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Documentary about the Protestant Church

Everyday life of a bizarre bookseller who sees his main occupation in stacking and sorting paperbacks.

One’s own family is not always easy. Protagonist Akosua is queer, Ghanaian-German, polyamorous, and she wants a child. Her friend, director Mala Reinhardt, accompanies her for three years on her journey through Germany and Ghana in search of her identity and belonging in a multicultural context.

«In actuality, National Socialism simply didn't exist: both the perpetrators and their victims remained silent about it,» says the protagonist of Mariella Santibáñez» documentary film, Mrs. Solomon. Just a few years before her father's death, she began to suspect that this optimistic man, who taught her to find joy in each day, had survived the Holocaust in his youth. Delving into family archives, Mrs. Solomon investigates her father's history, which he had never mentioned before, while simultaneously uncovering the secrets and traumas of her own past. Over the course of 18 minutes, we witness the profound transformation of the protagonist as she journeys towards self-discovery.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Documentary about the Jewish Ashkenazi-Polish dancer and resistance fighter Sylvin Rubinstein, who made a career on stage in his sister's costumes after losing his family in the Second World War.

The Odyssey of the Lone Wolf looks at the current topic of the return of a predator from the perspective of European wolf research. To this day, it remains a mystery to scientists why individual young wolves travel incredible distances of more than 1000 kilometers in search of new territory.

A theatre reading about the Maji Maji uprising in the former German East Africa reveals that colonial, racist patterns of thought still dominate in Germany today. Philippa Ébené, Grada Kilomba and others linked to the production all get to have their say.

How do you find your place in an ableist world as a person with a disability? Disabled Hugo Schmidt talks to the almost 90 year old Franz-Josef Sauer, who was left with a walking impairment by a tuberculosis infection in his childhood. In the 1990s Sauer received the German Federal Cross of Merit for his achievements in the disabled community. As a public servant in Münster and Düsseldorf he worked on several projects which still benefit his disabled peers. Sauer and Schmidt discover that, although they were born almost 70 years apart, their paths in life are not that different from each other.

An artistic audiovisual project emanating from the economic and social confusion that first emerged in recent years between Germany and Greece and now is spreading throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The two countries are presented here as examples, representative of the differences and conflicts that are exacerbated by a crisis.

Employees remember the director Max Ophüls, who was forced to emigrate in 1933 - his fifth film "Liebelei" was a great success in cinemas. After an odyssey through France, Italy, the Netherlands and the USA, he returned to work in France and Germany in the 1950s. The film commemorates Ophüls, who died in 1957 at the age of 54, and uses a series of film examples to demonstrate his special way of directing.

Muharrem has dedicated himself to the Kurdish cause since the 1970s. From a theater artist living in exile, he has transformed himself to an activist. As a political prisoner, he was called many different names: Terrorist, comrade, friend.

Short film about Deutsche Bahn as a major steel purchaser

After 21 years I return to my city of birth in order to find out what would have occured to my family if we hadn't fled the war.

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.

Cities and landscapes bear the desires of the residents. This restless fight for a fulfilled life in which we often stand in our own way. We long for love, recognition, freedom and a sense of home – but just as soon as we arrive somewhere, we long to return or to go somewhere else. It is this longing that drives us through life.

In John B. Benitz’s documentary Behind the Lines, you might end up questioning whether history should just be written by historians. Based on Andrew Carroll’s New York Times best seller Letters of a Nation, Behind the Lines, and War Letters and inspired by a subsequent stage play, Benitz’s film tells the story of Carroll’s life mission to travel the world seeking out war letters. Over the past 25 years, he has preserved more than 200,000 correspondences from troops, veterans and their families, dating from the American Revolution to present day Ukraine. In Behind the Lines, we accompany Carroll on his continuing quest; one of fact finding but also tremendously emotional. This is captured evocatively when letters written by soldiers, some of whom having lost their lives only a day after having written them, are read by various actors such as Laura Dern and Gary Cole. The film is narrated by Annette Bening. – Adam Schartoff

Three women contemplate their relationship with convicted serial killer Richard Ramirez.

This is a far-reaching interrogation of something that’s usually regarded as the undoubted precondition of life (generally) and filmmaking (specifically): an objective, at best yet interpretable reality. Starting with Gerhard Mack, retired professor of theoretical elementary particle physics at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Claudia Lehmann and Konrad Hempel set out on a filmic expedition that aims for the universal and at the same time delves into the molecular (and smaller) realm, asking for the meaning of every kind of life in our complex world.

In the face of death you can really sense life. There are people who share their lives with the dead and some literally with corpses. A trip from Argentina to Manila, Cairo and Sulawesi.

1905: Heinrich Vogeler is celebrated as the star of German Jugendstil. But self-doubt increasingly torments him. In search of new inspirations he moves to the First World War and returns as a changed man.

Why are men two or even three times less likely than women to be diagnosed with depression? Why are the figures reversed between the sexes in suicide statistics—some 47,000 people in Europe each year, more than three-quarters of whom are men? In men, the signs may differ from those generally identified with depression: anger rather than sadness, hyperactivity (at work or in sports) rather than asthenia, antisocial or addictive behavior, greater difficulty in asking for help due to modesty or shame, etc. But whatever form it takes, mental suffering is still often overlooked by those affected, misdiagnosed by many practitioners, and therefore generally underestimated.

Picture postcards, travel brochures and holiday photos are all this merrily caustic collage needs to portray moods and desires between the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. In spring 1990, the first Interflug plane carrying GDR citizens touched down on Majorca. About the mediterranean colours of the island, the first-person narrator remarks in the voiceover: “We knew them from the postcards sent by our West German relatives. This was the West, this was West-West.” Ostensibly naïve, her recollections nonetheless develop an ironic undertone. However blue the sea shines in the photos, however loud the castanets play, the travel group with their East German money are never more than onlookers in this half-board paradise. Everything seems like an empty promise: the bursting oranges on the trees, the sumptuous breakfast buffet and the giant hotel pools.

In the early 1950s, European construction was in its infancy, while the Cold War intensified. A return to the archives over two crucial years, nourished by testimonies "from the inside".

Documentary film.

Hans-Dieter Grabe portrays his neighbour, Raimund, one year before his suicide.

Dobropillia is a town located in Eastern Ukraine: 70 km from the border where conflicts with the breakaway republics are raging on and people feel always like being on the verge of total war. The sheer uncertainty about the future pushes folks to cling on to their daily habits while trying to get along with the ever-shifting political landscape. A wide array of wildly diversified characters try to cope as good as they can with the hardships in their town. A death metal band keeps rehearsing daily. A teacher guides visitors through the story of the city. The wonders of a vibrating armchair are tested as a tool against stress and anxiety. An elderly lady who has lost her son tries to talk some sense into her fellow citizens urging them to accept peace.

"Those who don't know their limits have none." This is the story of Mehmet Göker, 32, absolute ruler of a cult-like insurance empire. The film shows the rise and fall of the young entrepreneur of Turkish origin from Kassel. A story of greed and megalomania. But also an illuminating insight into the business practices of private health insurance companies.

The word and image "Meer" are brought together by young people in a provisional way.

The nine-year-old Sinti girl Brigitta shows us her world. She lives with her family in a caravan site on the outskirts of a small Bavarian town. Everybody still speaks Romani and continues to live by the customs handed down. That means that the children take part in adult life and that the very highly respected parents describe how it used to be. In this community, all age groups live together naturally. For these Sinti, `gypsy' is an insult. At school they are taught there are two cultures, two languages and two realities: that of the Sinti and that of the Germans. While German is spoken at school, the only pupils are Sinti children. Brigitta animatedly describes the material deprivations, which are mollified by the life as `one big family'. Brigitta knows all too well where she belongs.

Concorde was the epitome of elegance, speed and glamour, linking London and New York in little over three hours. But on the 25th of July 2000 tragedy struck which meant the end of supersonic flight.

Short film about an express steamer

What does it mean to be trapped in your own body and not be seen? "Sand Girl" takes us into the unique world of experiences and everyday life of Veronika Raila, a young autistic woman who is hypersensitive and severely disabled from birth.

A reflection on retirement, the transition into this particular new phase of life and the significance and insignificance of work.

Marriage and sexuality is examined through the lens of screenwriter Dr. van de Velde, a Dutch gynocologist.

If the world doesn’t accept you and your kind, trailblaze a world that does. Inspired by the Black and Latinx underground Ballroom culture of New York, Sun, Teddy, and Xyza create Ballroom communities in Southeast Asia as safe havens from homophobia, transphobia, color discrimination and HIV stigma.

Gor's escape takes 48 hours. The 13-year-old is behind the wheel himself to bring his large family to safety. In Armenia, Gor is therefore celebrated as a hero. In his new home he can now fulfill his big dream: becoming a hairdresser.

The film proves that the apparently ideally and extremely purposefully coordinated relationships between flowers and the insects that pollinate them are nothing other than the result of a very long period of natural selection and mutual adaptation. Phenomena that contradict the preservation of the species must die off. The example of the bee and the red clover illustrates that contradictory relationships can be cultivated artificially.

Presents the human face of the immigration crisis, following four migrants from Syria, Kenya and Cameroon as they wade through Germany's rigorous immigration process and await the final verdict on their applications for asylum.