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In 2019, 160 people will be chosen by lot from the population registers throughout Germany. The aim is to involve the people in decision-making processes outside of elections. Under the chairmanship of former Bavarian Prime Minister Günther Beckstein, 160 citizens will discuss the future of democracy in Germany over four days in Leipzig in autumn 2019. The central question: What form of democracy does Germany want and need?

What are heroes made of and why do our societies need them so badly? At the Staatsoper Stuttgart, stage director Árpád Schilling tries to answer this mythological, political and existential question, lying at the core of Richard Wagners Lohengrin. A wonder! A miracle!, the men and women of Brabant agreed when, against all expectations, someone stood up for Elsa and invalidated the allegations made by the plaintiff Telramund. And yet he does the most normal thing in the world: to help a person in distress. So why is there a need for this savior, surrounded by the aura of mystery, whose name and origin even his new wife Elsa cannot ask? Why does the collective body abdicates its moral and political responsibilities and surrenders them to a single individual? And when does the providential man stops being a savior and becomes a threat?

A black paste that made our world louder and happier: when inventor Emil Berliner began using shellac as a sound carrier in 1896, this was the initial spark for a media revolution that has continued right up to the present day. It had already begun ten years earlier with Emil Berliner's invention of the gramophone. Together, the record and the record player changed people's everyday lives. It was a revolution - technically and culturally - because shellac records, unlike wax cylinders, could be reproduced and distributed on a mass scale. 78 revolutions per minute became the standard playback speed and shellac - the resinous paste made from slate flour, cotton, soot and the resin of the lacquer louse - gave the record its name and became synonymous with an era.

A documentary about five taxi drivers, each driving in Bangkok, Pristina, Dakar, El Paso or Berlin.

Nude poetry reading: pure fun!

Two sisters reunite after years apart. Two opposing views of the father collide and each one defends a different truth about the deceased parent. In the meantime, they spot a mysterious object in one of the rooms. But they find themselves unable to uncover it.

The wildlife of the tundra on Alaska's north coast is particularly threatened by climate change.

A human sees his past in a sphere. He is gay and changes his sexuality and gets to know a woman. They are happy, but he does not feel well, and his girlfriend gets pregnant. He misses his boyfriend, but still wants to be with the woman. Suddenly he leaves the woman and leaves her alone. He pounds the ball and takes new ones and the story repeats itself.

Grey house facades roll by like monstrous walls. Numerous identical windows, creating lines of lights as they pass by steadily. The bike courier Michel pushes through crowded streets of a dystopian city of the future. On behalf of the monopoly Clinair, he delivers oxygen tanks that are now necessary.

A recurring drone changes and reshapes the land and sea.

Nothing shouts northern wilderness more than a magnificent moose, the undisputed king of the forest. But moose don’t start out big and burly; for two twins born into a forest glade, a challenging life lies ahead.

Mr. Kremer's life seems narrow and dreary on the outside - he is unemployed and lives in a tiny apartment in the middle of the city. But on the inside, he enters the portal to another world. A journey begins that he is less and less able to separate from the outside world. An inner voice guides him and makes him predict numbers, which often leads to bizarre situations. The atmospheric film allows the viewer to participate in both the protagonist's floating perception and the discovery of his inner dimension.

Why is a person evil? Is evil in the genes? These questions have always preoccupied people. The approaches to explaining evil are as varied as evil itself. The latest science assumes that there are three factors that shape human behavior: genes, the environment and the individual situation. All three factors interact and influence each other. The film presents the latest research and addresses one of the most exciting questions in behavioral research.

White fog is slowly moving from left to right. A man cleans his workwear from a vanishing distance with an air hose. Three trembling steel cables emerge from a grey metal building. A large dump truck with a full load passes by. In a deeply green forest landscape there is a dark monolith. You can hear jingling metal noises from the off, which cause a spreading echo. A white cargo helicopter is slowly approaching for landing. A dredger moves in a circle on the surface of the water. In "Objects and Artifacts", various pictorial elements come into contact with each other in a situational manner and create a friction surface that deals with forms of a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Symbols of a bygone era, the cars produced by the state-owned factories of the Eastern Bloc are now highly prized by collectors. In the former German Democratic Republic, as in the other Eastern Bloc countries, the individual car was a grail, an almost unattainable commodity.

Offenbach’s mockery of bourgeois ideals, the sublimity of music and the institution of marriage ensures that the moralistic sermonizing of ‘Public Opinion’ falls on deaf ears. The mysterious figure of John Styx tells the story of behind-the-times Orpheus and his hacked-off Eurydice, of gods and goddesses seeking diversion, jaded with humdrum life in Olympus. He tells of the rebellion in the pantheon, which Jupiter adeptly averts by promising an amusement for his entourage. Burning with curiosity to see the beauteous captive and the contest between Jupiter and Pluto for Eurydice’s favour, the illustrious company embarks on an infernal ride to the underworld that culminates in what is surely the most wellknown can-can in the history of music. And what of Eurydice? She ends up putting a spoke in everyone’s wheel…

Tom is a grossly engineered man who is getting a bit old now. Despite his age, he wants to learn to play the piano. However, his music teacher Tina is search desperate for his talent. And so Tom has to find his own language and access to music.

Two boys, who really only want to hitch up on girls, pick up a hitchhiker who fits exactly into their "prey scheme". But their offensive flirting attempts not only fail - they also quickly find out that their passenger isn't as defenseless as they think.

In Wuqiao, a small Chinese town, the inhabitants are dedicated to circus. For decades, different generations have been presenting themselves as clowns, magicians, acrobats and tamers. During the holidays of Chinese New Year, the Wuqiao Acrobatic World turns into a big playground for spectators. Surrounded by Buddhist temples and Taoist sculptures, artists create their own space of circus tradition, imagination, illusion and reality. Backstage life is melancholic. "Wuqiao Circus", a film about circus life fragments, performative existence and the love for playfulness.

The area around Stuttgarter Platz unites the most diverse worlds: It is a celebrity neighborhood, middle-class Charlottenburg and a meeting place for the drug scene. The documentary "Smart Berlin - Der Stutti" is a portrait of this special neighborhood through the eyes of its residents. Because they take over a bit of the direction here - from a selfie perspective.

In Aurand’s signature diaristic form, roses in bloom, farm animals, Orkney landscapes, and scenes of the late filmmaker Margaret Tait having tea are rendered through expressive Bolex movements as well as the director’s active camera, and punctuated by abstract swaths of saturated and shifting colors. The film is an homage to Tait, whom Aurand visited in Orkney.

To outsiders, Turkmenistan is one of the world's least known countries. For the first time in ten years, a film crew has been free to visit spectacular excavation sites and follow international researchers into areas that have long been off-limits. Once considered the poorest part of the Soviet Union, oil and natural gas have brought new wealth to Turkmenistan today. A little known fact in the West is that 4,000 years ago, the country was home to one of the ancient world's centers of power. Although it flourished around the same time as the advanced civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Margiana empire was later largely forgotten. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the country has been slowly opening up to international researchers, and its astounding cultural heritage is coming to light.

The government collects illegal aliens from their homes and stuffs them into detention camps.

August Klar has a dream. He’s trying to make a movie, that has never been done before. His ambitions are high, his methods are unconventional and to some extendeds even absurd - But his biggest obstacle is: August has no clue how to make a movie. The Documentary „How to Poetry Film“ follows the young Slam Poet through the Development process of his first shortfilm and dares to take a look at what lies between Euphoria and Rock Bottom while portraying the mind of wild creative that struggles to catch up with his ideas...

Behind bars in Russia is no fun - in our Documentary about Russia's toughest prison we show why! Terrorists, gunmen and mafia bosses are serving their life sentences in the Russian penal camp "Vologodski Pjatak". The fortress on the island of Ognenny was built as a monastery in the 16th century. Later the "Fire Island" was converted into a gulag for enemies of the state after the October Revolution of 1917. Since 1994 it is a maximum security prison for serious criminals. Christoph Wanner is the first western TV reporter to manage to shoot behind the prison walls on the island of the damned.

Migration is one of the great phenomena of the natural world. When it’s time to move some take to the skies or the oceans, but the migrants we know best are found in the awe-inspiring herds running across our planet.

A pretentious independent filmmaker wants to resist the urge to keep making bad movies while being tortured by the compliments of his friends.

Daniel rents out her body. Her customers are inhabitants of the Spheres - a virtual reality that is home to large parts of the population and that used to be Daniel’s home too. While saving up the money she makes to pay for her eventual return to the Spheres she receives a risky offer that might take her back faster and that leads her on a journey exploring the nature of human desire.

Viktoria Klebe's two-minute submission to rbb.

Jan Tenhaven's two-minute submission to rbb.

Thomas Borchert is already looking forward to his goddaughter Jenny, who is completing a practical semester in Albania. At the airport, as part of the baggage check, half a kilo of hashish is seized from her, which Jenny claims she did not know anything about. Borchert and Dominique Kuster want to find out who could have put the hash on her. They also have to solve the murder of an entrepreneur who was involved in crooked business.

In 2020, the contraceptive pill will be 60 and has revolutionized the relationship between the sexes. The Pill brought freedom, but today more and more women are seeking freedom from the Pill. And they ask: Why is there no pill for men? Scientists all over the world are doing research on the Pill for Men - and in the end there is a surprising discovery: hormonal and non-hormonal contraception for men has been around for a long time. And it has been used successfully for 50 years.

„It was the same at my first time“ said the extended austrian civil servant to the new COVID-19 volunteer, who had to bring a person from the bereavementroom to the cooling chamber minutes before.

Why has the German film and television industry so far not found a natural way of dealing with people with a migration background? The documentary "Kino Kanak" begins a complex search for traces.

Natalia, a young Chilean woman, comes to Europe for the first time searching for her family history. She starts a road trip through Poland together with her school friend Morín, who moved to Hamburg three years ago trying to develop her career as an actress. Between encounters and borders, not only her expectations about Europe will be challenged, but also her old friendship with Morín.

In the film, five people embark on a self-healing project. They radically change their lifestyle and take responsibility for their mind and body. Ranja gets in touch with herself through yoga, Stephan discovers the power of medicinal and wild herbs and Mona becomes pain-free through a vegan diet. Dominique finds vitality through sport and exercise and Chris lives mindfulness and meditation. What they all have in common is that they feel more happiness and vitality through change. Those who start with one area embark on the most beautiful journey of life: to their own BEING.

The story of Lebanon is one of ongoing tragedy. A march of follies orchestrated by heads of state, sects, and militias. The Palestinians, French, British, Iranians, Syrians, Americans, Israelis and the Lebanese themselves, have all, at one point or another, contributed to the country's tragic history. Caught up in the chaos were the Lebanese themselves - made up of different sects, religions, and ethnicities - writing their own history in a string of political assassinations, massacres, and betrayals.

Ludwig van Beethoven is far more than just an epitome of European culture: he has become a synonym for classical music, much like the Beatles for pop or Picasso for modern art. "Beethoven Reloaded" brings the composer's inexhaustible potential to everyone, from interested laymen to musical specialists, with a fresh perspective. The essential biographical facts, political convictions and the musical and historical context of Beethoven form the central theme of a multifaceted portrait.