Discover Movies

How does mobility reflect social status and racism? A story of two African American women working to provide and improve mobility in their community, as they tell the history of the Safe Bus - formerly the biggest black-owned transportation system in the world.

What is behind the huge hype behind Eurovision and why is Stefan Raab so involved in finding our contestant?

Ten years ago this summer, she said the historic sentence: “We can do it”. In the WDR interview, Angela Merkel speaks publicly for the first time with refugees about the refugee movement of 2015.

“Just One: The True Story of Patient Zero” tells the story of the person commonly referred to as “patient zero” — the first Soviet citizen diagnosed with HIV. The official history of the epidemic in the USSR begins with this 1987 case, a crisis that has since affected millions in Russia: those living with the virus and those who have died from AIDS. Yet almost nothing is known about this individual. The few existing facts have long dissolved into myths, propaganda, and misinformation. No photographs, no footage — nothing. The biography of “patient zero” had to be reconstructed from scratch, turning the film into a historical investigation.

An experimental documentary profiling 42 women artists across generations and disciplines as they reveal their distinct creative worlds.

The Sykora family are only four people out of millions of Venezuelans that have recently escaped their collapsing country. They land in the Czech Republic, the country where Grandpa Jan was born, but also a place utterly strange to them. In a matter of months their savings have almost gone and job seeking becomes a nightmare. Again, the dream of just having a normal life starts to vanish. Will the family manage not to crumble along the way?

A poetic approach to the everyday and at the same time magical phenomenon "sun".

For Aloe Blacc, a song is more than just a track. Both a producer and performer, he combines funk, soul and political engagement in songs such as ‘I Need a Dollar’ and ‘The Man’. He is a musician who has mastered groove and the art of making bodies and minds dance.

Returning to the archives of this memorable recital, from which it presents numerous excerpts, this documentary is punctuated with testimonials from its principal performers, music critics and several big names in piano, including Lang Lang, Gabriela Montero, David Salmon and Manuel Vieillard, whose Geister Duo is considered one of the most promising duos of their generation.

In the beginning was the sea and the wind, broken rocks and trees. And Gemma and Sidra. Words come and go. Then the language between them disappears. Inspired by the poems and abstract paintings of the artist Etel Adnan.

When the shy Lola experiences a wild club night with her extroverted friend, she gets caught in a whirlwind of drugs, sex and power games – until a shocking event radically shakes her perception and reality.

In the remote village of Kök-Tash, Kyrgyzstan, where conservative norms confine women to domestic duties, an activist organizes a women's football tournament to challenge these patriarchal traditions. Stunningly filmed, visually captivating, and quite evocative, Kick-Off demonstrates how athletics has the power to break taboos, opposing the norms of traditionalism, while promoting gender quality in rigidly patriarchal societies, where women are left with no choice but to occupy the margins of solely inflexible, highly restrictive roles. Sports and play, being the most natural expression of human joy - unbound by limitations and uncontained, are the best response to the sullen "no's" imposed by any form of oppression.

For its opening concert, the Young Euro Classic features Austrian conductor Katharina Wincor and Romanian violinist Ioana Cristina Goicea. The two women will be joined on stage by the Romanian Youth Orchestra, who have already played a starring role at the Berlin festival.

Blargh is a passive little feller. Everything just kind of happens around him, while he’s keeping it all in. So much that he discovers a ball of black goo in his stomach.

Lubiana presents Terre Rouge, her second album, to the Europavox festival audience. A bubble of sweetness carried by the sound of her kora.

When Odin dies one night, he wakes up at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. There he meets Charon, only she can take him to the afterlife. But he has to pay her first.

A robot designed for flawless precision follows a life of strict routine and mathematical order. One day, a small disruption breaks his rhythm, sparking curiosity about imperfection. As he ventures off his programmed path, he begins to fall in love with errors for their unpredictability, each mistake drawing him deeper into a journey of self-discovery and revealing the beauty of flaws, and the raw essence of human nature.

The name Piranesi evokes a world of mystery and imagination. The Italian architect, engraver, and archaeologist gifted us with dreamlike visions – labyrinthine spaces where stairways lead to nowhere and shadows stretch into the unknown. At the same time, he celebrated the monumental beauty of ancient Rome in his iconic vedute – vivid panoramas of the “Eternal City” that spread far and wide across Europe. But who was Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the man behind these extraordinary creations? Very little is known about his life and inner world. This documentary seeks to trace his footsteps, to delve into the enigma he left behind and to bring us closer to understanding the mind of a genius who built entire worlds on paper.

60 Berlin community members — including children, teenagers and adults, professional and amateur artists from various disciplines — address music, movement and poetry to explore questions of home and belonging, dream and utopia, and experiences of trauma in this 20‑minute collaborative experimental film.

For the first time in six years, Barbara Morgenstern, pioneer of German-style electronic intimate pop, works on a new album. Her laptop sits on a shoebox, in the privacy of her home she finds first lines and harmonies: “I like to be alone,” one song begins. One by one, musicians join her. Intuitive ideas take shape. A window has opened. Arrangements, rehearsals, recordings follow. Step by step, the music enters public space, images are produced, videos, narratives. Questions arise: New beginning or back to the roots? New Biedermeier or tough political comment? The bigger the band, the riskier the booking. The more crisis-ridden the environment, the more comforting the music-making.

When Fred’s neighborhood is invaded by a strange being, they are frightened. Only Fred, who dares to approach the intruder, slowly begins to question his fear and finds himself in a world that has yet been closed to him.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

Peter Engelhardt - aptly named “PENG” - has dedicated his entire life to good design: as a renowned designer as well as a collector of everything that makes up everyday life in the 50s, 60s and 70s ... The well-known and the nameless, the precious and the superfluous, the special and the everyday. The Engelhardt collection once comprised over 30,000 objects. But the more Peter collected, the more space he needed - and the less money he had. The last stop for the time being: a dilapidated industrial wasteland near Bingen, rainwater and theft the biggest enemies. The preservation of the collection - or rather the fight against its destruction - in the old mine in Waldalgesheim became the 78-year-old's life's work.

For his film "12 ASTERISCI" Telemach Wiesinger visited numerous places on the internal and external borders of the European Community. The film's open, experimental form visually loosens boundaries and aesthetically challenges any ideas the audience might hold of conforming to rigid regulation.

Ground floor window fronts, being half inside and half outside, as an in-between space of private and public.

After a man dies in a fatal accident at work, the only compensation offered to the family is the chance for his two sons, Hossam (23) and Maro (12), to be employed in the same factory, side by side with the man responsible for their father’s death.

A morning visit to Peter, the day begins.

After a terrible car accident resulting in death and serious injury, Denis was given a suspended sentence. Following a psychological assessment to get his driver's license back, he contacts the surviving victim, Alfred. Alfred has lost all memory of the accident and his deceased wife. The planned short visit to Alfred does not go as planned, and Denis is drawn deeper and deeper into Alfred's world.

Mutiny: Some caregivers party in a New Year’s Eve nursing home. Boarding: A Congolese family living in Germany is visited by a pretend social worker. Adrift: A man crushed by his community wanders in the medieval German countryside. Spanning three interlinked but stylistically distinct films, the triptych navigates the metaphoric and literal topographies of shipwreck as both rupture and reckoning, building a suggestive meditation on exile, identity, and the fractured condition of modern belonging.

"Sometimes we have to get to the other side first to understand what we've really been through." FEBRUARY ANSWERS is a cinematic travelogue filmed in February 2022 between Finland and the USA, and finished in 2024 in Berlin.

Deep underground, the water has created breathtaking landscapes: caves. They are the last white spots on the planet. What forces lead to the formation of caves? How do animals adapt to the extreme conditions? And why are caves important treasure troves for archaeologists? ARTE descends into the depths and explores the most spectacular water caves on earth.

Director Alexandra Bidian goes to Romania, the home country of her late father. She invites her mother and sister along to the land where they used to spend their summer holidays, but this time in search of memories. It is her attempt to address and voice things, and her means to understand the man who wrote a lot and spoke very little, and about whom much remains in the dark. When her father came to Germany, he already had a life behind him – including decades of political involvement, which was documented not only by him, but also by the Securitate, socialist Romania’s secret police. Bidian combs through old boxes, reads letters, and peruses files. But instead of answers, she is left with more questions. A road trip to the past, and a letter to her father. Using archival material, family pictures, and interviews with friends and associates, Bidian tries to track down who her father was – and how her own story is intertwined with his life and his actions, as well as with his losses.

On a sweltering Berlin day, Şirin picks up her aunt Bihar for a spontaneous trip to the countryside, where queer joy, intergenerational tension, and buried migrant memories rise to the surface under the summer sun.

From her theater work to the worldwide fame brought by cinema, Sandra Hüller talks about her art and her career, from "Toni Erdmann" to "The Zone of Interest", via "Anatomy of a Fall". A vibrant encounter with an actress in love with the absolute.

The influencer couple Lilly and Pascal, known online as @pascilly, try their hand at the Snif-Sip-Spit Challenge to gain more viral reach. However, drinking the extremely toxic e-liquid live on TikTok has devastating consequences. They wake up in an in-between world and are suddenly confronted with themselves. While Lilly just wants to keep producing content, Pascal is totally okay with their demise.

Every city has a kiosk, newsstand, refreshment bar, or late-night shop. Hajo inherited a shop like this. Here he is with Thorsten and Guido. When the three of them find a dead body in the toilet, their peaceful existence comes to an end. The police arrive and strangers show up. What is the story behind the dead man and his mysterious suitcase?

In an age of overlapping ecological, political, and social crises, the question of care and responsibility takes on enormous significance. Who cares for whom, and under what conditions? How can we think of care beyond normative role models, structural isolation, and exploitation? In light of the climate crisis, wars, growing social inequality, and the profound experiences during the pandemic, one thing is clear: without radically rethinking care work, a more just future cannot be achieved. The group screening brings together three video works that deal with practices of care. Starting from the private sphere, the works develop perspectives on care beyond the neoliberal burden of personal responsibility and examine how solidarity can be conceived and lived.

Repetition is ever-present, life seems to lack meaning, and one feels insignificant. Apathy, melancholy, exhaustion—the same concept under different names. Boredom is a spectrum on which everyone has found themselves at some point. In everyday moments, such as folding laundry, taking a bus, or performing work that has lost its purpose, it becomes a silent companion. The film explores boredom, its causes, and how people cope to avoid frustration and maintain mental balance.

In November 2023, right-wing thought leaders, politicians from the AfD, CDU and Werteunion, as well as numerous entrepreneurs, met behind closed doors at the Landhaus Adlon in Potsdam. The topics discussed at the meeting were never intended to be made public. But weeks later, the media company Correctiv published the explosive contents of this conference, as investigative journalists were also present undercover. The revelations caused a stir and triggered the largest protest rallies against right-wing radicalism in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, with more than three million people nationwide. Suddenly, Germans were discussing a word that hardly anyone had known until then: "remigration." Award-winning documentary filmmaker Volker Heise tells the story in a fact-rich, gripping, and unpretentious way, like a political thriller, bringing together the voices of those who were part of the meeting and those who exposed it to create an illuminating overall picture.