Discover Movies

Samir is 19 years old and from South Sudan. He reached Hamburg two years ago. Last winter, falling temperatures forced him into prostitution.

Alice Cordes is to spend Christmas with her boyfriend Nicolas Huber's family in Upper Bavaria. Although the Hamburg chef no longer has parents herself, she initially reacts hesitantly to the invitation: a family celebration? But they haven't known each other that long. Unfortunately, their journey together comes to nothing: Nicolas is held up by work and has to join them. Alice only finds out about this at the train station in snowy Bavaria.

Young designer Lilly is trying to find true happiness in harmony with nature. Just as her breakthrough is within reach, fate throws a wrench in her plans.

Is it possible to get close to someone who sees their sole task in life in losing themself in the parts they play? How can a film portrait be created when every image only contributes to further fictionalization? Who is facing each other when the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred? Katharina Pethke looks back to dissect the past and her contradictory feelings for the celebrated actor Philipp Hochmair, following the lines of her own artistic and personal doubts.

The night of July 15, 2016 changed the history of Turkey. On that day there were coordinated attacks by parts of the Turkish army, among others in Istanbul. The aim of the military: a coup against the government. The decisive confrontation occurred on the Bosporus Bridge. While President Erdogan was still on vacation, live at TV he called on the people who were devoted to him to stand against the military. As an enemy for the masses, he presented his adversary Fethullah Gülen, whom he branded as the coup leader. He also urged the imams of the country's mosques to condition the population to resist. And so it happens that at night thousands of agitated people take to the streets to oppose the armed insurgents. The death toll was high. 352 people died across Turkey during the attempted coup. The consequences are even more serious: Erdogan used this gift, as he called it himself, to undermine democracy, to arrange mass arrests of dissidents and to transform Turkey into a dictatorship.

On the first day of the Corona lockdown, the director‘s father is picked up by an ambulance. He dies shortly thereafter. Mother and daughter mourn in the parental apartment, isolated on 49 square meters — and connected to the outside world only by telephone. With painful intimacy, these phone calls exemplify the loneliness of the mourners in pandemic times. Photographic images of the desolate apartment are marked by an intense geometric strictness, which, in spite of the confinement, also creates a certain distance to the inevitable. “27 STEPS“ thus leaves room for interpretation and deals with a universal question: How does isolation affect us when we are dependent on solace and help? This is a very personal film which puts a magnifying glass on the circumstances that we are all experiencing right now.

Filmmaker Erec Brehmer's world collapses when his longtime partner Angelina Zeidler dies in a car accident. Using personal videos, photos, voice messages, diary entries and music they shared, he creates ways of meeting and loving her again despite her absence. "We don't talk about the dead, even though that's the only thing we can still do" once someone is gone. And so, Who We Will Have Been is less a documentary and more a mode of communication with the deceased, where slow motion, reverse and soundbites taken in a totally different context suddenly give profound meaning and subtext. When Angi asks in a saved video "Am I still in time?" it resonates with deep, universal, spooky-action-at-a-distance significance. Do we still exist in time without a body and out of mind? Brehmer's powerfully emotional and absorbing meditation on living with loss recognizes that grief changes, but never really ends, like love.

Thirty years ago, in 1991, the Soviet Union, founded in 1922, disappeared, giving birth to fifteen new states, located between the Baltic Sea and the Pamir mountain range, which went their own way. How many of these republics have succeeded? How much real influence does Moscow exert over them? What role do NATO and the European Union play in this very complicated economic and political maze?

Nursel Aydoğan, Fırat Anlı and Zülküf Karatekin are linked by political exile in Europe after threatened prison sentences in Turkey.

"The Pipeline of the Century -- How Soviet Natural Gas Came to the West" by director Matthias Schmidt shows touching personal memories. The production is a treasure trove of material in which previously unpublished visual material about the construction of the century and its builders can be seen. Writer & Director Matthias Schmidt ; A Co-Production by LOOKSfilm and MDR in Cooperation with ARTE

After a ceremonial sea burial in the Mediterranean, the yacht of a wealthy community runs aground. The luxury of some sinks with the desperation of others.

Ukrainian Marija works in Germany as a 24-hour carer to support her family back home. Here she looks after Curt, who suffers from dementia, around the clock. When Curt's controlling daughter stays away due to an accident, Curt begins to think Marija is his deceased wife. In order to have her peace of mind, Marija plays along with the game and she realizes that this makes Curt feel better. But there is also Curt's son, who is more interested in Marija than in Curt.

While Wilson questions the future as a hooligan more and more, Liam runs, almost blindly, from fight to fight and doesn't listen to any of Wilson's concerns. In an attack of revenge Liam dies, which leaves Wilson alone with his thoughts.

The story of the most popular piece of furniture of all times: the monobloc chair, sold over a billion times across the globe.

A dash of nostalgia, then a shrug and self-irony: The portraits of Berlin subway stations in Berlin [Underground] begin in Schöneberg’s Regenbogenkiez only to evaporate towards Dahlem, the location of the Freie Universität. The western underground academically frittered away. The trees in Argentina are more exciting. And over and over, the unfathomable notebooks of Heinz Emigholz.

An interactive, sci-fi experience, which immerses you into the mysterious beauty of deep sea life on a dive that takes a shocking turn for the worse.

Berlin. The rents go through the roof and when Elias leaves the flat in a rage after a fierce argument, he doesn’t want to go back and is dependent on his five-man gang. As the son of a rich estate agent, Flávio, a member of the group and Elias’ best friend, seems to find a solution to his problem.

Veteran defense attorney Konrad Biegler and tenacious police inspector Peter Nadler face off in the trial of a man accused of kidnapping a young girl. (Abridged version of Enemies: Against the Clock and Enemies: The Confession, focusing on the ins and outs of the judicial process.)

A death in the family draws forensic scientist Dr. Viktoria Wex back from Berlin to her childhood home in Poland. But this is not the only reason for her return: Haunted by the recent murder of her husband Felix, Victoria is determined to find out who killed him and why.

"ROTOЯ | Sonic Body" by artist collective NO1 is a physically intense perception cinema and phenomenological study. At visual and acoustic levels, the video confronts the fundamental categories of movement, time, and space.

The lively damselfish Shorty lives in a colorful coral reef with his beloved little sister Indigo and his best buddy Jake, a high-spirited sawfish. Shorty and Jake want to finally win the annual soccer tournament for the reef cup, when a huge trawl net from a fishing fleet devastates their tropical underwater world in a matter of seconds. The two friends narrowly escape the disaster, but Indigo is initially swallowed up by the seabed. When the three friends are finally reunited, they set off together in search of the mysterious magic reef that the wise octopus Oana told them about.

Martin is rejected by his mother with callousness and beaten by his father: a childhood without love. The story sounds like a case study from the book "The Drama of the Gifted Child" by the world-famous Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller. But Martin is the son of the committed child rights activist...

On German Reunification Day, Peter picks up his son from his ex-wife Anja for a long weekend. Everything gets delayed, and a long-overdue argument breaks out. Ellen, Anja’s father’s new girlfriend, tries to mediate between the quarreling ex-couple and increasingly becomes the target of their arguments.

The body of Christian Rommedahl, from Denmark, washes up on the Flensburg Fjord. The victim's friend and work colleague, Lasse Jørgensen, is the target of the new investigator duo Svenja Rasmussen and Antoine Haller. Another lead leads the inspector to the Flensburg liquor dealer Philipp Schaaf. There also seems to be a connection between him and the dead. Because photos of Schaaf's daughter Lisa are found on the dead person's cell phone, and Lasse also seems to be involved.

The ways of love are strange indeed. Sometimes they lead to the neighbours’ patio roof or to the music stand of a piano in the university basement. Both Valentina and Sonnili are in an intimate relationship with an object. Even if the hurdles might look incomparable to those encountered by more traditional love stories, the core topics remain the same: intimacy, comfort and the idea that the world is a nicer place if you share it.

Whales beached after ingesting plastic, oceans soiled: a quarter of marine waste today comes from cans and plastic bottles. The drinks industry produces 470 billion single-use bottles each year, 25% of which come from Coca-Cola. Although the world's largest soft drink producer has set ambitious targets to prevent this environmental pollution, it has often failed to do so. In the 1950s, the company sold its drink exclusively in returnable glass bottles, which it washed and refilled. Two decades later, these were replaced by disposable bottles - a decision whose devastating effects still linger.

The bleakness of Antarctica is a fallacy. The ice continent is full of life and offers a biodiversity of which only about two percent are known. Much of it is under water and could determine the future of human beings. When the northern lights cover the ice landscape in summer, the animals in the Antarctic are in a paradisiacal state. Whales blow their fountains in the sky, penguins fly like small rockets into the water, seals dive for crabs under the glittering ice floes. From the bay of the Ross Sea to the ice shelf, from the huge penguin colonies to steaming volcanoes, a life in rhythm with the ice. But the consequences of climate change are slowly becoming apparent here too. While some species are dying, others are spreading. They could bring new viruses and bacteria with them, and new dangers for humans too. The structure of nature has gotten off course. How many generations will still be able to experience the magic of Antarctica?

Andi shares a deserted building with a group of fellow-squatters he considers his family. One day his sister turns up unexpectedly with her small son Levi, seeking refuge from her abusive boyfriend; she has nowhere else to turn. So Andi suddenly finds himself in the role of uncle, the squat is transformed into an alternative kindergarten, and the estranged pair become the siblings they once were.

From 1945 to 1989, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, two rival ideologies, communism and capitalism, faced each other in a merciless battle. On one side of the Iron Curtain and on the other, throughout the Cold War, the USSR and the United States sought to shape children’s imaginations through their magazines and films. Never in the history of mankind have so many comic books been published and so many cartoons produced for young people. In November 1989, communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall; capitalism was left to decide the future of the world. What if this victory had been prepared for a long time, and our thinking conditioned, from our early childhood, to ensure this absolute triumph?

Werner Träsch, who has just moved into an apartment with his great love Gabi Hertz, surprises her with a trip to Fuerteventura on the second anniversary of their meeting. However, this proves to be difficult to implement...

The birthplace of the Vltava lies in the Bohemian Forest. Dark yellow, like heavy gold, it fills its bed. The golden river, which has repeatedly overflowed its banks, has inspired poets, architects and composers. Today, badgers and wolves are just as much at home on the Vltava as the ground squirrel and the pouched tit. Moose are once again living in the moorland on the upper reaches of the river.

Sabine Nemez is now studying at the BKA academy with the eccentric forensic scientist Sneijder. Although she is shocked by the death of her boyfriend, her lecturer puts the young investigator on three unsolved murders. Second case of the duo after Andreas Gruber.

The pandemic has many faces. It has affected everyone across the world, but each of us in a different way. A collection of individual fates observed in fine detail. And a filmic world tour that looks down on places of residence from above and yet gets very close to the people.

The wife of the Düsseldorf Police Council Rainer Bachmann is kidnapped. While trying to save his mother Monika, the adult son is shot dead. His widow Nicola desperately seeks support.

The Bundschuhs buy an old manor house, which of course is very popular with all family members. So Hadi and Rose, Ilse and Susanne nest there, but don't even think about helping Gundula with the necessary renovation work. To make matters worse, the monument conservationist von Sternberg gets in the way, who is closely monitoring the renovation work in the listed property.

The film tells the story of a young woman trapped between her own desires and the expectations of the others.

Prejudices, ignorance, and racism still leave their mark on the everyday life of black Germans, respectively Europeans, until today. How do Afro-Germans deal with their history? Which colonial-racist patterns still shape our society today? With insights into various historic epochs, it is made clear that THE history of the Black people does not exist. And neither exists THE history of white people.

Dienstag aus Licht (Tuesday from Light) is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting and two acts, with a farewell, and was the fourth of seven to be completed for the opera cycle Licht: Die sieben Tage der Woche (Light: The Seven Days of the Week). It was begun in 1977 and completed from 1988 to 1991, to a libretto by the composer. The main theme of Dienstag is the struggle between the protagonist Michael and his antagonist Lucifer (with the feminine character Eve appearing in a more tangential role, trying to broker a peace between them or mourning the carnage). The first Act portrays this competition in the form of a "time game", in which the two combatants employ humorous tactics and feints in orders to stop/start time's march. This initial "fight by proxy" leads to the more direct 2nd (and final) Act, which portrays all-out war using mobile sound-warriors in an apocalyptic 3D sound environment.

A tale of dirt, soap, and magic set in a cult on a remote Greek island.

They have collected legends and fairy tales that have been passed down from generation to generation, albeit with slight changes and added meanings always intended for a specific time. Tales of all the enchanted characters, the wicked witches and the knights in shining armour. Venture into the woods with us and experience amazing things. You can meet evil or find your fortune. But what is it that makes the forest so terrifyingly appealing? In all the old tales and fables there is always at least a grain of truth - a reflection of reality. We all know the forest. Yet it guards its secrets well and will not give anything away. More than two hundred years ago, it enchanted two brothers. They told each other fantastic stories from the past, which they saw as symbols of their present. In Germany, where the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm grew up, as throughout central Europe, there were once dense and vast forests and woods that surrounded villages and towns...

Carla's daily life is thrown off when she receives an unexpected visit from her daughter Feline, whom she has lost sight of for some time. While searching for Carla's swarmed bees together, the two different women get closer again.

A neurotic waitress with a phobia of coins struggles with visions of the microscopic world of dirt and germs. As she fights to control her darkest fears, reality falls apart piece by piece.

Paintings and poetry about the end of it all.

A child is left alone at home. The rules and codes of the adults seem ubiquitous: “No TV before eleven in the morning” – but nobody is around to check on the child's behaviour. While watching TV the child starts to relate to scripted reality show actor Daniela. Her subversive actions enable the child to search for a way out.

A failed art forger keeps his head above water through contacts with rich women, and he is particularly close friends with an old widow. However, when he becomes acquainted with her children, the artist finds himself in a precarious situation: his son dies after falling into the Spree, while his sister proves to be an unpredictable and aggressive contemporary.

Four children aged between eleven and 14 take us on a journey into their secret world - a world where there is no bullying, no racism and no money. But there is plenty to discover: lion tongue fights, experiences of an escape, cat people and shiny blue crawling beetles!