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"Hermann mein Vater" is a companion piece by director Helma Sanders-Brahms to her 1980 film "Germany Pale Mother". The latter work was focused on the impact of war on a German family. This made-for-tv documentary follows Sanders-Brahms and her father Hermann on a trip to Normandy, where he was stationed as a soldier in 1940-41.

London 1976: Between economic crises and the Silver Jubilee, something is brewing in the squats and basement clubs of West London: Punk. A promise, a new beginning. Punk meant self-empowerment, especially for the women in the scene. For the first time, women picked up guitar, bass and drums, formed bands and wrote their own songs.

The Russian island Sakhalin lies 8000 km to the east of Moscow. Every summer, with state support, it hosts a military-patriotic camp for kids from the region. The children are being trained in patriotism and armed combat, backed by lessons of Russian orthodox tradition. In Summer 2015, due to the 70th anniversary of the victory of the soviet army in WWII, the camp takes part in reconstruction of a historic battle, where the kids take on the roles of soldiers. The documentary follows the children in their daily training until the final performance.

Karl Weisz, photographer of the trip, the fight, the naked life. With the eye of a survivor who doesn't want to leave the street, his home; with the eye of an ex-junkie who misses the thrill, of a friend who is led by his past.

Strasbourg was home to one of three Reich Universities founded by the Nazis, known as a project close to Hitler's heart. The university, founded in 1941, is infamous for the human experiments performed on KZ prisoners by the professors of the medical faculty. What did its dean, Johannes Stein, grandfather of documentarian Kirsten Esch, know of these crimes?

Hansjürgen Pohland's short documentary is an audiovisual study that captures events and people on the streets on film. The special feature of the work is that the people and objects are portrayed exclusively through their shadows.

When Lieutenant Colonel Anastasia Biefang came out as transgender at the height of her military career, she became the first trans female commander in the history of Germany’s armed forces. The film follows her personal and professional journey, including her physical transition, increasing demands on her as a military leader, and the stress of planning a wedding before being deployed to Afghanistan.

My mother googles the film hero of her youth: Helmut Berger. She is shocked: only an addicted shadow of the former icon seems to be left. She decides to halt the obvious catastrophic decline of the once “most handsome man in the world”. As a consequence, this one-time god of the screen is suddenly sitting on my mother’s sofa in Nordsehl in Lower Saxony. And he stays put - for several months. While he trustingly rolls out his whole life before us, the dividing lines between film team, world star and family intermingle. This is a film about ageing, rising and falling - and about the fact that it is sometimes possible to regain an element of dignity in life.

Austria: the conservative People's Party has been in power in Styria for sixty years - but now its position is being jeopardized by the communist city councillor Ernest Kaltenegger of all people. He gives away sixty percent of his salary to the needy, Lenin pictures and Cuba flags hang in his office and people address each other as "comrades". Although this may seem somewhat anachronistic, his KPÖ has already won 21% in the local council elections with this policy and even conservative voters are secretly giving him money. In the upcoming state elections, they now want to try to transfer their successful model to the state level...

Film adaptation of Werner Keller's bestselling non-fiction book, which attempts to show in a "less spectacular way than the original" that archaeological finds and findings do not contradict biblical statements.

On the shores of the Gulf of Finland, the ancient Finno-Ugric peoples originated a singing tradition of mysterious power called the Regilaul. These songs are the roots of Estonia’s renowned singing culture. Based on the continuous repetition of eight-syllable verses, they produce a haunting sound able to connect the fleeting present with the eternal circle of life. Against the stunning setting of modern Estonia, this film explores how Regi songs still fire the imagination today, weaving together people and nature through song.

Documentary about the history of German television.

Whether "Harry Potter", "Kevin - Home Alone" or the "Titanic" - almost everything can be rebuilt from LEGO bricks. On the occasion of LEGO's 90th birthday, Kabel Eins travels to the company headquarters in Billund and asks questions like: How did LEGO become one of the largest toy manufacturers in the world? Will LEGO made of plastic soon be history? And who is behind the ideas? Fans like Guildo Horn, Panagiota Petridou or Eko Fresh comment on the brand's ten biggest milestones.

Nardos, an Azmari singer from Addis Ababa, dreams of telling stories about the lives of ordinary people through her music. In her search for the stories behind her songs, she meets Gennet, a poet who lives on the streets with her children. Nardos puts the lives, visions and power of Ethiopian women at the center of her creation as we slowly immerse ourselves in a rapidly changing country.

For the first time in history, a white man has been invited to become a Massai Warrior. The Massai of East Africa are one of the last tribes on earth to live as they did hundreds of years ago. Benjamin will live among the tribe, sleeping, hunting, and surviving in the bush. He will get to know their culture, their customs of dancing and playing, and learn how to conquer the dangers of the wilderness. Will he be able to become a true Massai warrior? To become a Massai is a great journey into the unknown.

Documentary about the vanishing traces of WWII and the Holocaust in contemporary Berlin, and about individuals who keep the memory alive despite of that in a very personal way. Like the group of female friends who tend the garden of the Liebermann estate, or the Shoah survivor who has always kept the lights on in her home since she evaded Nazi persecution by hiding in a dark bunker. Filmmaker Alexa Karolinski talks to historians and Berlin Jews, and her film connects a poetic portrait of the city with the memory of a collective Jewish trauma that not only affects the generation of survivors.

Since the massacre by the terrorist organization Hamas on October 7, 2023, it has been clear that anti-Semitism is also a massive problem in Germany. The media reports on anti-Semitic incidents almost every day. Jews no longer feel safe and are often victims of discrimination and hatred. More than 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Jewish life in Germany is still often exposed to anti-Semitic hostility. Schools, kindergartens and synagogues must be guarded. In the wake of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on German streets, aggressive anti-Semitic agitation by angry Islamist mobs is increasingly occurring. Politics is failing to act on its promise. But the breeding ground for this is older. The documentary attempts to show that, based on age-old hatred, stereotypes and prejudices, anti-Semitism from the right-wing, from left-progressive circles and the middle of society is omnipresent in Germany.

Some villages are torn down because of open cast mining south of Leipzig. The landscape changes and so do the lives of the people. The four years chronicle - an allegory of the loss of homeland, the destruction of nature in the name of progress and prosperity. Sadness and melancholy remain. Environmental protection, one of the difficult issues in the GDR.

"Faith and Beauty" - The BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit (German for BDM Faith and Beauty Society) was founded in 1938 to serve as a tie-in between the work of the League of German Girls (BDM) and that of the National Socialist Women's League. Membership was voluntary and open to girls aged 17 to 21. A Nazi propaganda film.

An alternative history of the not-so-well-known West German genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.

Sex is the defining theme of his life—it made Oswalt Kolle successful and famous as both an author and a film producer. In the 1960s and 70s, beginning with his book *Dein Kind, das unbekannte Wesen* (Your Child: The Unknown Being), he embarked on a mission to liberate the German people from a repressed and old-fashioned approach to eroticism. His goal was sexual enlightenment, and he became its standard-bearer. Yet, even at the age of nearly 80, Oswalt Kolle continues to participate—with a spirited, combative energy—in public discourse through lectures, talk shows, and books, addressing topics such as sex in old age, homosexuality, and, most recently, assisted dying.

Fragmented views of deserts and Baghdad interiors evoke a society shaped by war, repression and resilience, linking cosmic beliefs with history and memory.

A journey through the most beautiful corners of Europe! Europe 4K is composed of individual films, which show what the versatile continent has to offer. Starting with three of the most famous countries in Europe, this documentary takes us through the Mediterranean atmosphere of Italy, takes us to France, the cultural and gourmet Mecca and also dares a jump across the continent to the eastern Hungary, with its history and by contrasts embossed capital Budapest. The set with the UHD Blu-ray, including normal Blu-ray is an unforgettable journey through the most beautiful cities in Europe, coupled with great stories about the history of each city.

Documentary about the German actor Rudolf Fernau

Documentary about Ludwig II.

During the donations scandal of 1999/2000, Helmut Kohl gave his legendary "word of honor" not to name any donors. This documentary explores the question of what this word of honor was really all about

An overview of the ruins of Angkor, the former capital of the Khmer Empire.

In the mists of war and violence, the Harlequin, trumpet in hand, drifts through ravaged landscape passing a cripple and a marionette: Bernhard Heisig's pictorial worlds shock the viewer by depicting the great dramas of German history. Both a victim and a perpetrator in World War II and in the GDR dictatorship, the artist's search for sense and truth led him to his moving image formulas. Director Reiner E. Moritz converses with the renowned ex-principal of the Leipzig Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Visual Arts) about his work, which influenced the development of art for many decades in the rigid GDR system.

Between 1933 and 1935, the painter Wilhelm Eggert and his wife Dora Kuster traveled the African continent. Their expedition took them from Mediterranean Algiers through the Sahara and parts of the African west coast to the Congo and Kenya. Not only did the couple explore vast stretches of land that were almost completely unknown, at least to private travelers at the time, they also captured this journey on film. A screenable documentary film was compiled from the original 12,000m of film material. In cinemas and film clubs, European audiences were presented with a film that was evidently able to satisfy an interest in foreign, 'wild' cultures and exotic landscapes, albeit one that was always Eurocentric. The spectacular shots of African lifestyles and nature, which in many respects were new to European viewers who were almost completely unfamiliar with Africa, were praised and appreciated precisely because of their supposed authenticity.

A controversial documentary about four gay men, who are living on the countryside of Swabia (a rural area in the south west of Germany) far off big cities. Being alone as Gays among a entirely heterosexual environment, they still try to live a rich and happy life.

Austria's largest housing complex erected in one building stage is situated in the Northeast of Vienna. It lies on the former premises of a horse racetrack and comprises 2.400 flats. 59 blocks and long hall-like corridors lead more than 8.000 people to their living rooms: The film offers glimpses into the lives of more than 20 people - the life of an individual behind one of the countless doors.

Final part of a long-term observation of football talents trained at Borussia Dortmund in the 1990s. Three lives with, for and after the "favourite sport".

The film observes the implementation of an idea by a special company, the Waldviertler shoe factory, in one of Austria's most precarious regions, the northern Waldviertel. How can the visions of a just world that drive company owner Heinrich Staudinger be realized in the economic developments of the present?

Documentary about construction work.

The Drill family lives in a big city house where everything runs smoothly. The father drives a small van with groceries, the son rides a motorcycle, the daughter rides a bicycle, and Mr. Höflich from the floor below, who adores the daughter, drives a small car. But in order for everyone to be one big family in traffic, they have to be considerate of each other.

Franky is a unique street sweeper who cleans his neighborhood in Munich every morning at 4:30. In addition to his work on the streets of Munich, he is also a painter and hobby philosopher.

Documentary film.

Wallraff hid for two years as Ali Levent Sinirloglu, working various jobs as a Turk. His experiences were shocking, and he documented them with a video camera, aided by director Jörg Gfrörer. The footage, along with additional recordings, was edited into a 106-minute film from about 100 hours of material.

A poetic but also wryly humorous study of the selfish artist trying to play the indifferent God, but ending up revealing himself as all too human.

In the film, the director examines the understanding of sport and the performance requirements in the German Democratic Republic. Among others, she interviewed four important athletes who took part in various world championships and Olympic Games for the GDR. Director Kaudelka sheds light on the glorious and at times arduous path of the protagonists in the GDR and how their lives changed after the fall of the Wall.

At the beginning of cinematography were a variety of devices and inventions that produced animated images. They meet me today as a colorful group of plastic in the souvenir shop or chewing gum machine. This survival story is documented in the installation “Zu Hundert Jahre Film”; the film documents this installation.

Along the dark country roads of rural Germany, prostitutes from foreign countries work in old caravans. ln this uncanny world, the murder of one of the women .

Berlin is changing. The film maker interviewed and accompanied real estate agents and investors and filmed tenants struggling to cope with the situation.

Anna, who was born in Germany, has a distant relationship with her father Hung and his country of birth, Vietnam. When she finds out through a documentary that he was affected by racist attacks in Rostock in 1992, she is suddenly confronted with her father's culture and history.

On August 21, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City, after eleven years of exile. The killer, Ramon Mercader, a young Spanish communist, was a character straight out of a spy movie. He was recruited in 1937 by Stalin's secret service when the latter decided to eliminate Trotsky, that tireless opponent. Through the epic story of Trotsky's last years in exile in Mexico, enriched with flashbacks to his political past, this film, a true historical thriller, offers a cross-narrative between Trotsky's life in exile and the setting up, at the same time, of "Operation Duck", the code name for his assassination.

The Stammheim trial against the leadership of the first generation of the RAF was one of the most elaborate in the Federal Republic of Germany. Through this trial, Stammheim also became a place of identity for the RAF. The docudrama uses the perspective of Horst Bubeck, who as a prison officer in the cell wing had the most intensive contact with the prisoners, to shed new light on the history.

Notizen aus dem Altmühltal shows the West German south as mezzogiorno of the Wirtschaftswunder republic: the simple folk, as they say, vegetate a bit dully through their days; meanwhile, the authorities do nothing to promote the economic, and hence social, development of the region, while the local honoraries look back on better times.

Who is the funniest Berliner? Helga Hahnemann or Edith Hancke, Brigitte Mira or Cindy from Marzahn? rbb television is looking for the Berliner with the biggest mouth and the even bigger heart. Who will be number 1? To this day, they inspire TV audiences with their big mouths and big hearts - genuine Berliners such as Ingrid Steeger, the nation's "funny girl", Helga Hahnemann, the unforgettable "Henne", or Cindy from Marzahn, the cult figure in pink and jogging pants. From a selection of 15 ladies, rbb Fernsehen is looking for the funniest Berliner of all time. Highlights from 60 years of German television entertainment will be presented: legendary appearances and sketches, curious finds and lots of music and artistry. There will be a reunion with the master cake thrower and fast-talker Gisela Schlüter, the funky rock star Nina Hagen, the "Drei Damen vom Grill" and many, many more.