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As a child, we live in a carefree timelessness. But this, too, passes, and the person who grows up is increasingly confronted with temporal limitations.

An Iranian-Afghan family's life in Germany can be solely seen through their hands. Maryam sticks to a daily studying routine, hoping to return to her medical career, while her husband receives a job interview, seeking to become a photographer.

Daniela is unsure about what to do next and where to live. Mia is finishing a master’s degree that she spontaneously started. Along with Natascha, another friend thinking of moving to Vienna, they wander around and talk.

The racist murder attack in Hanau has made the question of who actually belongs to this society an existential issue for a group of young adults.

The BND did not only employ individual heavily incriminated Nazi perpetrators. The recruitment and hiring of murderers and desk criminals was systematic. Gerhard Sälter, member of the Independent Commission of Historians, can prove this.

When diplomacy fails, the Slap Commission is the United Nations last measure. Their duty: keeping politicians in check – by delivering a hard slap in the face. A positive conspiracy theory about the UN’s greatest secret.

Investigative crime-documentary about how the arms of the Nigerian mafia reach far into Europe and use religious pressure to keep trafficked women in prostitution.

This expressionist, black-and-white film-poem recalls avant-garde experiments from the beginning of the last century and makes use of stark contrasts between light and dark. Accompanied by ambient noise, the film introduces a dystopian world in which familiar objects are transformed into abstract images, leaving viewers unsettled and disoriented.

Bassim Al-Shaker was 19 years old when a group of Mahdi militia members visited his barbershop in 2007. They wanted a new haircut. When they saw his unfinished painting of Venus, however, they were so offended by the nude figure that they beat the young man, forcibly cut his hair, and dragged him out into the street. The film reconstructs the shocking incident through personal testimony and his own drawings.

A sky full of bees

A man takes the wrong path in life.

Every year since 1970, the German town of Burghausen has hosted one of the world's biggest jazz festivals. During Burghausen International Jazz Week, the town becomes a "Bavarian jazz mecca": visitors from all over the world join residents to enjoy wonderful jazz performances in the colorful frenzy that grips the town packed with spectators and musicians. One of the artists featured in 2019 was The Earth, Wind & Fire Experience. In this concert, guitarist, composer and musical director Al McKay performs his timeless disco and soul hits. Joined by 7 of the 13 original members of Earth, Wind & Fire, he revives "Boogie Wonderland" and "September" from his world tour.

This documentary takes a look at the Hase, a river that flows through the Osnabrück Land in Germany. The 'Flow of the Hase' shows entertainingly with historic scenes how the requirements on the river changed through time. Today there is a great effort to renaturalize the Hase. 10 interviewees get a chance to speak: Some work professionally with the Hase, others get a special quality of life because of the river.

Fischli & Weiss meets TikTok in this absurd, cyclical, never-ending film-game.

For four years, the three ZEIT journalists Florian Gasser, Matthias Daum, and Lenz Jacobsen have been discussing current topics affecting the 3sat countries in the podcast "Servus. Grüezi. Hallo." Now they are on the road for a documentary and are making some adventurous discoveries.

Holocaust survivor Victor I. takes the viewer on a deeply personal VR journey through his memories of the Second World War: The trauma of the Holocaust, the trauma of war and the trauma of being forcefully uprooted from home. His story, told in his own voice, is one of despair and hope during the most terrifying time in modern history. The experience is guided by audio recordings of Victor's testimonies and supported by stylised visualisations of his memories that are both re-created through his recollections and reimagined through his daughter who grew up with and inherited his memories.

A marionette puppet extravaganza full of robots, coffee, and algorithmic capitalism. A punk rock space opera!

Ship ahoy, the musifants are back! This time, Charlie and Grandpa Günter get mail from the small green cactus in New Zealand and set sail with Fox and Captain Krause. On the way, they fish the little wild sow Svenja from the sea and sing their special shanty. The waves rise when the retired circus elephant makes musical forays into 1920s and 1930s song collections.

Benedikt is a farmer in a small village in the Palatinate Forest who lives off agriculture and beekeeping and has never left his hometown. The documentary follows Benedikt in his working and living environment, exploring the relationship between tools, the body, and the material world, in a sensual, haptic exchange, influenced by Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance: what might a resonant relationship to the world look like? The notion of listening gives an important clue: listening to the world as a whole, hearing voices other than human ones. Benedikt is a quiet, documentary portrait that gives the viewers time to reflect on themes such as life plan, loneliness, connections, and romance.

How does the representation of war change in the internet age? Using only material available on YouTube filmed by soldiers, journalists, civilians and tourists from war zones, Max Viktor Herbert portrays the absurd global theater of war and its representation through new digital communication technologies

My need to decide seems trivial. Nevertheless, it exists. But isn't it lost life time? I turn forwards and backwards, to turn backwards and forwards. I move on, bulging with all the experiences I have gathered for myself within me.

On the Jos Plateau in Nigeria, the British mined tin and columbite which sustained local generations until the end of the 20th century. Mining is now an artisanal activity. Karimah Ashadu portrays the harshness of manual labour while questioning the harm caused by the uncontrolled extraction of natural resources.

They are also called “your own four walls”, the ones between which you disappear, like behind the falling curtain after the show, where no gaze can follow you and where no storm can sweep you away. You close the door, you take off your masks and costumes and let yourself go, you love and scream and play and cry. No one will hear you here, no one will ever disturb you, you are alone in your own four walls, your third skin.

"We're going into space!" was the motto for children from all over Germany this year. More than 1,200 pictures of rockets, UFOs and planets were submitted for the painting campaign of the German Aerospace Center. Filmmaker Sven Bohde and illustrator Sarah Gorf-Roloff made a selection and turned it into a film - a colorful journey from Earth to the sun.

The prevailing postwar opinion that there was nothing to oppose National Socialism is contradicted by the example of the meeting of Władysław Szpilman and Wilm Hosenfeld. contradicted. Supported by the open, visual form of artistic imagery, the encounter is portrayed. is portrayed. The discourse is opened, civil courage has the floor.

"Heavy Metal Dancers" is a documentary about accepting one’s imperfections while striving for perfection on stage. The pole dancers may all be from Finland, but their stories are universal. Their passion for this unusual sport has allowed them to come to terms with their bodies, their lives and sometimes their difficult pasts.

The theme of outsiderdom anchors Güler’s In Limbo – a series of intimate vignettes that play with subversion. In one scene a masculine group is gathered on the shore talking about hooking up with girls, before one person jumps in the water to reveal top surgery scars. In another, a belly dancer twists in the desert, kicking up dust and sand before lifting their veil to reveal a moustache.

Hamburg in the 20s - while the city is brought to its knees by a storm, a man makes his way purposefully through the streets, driven by his biggest longing - Love. On this night, the search for his big love leads him to a hospital. Overjoyed to have found his man alive, his joy was short lived because the man claimed he didn't know him. Where does truth begin and longing end? As the dull throbbing of pain overcame both, destiny played its hand and ensured there was no way back.

The long-term documentary about Kalle, a boy from the prefabricated housing projects along the Allee of the Cosmonauts, paints a different picture of Berlin: “Poor” is not “sexy” here, it means: bad opportunities. The directing duo respectfully accompanies Kalle and leaves the charismatic boy to speak, supplementing scenes with animated sequences where background knowledge is meaningful.

The documentary focuses on the future of mobility and as a company that wants to help shape the automotive development of tomorrow.

Marianna, a Russian-Jewish girl born in Germany, proudly presents her hand-drawn family tree to the class: she openly and happily acknowledges her ancestry. When she arrives home, however, Marianne is forced to hide the drawing from her parents, who fear anti-Semitic attitudes and prefer not to talk about her Jewish roots. The same evening, the drawing is accidentally discovered by Eva, a journalist and blogger who experienced a similar trauma in her childhood... Anna Ehret's debut feature film draws attention to the ever-present problem of anti-Semitism and related fears.

This video essay is a survivor manifesto. It gives voice to those who are very often lonely, brings them together and celebrates them. The author is convinced that it is their experience and skills that may lead the humankind to utopian society. A thorny path, paved with painful processes like getting even with traumas, healing and self-acceptation, could make the soil ready for a world dominated by empathy, self-reflection and queer love.

In the evening, when the buses have finished their routes, they are brought to the depot. There Nurcan and Marinko wait together with 5 others. Nurcan is Turkish. Marinko is from Croatia. The others are from Portugal, Albania and Syria. Every night they care for the buses – cleaning, washing and refuelling them. Into the early morning hours. Again and again. Refuel, clean, wash - and wait. Until all the buses have gone to sleep. Every night.

The little green figure runs up the mountain to the other figures made of beads and small building blocks. All move to the same rhythm, right, left, up, down. One day the little green figure, too, is supposed to decorate itself with beads. But this throws everything out of sync. The gears come to a standstill.