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November 5, 2024 is election day and the USA is facing a momentous decision linked to the questions: Will Kamala Harris succeed in becoming the first woman President of the USA? Or will Donald Trump return to the White House? What consequences would a Trump victory have for the USA, the world and especially for Germany? Ingo Zamperoni, together with filmmaker Birgit Wärnke, embarks on a multifaceted journey through a country that seems more irreconcilable and polarized than ever before. The well-known Tagesthemen anchorman discusses the election-deciding issues such as inflation, migration, abortion and the Ukraine war during visits to members of his partly American family and their acquaintances, but also with celebrities such as pop star and Trump friend Kid Rock, football legend Jürgen Klinsmann, who lives in California, and the former commander of the US Army in Europe, Ben Hodges.

The film by the renowned filmmaking duo Anna Faroqhi and Haim Peretz was created within the framework of the German program «Film ohne Grenzen» (Film without Borders), which supports young individuals from various social backgrounds, including refugees, migrants, and teenagers from disadvantaged families. In 2022, the program's regular instructors, Faroqhi and Peretz, engaged former homeless youths in the making of a film. With the guidance of a social worker, an architect, and a historian, these young people worked on crafting a kind of memorial for the victims of a Nazi concentration camp that was once located in the area of a present-day Brandenburg village.

Angela Slobodyan is a journalist who survived 31 days of Russian captivity during the occupation of the Kherson region. She is travelling to The Hague to testify about the aggressor’s war crimes. 
Combining telephone video evidence of the occupation, and interviews with survivors, Invasion is dedicated to Ukrainian acts of resistance. The women at the centre of the narrative not only demonstrated their heroism in resisting the occupiers, but also dared to give oral testimony about the unspeakable horrors they endured.

Documentary about the rise of the female German boxer Regina Halmich.

TV-documentary about the German painter Carl Spitzweg

Dieter Howahl owns and operates a sausage grill in Hamburg. He does not sell fries.

A documentary about the integration and lifestyle of Turks who immigrated to Germany, especially young people, who are defined as the third generation today. The film contains a wide range of perspectives ranging from hip hop artists to businessmen, retired workers to film directors.

This time, the undercover journalist Wallraff has taken on the subject of 'cheap production for large discounters' with a hidden camera. Under a different identity, he was hired by a large bakery in the Rhineland that supplied cheap rolls for Lidl.

A black and white documentary which captures nighttime scenes in various European cities.

A portrait of the artist Andreas Gursky and his work „Hamm, Bergwerk Ost“. It follows the genesis of the image from conception to construction to contraction and reaction – until it finds its home in a worthy collection holding many of its „siblings“.

The Bokelberg photographic collection brings to life the Paris of the Belle Époque (1871-1914), an exhibition of workshops and stores with extremely beautiful shop windows before which the owners and their employees proudly pose, hiding behind their eyes the secret history of a great era.

It's about a little village in Switzerland, and about one guy who lives there since 32 years and doesn't know anyone there...

The film about Max Bill (1908-1994) moves between the dynamic fields of art, aesthetics and politics. Max Bill was probably the most important swiss artist of the 20th century and the most famous student to come out of the legendary Bauhaus in Dessau. He was an ardent anti-fascist and all his avant-garde work as an artist, sculptor, architect and typographer showed a social responsibility and environmental awareness right through his life. His views have become incredibly topical.

From prehistoric times to our technologically accelerated present, this exciting and entertaining journey through time explores the thousands of ways in which mankind has perceived, measured and passed time over the course of its history.

A documentary about the last Turkish shadow players and the German orientalist Hellmut Ritter

It is one thing to survive the Holocaust, but quite another to deal with the lasting impact of this experience. This film portrait of Ruth Klüger, an American literary scholar from Vienna, deals with these issues by revisiting four significant places in her life: Vienna, California, Göttingen and Israel. Ruth Klüger also shares her thoughts on very personal topics: her childhood in anti-Jewish Vienna, her life in the States, her motherhood of two American sons and the culture of commemoration.

Cast members of the television and movie series "Star Trek" reminisce about the making of the series and the films, and give their opinions on why the series has been so successful.

The Austrian architect Hans Hollein belongs to the world elite of architects since his candle shop Retti in Vienna (1965). His museum in Mönchengladbach (1982) revolutionized museum architecture in our century, and his Haas-Haus (1990) in Vienna became the most disputed post-war building in Vienna.

Documentary with recordings from the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

She is the youngest and the first female mayor of Cizre. A town located in the southeast of Turkey, where Kurds form the significant part of the inhabitants.

A film about German artist Joseph Beuys's art where the artist speaks about his work and explains it to an American audience.

A multinational company owned by Mrs Judit Angst is facing financial difficulties: she decides to hire a group of young anarchists to fake her "kidnapping". After a couple of weeks spent in confinement she will be able to justify the downfall of her company before the people and at the same time to gain the status of the opponent to the destruction and chaos.

Way up in the far northwest of the Russian Tundra lies the picturesque village of Krasnoschchelye. Its inhabitants, indigenous Sami people, live from the ancient tradition of reindeer husbandry. Once a year the reindeer herders are celebrated for their labors in a festival that features a reindeer sleigh race where they can display their skills. But the Kolkhoz is insolvent and it looks like the festival might have to be cancelled - a symbol of the Sami tradition and culture in Russia, currently threatened with extinction. 30 years old Sasha, a member of the newly found Sami parliament in Russia fights for the festival and the survival of her village.

Documentary by Ebbo Demant.

Avantgarde film about an exhibition.

The filmmaker delves into her family's past and the seemingly intact world of childhood begins to fall apart. Here, the private sphere reflects the helplessness and excessive demands of German society in the 1970s - between the shadows of the National Socialist past and new utopias.

Documentary about two families who have a private nuclear bunker built and then test it.

Portrait of the spokesman of the student movement and extra-parliamentary opposition Rudi Dutschke, who died on December 24, 1979 from the late effects of an assassination attempt. The film is not limited to the mere biography of the extra-parliamentary politician, but also depicts the political environment as well as the late effects of the student movement. In retrospect, it condenses into a picture of a highly politicized society that had not yet begun its retreat into the private sphere.

Propaganda short film

In summer Berlin’s lakes become mystical places where people go to transcend their mundane lives. ECSTATIC UNITY follows Jorge and Gerard on a ritualistic trip to one of these lakes. Enraptured by their natural surroundings and guided by primal instincts, the bearded boys spin themselves into a whirlwind of blissful breath and tantric touch.

"Behind every strong man is a strong woman!", Mumine shouts as her husband is arrested. She has 4 children, she's in her mid-30s, and she's the wife of a Crimean Tatar political prisoner. Muslim Crimean Tatars have been oppressed for a long time. They were deported under Stalin, allowed to return under Gorbachev, and since the occupation of Crimea in 2014 under Putin, they are being persecuted again. "Return" is a portrait of Mumine and Maye, two strong women struggling with the consequences of oppression. Their traditional understanding of their role as women does not stand in the way of their dedication. They possess strength, beauty and dignity. Only in their most intimate moments, they are overwhelmed by desperate helplessness.

In 2010, during the Love Parade in Duisburg, following a crowd movement, the participants found themselves stuck in a tunnel, soon trampled and suffocated. Results: 21 dead and more than 600 injured. Spotlight on the extraordinary trial which followed this tragedy.

Lusatia - the former energy production center of the GDR, today a landscape depleted by lignite mining. Large lakes have been created in which you can "rust" while swimming, and landscape formations reminiscent of the Grand Canyon of the Wild West. Native wolves and many exotic species of international flora and fauna are inexorably conquering new habitats. The people who have remained persevere like settlers. They appear in the film as narrators of their sometimes bizarre stories. We see how they try with imagination and commitment to wrest a re-inhabitable piece of earth from their battered landscape. For Lusatia harbors the old dream of Prince Pückler: the dream of a landscape for people. More is happening in Lusatia than we dare to dream.

Documentary film by Helke Misselwitz.

When the busses left, the nurse said to the children, 'Today you have to pray a lot, because today you go up the chimney and meet the good Lord.' The children of the area knew these vehicles and said, 'Look, there is another one of these killer busses.' And they said to one another, ' You are not very clever, you, too, are going to end up in the oven in Hartheim, you, too, will be hung up in the chimney.' Hartheim Castle near Linz was one of several places of destruction of 'unworthy life' within the framework of the euthanasia program of National Socialism. Over 30,000 mentally or physically handicapped, psychiatric patients and inmates of concentration camps were gassed in Hartheim between 1940 and 1945. Today Hartheim Castle is rented and inhabited. In a place where 40 years ago thousands if lives were destroyed by industrial methods, today life asserts itself in the trite daily function of living. The documentation is about Hartheim Castle, in the past and in the present.

After 30 years of conspiracy theories and myth making, this film uncovers the story of the CIA's most extensive clandestine operation in the history of modern warfare: The Secret War in Laos, which was conducted alongside the Vietnam War from 1964 -1973. While the world's attention was caught by the conflict in Vietnam, the CIA built the busiest military airport in the world in neighboring and neutral Laos and recruited humanitarian aid personnel, Special Forces agents and civilian pilots to undertake what would become the most effective operation of counterinsurgency warfare. As the conflict in Vietnam grew, the objective in Laos changed from a cost effective low-key involvement to save the country from becoming communist into an all-out air war to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and bomb Laos back into the Stone Age that it had never really left in the first place. Conventional bombs equivalent to the destructive power of 20 Hiroshima-type weapons fell on Laos each year - 2 million tons

By coincidence rather than by design, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann makes a sensational discovery in the spring of 1943. He realizes that he is dealing with a powerful molecule that will have an impact that reaches far beyond the scientific world. THE SUBSTANCE is an investigation into our troubled relationship with LSD, told from its beginnings to today.

Documentary about singer Sanije Torka, the model for the 1980 DEFA film "Solo Sunny" by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase.

Theatre of War is an essay on how to represent war, performed by former enemies. British and Argentinian veterans of the Falklands war come together to discuss, rehearse and re-enact their memories 35 years after the conflict.

Fatih Akin follows Turkish musician Gaye Su Akyol on a journey that redefines her musical identity. Rooted in the vibrant metropolis of Istanbul, the artist takes a radical step by leaving her homeland to record a new album inspired by her great idol, Iggy Pop.

“Pippi Longstocking“ has been translated into 70 languages and sold more than 60 million copies. The film tells the story of her “mother“, famous Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. When young an still unknown, she starts a diary on September 1, 1939. Full of despair about the world, she is in conversation with herself and discovers the healing power of writing. As WWII ends with millions dead and the destruction of Europe, her first book about rebellious Pippi is published.

A film essay investigating the question of what “the West” means beyond the cardinal direction: a model of society inscribed itself in the Federal Republic of Germany’s postwar history and architecture. The narrator shifts among reflections on modern architecture and property relations, detailed scenes from childhood, and a passed-down memory of a “hemmed-in West Germany,” recalling the years of her parents’ membership in a 1970s communist splinter group.

They have bones, no teeth and can grow up to 17 meters long: Oarfish. As the longest bony fish in the world resembles a silver reptile, it is surrounded by various legends of sea serpents and sea monsters. The documentary shows the rarely seen sea creatures in their natural environment. For two years, divers filmed the fascinating creatures from the deep sea around 60 kilometers off the coast of the Côte d'Azur.

Farewell Paradise is about the search for a truth within a broken family, based on the personal story of director Sonja Wyss's family. From one shared history, through 6 different perspectives, 6 different stories emerge.

Drifting through the streets of former East Berlin neighborhoods, the film traces the unsteady affective terrain of isolation and displacement, assimilation and oppression. The bureaucratic condescension and violence of a residency interview sits alongside domestic scenes featuring a father and his young son. The film uncovers the loss and thrumming tensions of exilic life under Western Europe’s smooth gray surfaces.

He was a pop star of his time: with his paintings, copperplate engravings and woodcuts, Albrecht Dürer is one of the most important artists of the Renaissance. An obsessive, hedonist, visionary, networker and self-promoter, an eternal doubter and admonisher, a lover and seeker, in short: a modern man who was far ahead of his time. In a sensitive blend of fiction and documentary, the film Dürer tells of the life of the eccentric artist and of the stories behind his famous works.

Documentary directed by Hans Rolf Strobel

The film tells the story of the victims’ relatives and the survivors of the racist attack in Hanau in 2020, in which nine young people were murdered because the perpetrator did not consider them to be German.

Gustav Ljungdahl talks about the making of Marian Dora's "Das Verlangen der Maria D."