Discover Movies

Five women fight against racism towards people of color in Germany. Against discriminatory language, media stereotypes and an education system that hides a part of German history.

Artist and filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt creates elaborately staged films that investigate the power of language and the conventions of cinema as an allegory for societal and individual behaviors. With the multi-channel film installation Euphoria he continues this examination by exploring capitalism, colonialism, and the influential effects of unlimited economic growth in society.

Pop icon, film star, LGBTQ+ activist: Lady Gaga inspires her fans with much more than just her singing talent. But she is paying a high price for her rise to the top.

The Bastard King chronicles the life of a lion from cub to King - battling against an unimaginable enemy that is ravaging a world where blood is becoming easier to find than water. This unique story challenges traditional storytelling - serving as an allegory for endangered species - and our very own fate

Yelena is an activist fighting for the rights of cotton pickers. Mukhabbat is a farmer struggling with the hardships of rural life... COTTON 100% is a story of two strong women facing the challenges of a society where forced labor is a norm.

In 2022, Mantas Kvedaravičius went back to Ukraine, Mariupol, at the heart of the war, to be with the people he had met and filmed in 2015. Following his death, his producers and collaborators have put all their strength into continuing transmitting his work, his vision and his films. Also a PhD in anthropology, Mantas Kvedaravičius wished to testify as a filmmaker as far as possible from the agitation of the media and the politicians. With huge force and sensitivity, Mariupolis 2 depicts life as it continues amidst the bombing and reveals images that convey both tragedy and hope.

A portrait of the actress Winona Ryder, the great muse of nineties cinema, who, although she has had an atypical and somewhat erratic career, has always offered performances as sensitive as they are honest.

A great symbiosis of music and documentary film which creates a true-to-life impression of the sense of community what singing in a choir means. Their film finds humanity in art and magic in music. A moving and immersive cinematic experience of great warmth, emphasizing the unstoppable power of community in times of isolation and understanding how music brings people together.

The world is on the cusp of an ominous development: Bacteria are building resistance to existing antibiotics faster than new antibiotics are entering the market. An ever-widening cavity is opening up. This "antibiotic gap", as experts call this development, marks the beginning of a new era in medicine. For the first time in recent history, we have to come to terms with the fact that not all bacterial infections are treatable anymore - with implications for all areas of medicine, from surgery to oncology. The WHO has been using the term "silent pandemic" since the fall of 2021 because, unlike Corona, antibiotic resistance is creeping into our society unnoticed - but it is shaking up our healthcare system just as overarchingly. The issue is currently so serious that it is being treated with the same degree of urgency on the international policy stage as climate change or migration.

For the past two years, the world population has been under the spell of the coronavirus. Emergency regimes have been established, civil liberties have been dismantled, surveillance programs were being installed and an unprecedented global vaccination program has been rolled out. Are we doing the right thing, or did we make a deal with the devil in exchange for a benefit? Through critical voices from various areas of expertise, PANDAMNED attempted for the first time to paint the whole picture and shed light on the darkness. It has become a relentless stocktaking of our time, which global organizations, governments and big tech companies would have preferred to prevent. Documentary maker Marijn Poels takes the viewer on an enlightening journey through the emerging absurd world of the "New Normal" and how we can still prevent it.

Together with African small farmholders Tony Rinaudo, an Australian agronomist, has been fighting against the spread of the desert for 30 years and challenges ideas of conventional reforestation with his simple yet effective method.

In August 1988, two armed bank robbers keep German police at bay for 54 hours during a hostage-taking drama that ends in a shootout and three deaths.

The two-part documentary Pop & Passion tells of power and magic, but also of the pressure and excess that prevails in the pop business.

Andrés Godoy is an unusual musician. At the age of 14, already an accomplished guitarist, he lost his right arm while working in his parents' mill. After years of depression, he reinvented himself by creating his own playing technique, and went on to become one of the world's leading guitarists.

The story of the life, loves and work of US writer Patricia Highsmith (1921-95), told through her unpublished diaries, her own voice and that of those who knew her, both family and close friends.

The exceptional photographer Andreas Reiner is accompanied in his work. His photographs are often provocative, but also bear witness to a fierce lust for life. Shots of his private life on a farm complete this hymn to human existence.

In 2019, the leakage of messages exchanged by authorities in Brazil undermines the credibility of Operation Lava Jato. A group of journalists follows the unfolding of the case, in a sequence of crises that puts Brazilian democracy at risk.

Leah and Purity are rangers in the Kenyan bushland. They roam around Amboseli National Park every day to track down wildlife. The Maasai shepherds also have their villages here. Conflicts can hardly be avoided. The young women are often called to missions to mediate or comfort. The two Maasai women themselves have to fight against discrimination

Could psychedelics treat depression? Banned substances such as LSD and psilocybin are now being tested for various afflictions. Several studies are ongoing with one of the largest being conducted by the Charité hospital in Berlin and the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. Since the risks and side effects of the substances have not yet been fully researched, their use for therapeutic purposes remains highly controversial.

With exclusive behind-the-scenes access into Herzog’s everyday life, rare archive material and in-depth interviews with celebrated collaborators – including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman, and Robert Pattinson, we are given an exciting glimpse into the work and personal life of the iconic artist.

In this documentary, 6 protagonists tell their personal experiences of abortion and sterilization, from unplanned pregnancy to a happy mother and vice versa from the wanted child to regretting motherhood.

At the death of her mother, Aga decides to leave her life in Germany with her partner Maja to look after her younger brother in Poland. To do this, she has to hide her love for another woman from the authorities. Closely following its protagonists, Silent Love delicately narrates their discreet struggle against a prying and viscerally homophobic society.

The high consumption of snacks and sweets in Germany keeps producers on their toes. In Viersen, consumer giant Mars produces 10 million cookie chocolate bars every day-and each of them must look and taste absolutely identical. In Erdmannhausen, snack pretzels are produced in the first Württemberg pretzel factory, Huober. And the Lübeck-based marzipan manufacturer Niederegger wants to use traditional production processes to produce what it claims is the best marzipan in the world.

A fascinating exploration of the literary — The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, by English playwright William Shakespeare (1604) — and lyrical — Othello, by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (1887) — myth of Othello, the desperately tragic story of a Moorish general in the army of the Venetian Republic whose absurd jealousy poisons his love for his wife Desdemona.

Women are sexually insulted and threatened by men every day. Experts around the world are registering an anti-feminist backlash that seems to be on the verge of becoming socially acceptable. Particularly affected: women in publicly visible positions – such as politicians, actresses or entrepreneurs. Who is behind the attacks and what are the motives?

An european artist writes about his experience in portraying life in Brazil during the colonial period. Aporteiro – concierge and security guard in one – watches the surveillance cameras in a residential building, while reflecting on his profession and the relationship with his employers. Between the exotic idyll of front yards and deterrent technology, his task is to establish security and normality. Brazil’s troubled past and complicated present come together in this highly charged film.

With tailor-made costumes, sophisticated choreography and consummate perfection, the German Television Ballet made screen history. Since 1962, the 26 ladies and gentlemen have danced their way into the hearts of millions of viewers. The television ballet has appeared in all the major television shows: "Kessel Buntes", "Showkolade" and "Schlager einer großen Stadt". Even in the DEFA film "Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella", the famous long legs were not to be missed.

During the Cold War, many of those who tried to flee westward across the dangerous and blurred line separating communist Czechoslovakia from freedom were gunned down: the story of Europe's deadliest border.

Explore the tragic truth about the massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games in Germany. Through interviews with key people such as the families of slain Olympians, German investigators and an anonymous perpetrator.

The weather station on the Khodovarikha peninsula on the edge of the Russian Arctic Ocean in the Nenets Autonomous District is probably one of the loneliest workplaces in the world. Unimaginably the weather for our weather forecasts is measured there using the simplest of tools without any electronics. The residents are a professional soldier who has been retrained as a meteorologist and was traumatized in the Chechen war, his young wife, whose previous life in the world of cities and money was a brutal failure, a cancer-stricken pensioner who has returned to his birthplace, the aggressive, boozy head of the station with a dubious, possibly criminal past, and Jack, the dog. Five traumatized souls removed from society, who, in the solitude of the seemingly paradisiacal, hostile nature of the Arctic, try to deal with themselves, the absence of civilization, their human needs and shortcomings, and to master their lives.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has fundamentally changed the German-Russian relationship. This is especially a special topic for those people who grew up in the GDR. Because what the USA were to many in the west, the Soviet Union was to many in the east: “the big brother”. And now? The invasion of Ukraine by Russia calls old certainties into question, rocked convictions, and runs like a rift through families. In this film, the ARD journalist and host Jessy Wellmer embarks on a very personal journey through the east of Germany. Born in 1979 in Güstrow in Mecklenburg, the Russian war of aggression also caused intensive discussions in her family which ultimately were the cause for this film. How do the East Germans think with regard to Russia? Why is there often a greater deal of closeness to Russia here? And what does it say about the divide which still exists in the German populace more than 30 years after the fall of the wall?

Masha and Ilya were born around the time Vladimir Putin came to power. The girl and the boy, just like their friends, wanted to live in a free, democratic and open country. Fighting for freedom and their future, our heroes organise discussion clubs and protest actions, participate in pickets and give lectures, support their comrades who are behind bars, try to change the minds of their relatives, friends and ordinary passers-by in various Russian cities. "Moscow, come out!" shouts Masha at a rally. But Moscow does not come out, it is busy and in a hurry. The centuries-old machine of unfreedom sweeps the boys away. War breaks out. And we all find ourselves in another reality.

Grandma has become a little doddery. And since the death of her husband, called E.O., ever bigger gaps have opened in her memory, and her disorientation has increased. Director Astrid Menzel makes a decision: to take a ten-day canoe trip on northern German waters with her brother and the 86-year-old lady. An adventure whose outcome is uncertain and which the three travellers have to face anew at every stage.

Jonasz studies insects and fishes, Signe leaves and herbs. After a day spent in gardens and libraries, they meet, take the train and leave the city, pitching their tent on the shores of a lake. As they read, eat fruit, wander the forest and swim in the cold water, the outside world feels further and further away. A stranger appears and a trio is formed. But there are also other trios, other lakes, different places, different times.

A mysterious story from the madness of the Second World War: when the Red Army shot down a civilian plane over Brandenburg villages on April 20, 1945, the incident not only destroyed lives, but also left deep traces and numerous questions at the scene of the accident: who was on board the plane and who was even allowed to leave Berlin, which had been bombed by the Allies?

"Constant" is a journey through the social and political histories of measurement. For most of recorded history, the human body was the measure of all things. “Constant” asks what led measurement to depart from the body and become a science unto itself. The film explores three shifts in the history of measurement standardization, from the land surveying that drove Early Modern European land privatization, to the French Revolution that drove the Metric Revolution, to the conceptual dematerialisation of measurement in the contemporary era of Big Science. Each chapter traces the relationship of measurement standardization to ideas of egalitarianism, agency, justice, and power. Cinematic and technical images that begin as products of measurement systems are stretched beyond their functions to describe the resistance of lived experience to symbolic abstractions.

Bewildering, amusing, insightful: Anke Engelke acts out eight authentic interviews, assembling them into a gigantic mosaic about motherhood.

A reconstruction of the shipwreck of Costa Concordia, occurred on the night of 13 January 2012 in front of the Island of Giglio. A tragic night, full of emotions, that changed the life of those who were on board and the history of tourist navigation.

He is versatile, he is unmistakable, he is one of Berlin's best-known and most popular artists: Frank Zander. The singer and entertainer, who many of his fans affectionately call "Franky Boy", is still not thinking about retiring after more than 50 years on stage. Today, the man with the unmistakable grating voice celebrates his 80th birthday. After training as a graphic designer, Zander began his career as a singer and guitarist with the Gloomy Moon Singers, who later became the Gloomys. He began his solo career in the early 1970s and landed numerous hits with songs such as "Der Ur-Ur-Enkel von Frankenstein", "Ich trink auf dein Wohl, Marie" and "Oh, Susi", and was also discovered by television in the mid-1970s: Together with Helga Feddersen, he hosted the legendary "Plattenküche" and wrote a piece of television history. This was followed by quirky music and comedy shows such as "Bananas", "Vorsicht Musik" and "Känguru".

On 9 July 2021, the 422 workers at the GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio near Florence received their dismissal, by email. They immediately met in front of the factory, scared away the management's bodyguards and have been holding an open-ended meeting at the factory ever since. In June of 2022, they talk about how they are rooted in the territory, why 30,000 people demonstrated with them. They explain why they put their struggle under the slogan "Insorgiamo!" ("Let's rise up!"), the slogan of the italian partisans who liberated Florence in 1944. But they also talk about their collaboration with climate activists and what they would like to produce. But as things stand today, it is not the workers who are responsible for the ecological damage caused by production: "Nobody asked me what I would like to produce when they hired me. They hired me and that was it."

She is one of the most mysterious icons of the pop world; fame at any price was always her credo: Amanda Lear. She became Salvador Dalí's muse at an early age and had relationships with musicians such as Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and Brian Jones. She developed as a model, painter, writer, singer and androgynous disco queen. "Queen Lear" tells the story of her many lives.

Udo Kier dies his way through film history. He screams, falls, lies, is cut into pieces, shot or commits suicide. Again and again his empty gaze, again and again his rigid body. In 54 years as an actor, Udo Kier played in more than 170 feature films, 120 series episodes and 50 short films. More than 70 times Udo Kier tried to give an expression to dying and death. In Staging Death, these representations of death merge into a montage of the most diverse shots, film formats, special effects and sound designs. "Directors are now thinking increasingly strained about what new ways they can kill me. […] At some point, somebody would have to make a montage of all my film deaths." Udo Kier (Interview Subway Magazine #145, December 1999)

Hammer and compass in Mozambique. We see a GDR flag waved at a rally in Maputo, carried by "Madgermanes", contract workers who once toiled in eastern Germany. Some of them founded families there, like Eulidio. His daughter Sarah grows up with her mother in Berlin. The relationship with her "second home" is slow in growing, partly thanks to Luana, Sarah's baby, whose father, Eduardo is also from Mozambique.

Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?

Kim has her music. Kim has her dogs. Kim has her faith. Kim struggles, every day: with anxiety, for a bit of normality, to stand on her own two feet. Kim’s mother, Lore, was deported to Auschwitz at the age of six. To this day, Lore is a DP, a displaced person. Lore has her index cards. From morning till night, she transcribes articles from the daily newspaper, archiving them in boxes and baskets. All her life, Lore has been silent: about her mother, about the hiding place where she survived, about Tom, her son, Kim’s brother, who took his own life. Kim instead wants to talk: about her childhood with Lore, about Tom, about the scarred lives they both lead.

Michael Scholly is released 28 years after being sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. He had three years to prepare for this moment. But the world outside the prison walls has fundamentally changed in his absence and Scholly's ideas and expectations have little in common with reality. Questions arise: Can Scholly meet the demands placed on him? Is Scholly ready for freedom? His first year after discharge was supposed to provide answers - but the answer came sooner than expected.

After the Russian invasion, a young Ukrainian woman becomes an accidental TikTok star when sharing her funny takes on an awful situation.

Koekie, Fluksie, Sanna and Jo-Marie live together in a safehouse in Bredasdorp, a small town in South Africa. This community of around 15,000 has been shaken by a series of rapes and murders of women. Community worker Lana O’Neill felt compelled to create a safe place for the most vulnerable women, so that what happened to Anene, Kayde, Sulnita and Jodene doesn’t happen to them too.

An environmental spy infiltrates the global syndicate for illegal timber trading. With the aid of a hidden camera he documents the chain of illegal activities, from harvesting of the wood to the marketing of “washed” products in supermarkets. This turns out to be an excellent motor for political change.

Born in 1873 in a poor neighbourhood in Naples, Enrico Caruso conquered the world with his singing voice. At the age of 27 he got a contract at the Scala in Milan, and his already considerable popularity skyrocketed thanks to the invention of the gramophone. He sold millions of records, and garnered international acclaim. In 1903 he moved to New York to perform at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera, in the role of Radames. But his riches and fame attracted the attention of the Mafia, who started blackmailing him. He felt trapped by his fame and died at just 48 years old. Biographer Francesco Canessa, the music critic Jürgen Kesting and the composer Micha Hamel explain the ups and downs of the man behind the timeless Italian voice.

They grew up in the land of dictators and surveillance, where images are censored, photos are burned, thoughts are discreet, and mouths are kept shut. They grew up in Syria.

After the brilliant success of her “Mozart y Mambo” project, Sarah Willis is returning to Cuba. This time the Berlin Philharmonic hornist sets out together with the “Havana Lyceum Orchestra” on a musical road trip to showcase the traditional Cuban music, bringing viewers and listeners into even more intense and lively contact with its roots and traditions. With them, the musicians bring a very special commissioned work. Sarah Willis has commissioned six young Cuban composers to compose a “Cuban Dance Suite” in six movements – for strings, Cuban percussion and solo horn in a fresh and modern adaption of traditional Cuban dances: Son, Danzón, Guaguanco, Cha-Cha, Bolero and Changüi.

Around the year 2000, I was looking for a house in the countryside around Berlin. After two years, I found a former farmhouse and started renovating it. In the centers of the surrounding villages, enamel signs from socialist times were attached to walls and pedestals: “Death March April 1945” - with a red concentration camp triangle, a simple map with the route and a slightly abstract row of shaven-headed prisoners. Sometimes flowers were planted in front of them.