them. Others let huge bones grow on their heads at a rapid speed. And some can go into hibernation for months without losing muscle. Their skills could help humans against Alzheimer’s, heart attack and osteoporosis. But these superpowers are still a mystery. How do animals do that? Scientists are trying to solve the riddles to help save human lives.

Russia as you have never seen before: from the bird's eye view. From Kaliningrad, to the Bering Strait, from the Icebreakers on the Polar Sea to the antelopes in the Kalmykia steppes, from the Caucasus peaks to the volcanoes of Kamchatka.

Both a visit to a very peculiar exhibition at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany, as well as an unprejudiced look at the artistic depiction of violence throughout history and the ways in which that depiction has been gendered.

The film shows the connection between agricultural overproduction in Europe and hunger in Brazil.

The history of the magic lantern with demonstrations of moving slides, watertank or polarisation slides, followed by images on paper, which are brought to life with mechanical manipulations, with light shining through them or as panorama.

No place on Earth is more changeable than the seasonal forest, undergoing radical transformations year after year. These adaptations to the seasons are what make our woodlands so varied and dynamic; a constant cycle of interwoven behaviors and practices.

Here, where even monsters are political, the topography has its own memory. It has the mythological blues. Meanwhile, old gods are upset with us, and I am upset with my father.

Several hundred thousand euros for a pigeon: a price many super rich in Dubai or China are willing to pay because especially in China betting on pigeon races has become a million-dollar business. "Höhenflüge" talks about winners and losers in a game ruled by the new powers of global economy.

It is normal for 15-year-old Linn to have two mothers. But when she finds out that there are still numerous siblings, she realizes that she is part of an extraordinary extended family. Her father Eike not only had an appointment with Linn's mothers to donate sperm, Petra and Anny also have three children with him. A film crew followed this rainbow family for twelve years.

On October 13, 1957, cash was exchanged in the GDR (old bills 1:1 for new bills). The film reports on this event.

Microsoft is generally considered the dinosaur of the digital age. However, the US Corporation is more powerful today than ever before. The power of its monopoly is nowhere more apparent than in Europe: from Finland to Portugal, from Ireland to Greece, the information technology of every state administration and its institutions (military, police, fiscal authorities etc.) is based on Microsoft programmes. Since digital systems are constantly expanding and increasing in importance, countries are becoming more and more dependent on this single company. This dependence causes continually rising costs and prevents technical progress in state authorities. It systematically undermines European procurement and competition laws, it leads inevitably to the company having an overwhelming political influence, while it exposes state IT systems along with citizens’ data to a high technical and political security risk. Is Europe’s digital sovereignty at stake?

Two friends, two Viennese, two poets, two unusual women. They have known each other for 30 years. Elfriede Jelinek is the better known of the two, the great author with her analytical mind and her social commitment against the whole "politician's docks." The now deceased lyricist Elfriede Gerstl remains rather tender with her poetry, although her poems do not miss a certain amount of sharpness, albeit ironically packed. When the two Elfrieden sit in their Viennese coffee house and drink the little brown, they usually talk about clothes, they talk about the fashion that Elfriede Gerstl has just collected again.

Short film on the manufacture of glassware

Painter and government official – the two sides of Willi Sitte which made him the most important yet most controversial East German artist. Portraying the working class, defying imperialism or revealing intimate togetherness, he became the leading figure of Socialist Realism. His career in the Association of Fine Artists (VBK) and the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED elevated his status to that of ‘Prince of East German Painting’. Reiner Moritz met the controversial, first-rate draughtsman in his studio after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Through his life and work, he traces the story of Sitte’s artistic development in the service of socialist ideology.

Dieu Hao Do, whose parents found refuge in Germany and were part of the Chinese minority in Vietnam, embarks on a very personal journey to meet his relatives on three continents. He confronts his mother, encounters his aunts and uncles in Germany, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City and asks, “What are your memories of the war in Vietnam? Of the exodus? And how did the refugee experience and torn-apart state of the family affect you over the years?” And he wants to know: “Can the trauma of war be inherited?”