Cinephil

Germany 2014, 156 min
by Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margreth Olin, Karim Aïnouz

'If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?' Cathedrals of Culture offers six startling responses to this question. This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, an icon of modernity; the National Library of Russia, a kingdom of thoughts; Halden Prison, the world’s most humane prison; the Salk Institute, a scientific monastery on the California coast; the Oslo Opera House, a futuristic symbiosis of art and life; and the Centre Pompidou, a modern culture machine. Cathedrals of Culture explores how each of these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.

Germany 2013, 90 min
by Alexander Gentelev

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia will be the first ever to be held in a subtropical resort. The most expensive games ever break all records when it comes to corruption and megalomania. Putin's administration has everyone at its beck and call, from oligarchs down to the ordinary people who have to pay the Olympic bill. Both the powerful and the weak speak out in this investigative documentary, which unveils the hidden story behind Putin's games. Government critic Garry Kasparov says that Putin's Olympic propaganda is really all about speeding up the privatization of land in Sochi. Many inhabitants have had to make way for hotels, ski jumps and a large harbor, which were subsequently swept away by storms and landslides – the Olympic village was built on a swamp in the hottest region of Russia. To a large extent, the story of these environmentally unfriendly Olympic Games is one of threats and enormous misappropriations of money. The 45-kilometer (28-mile) road to the Olympic Village was so expensive that it might as well have been paved with gold or black caviar. Director Alexander Gentelev got to speak to many key figures, from the mayor of Sochi and corrupt contractors, senators and lobbyists to the president of the Russian National Olympic Committee. (IDFA)

Australia, Mongolia, Germany 2024, 96 min
by Gabrielle Brady

A young couple must adapt to a new way of life after a devastating storm wrought by climate change forces them from their home.It is spring in the desert of Bayanhongor province in Mongolia, where young nomadic couple Davaa and Zaya live with their four kids, caring for their birthing animals.The kids spend the nights telling each other ghost stories of disappearing gers. Davaa awakes startled to check the herd for wolves, but finds nothing there. Local herders discuss the auspicious sighting of two 'red stars'.One fateful day a violent dust storm hits the families camp and they discover half their animals killed. They make the painful decision to leave for the city and Davaa is forced to sell his beloved horse.Setting up their ger in the cities 'districts', the family begin adjusting to their new life. Davaa begins work at a gravel factory but becomes increasingly haunted by the presence of his lost animals.

Germany 2023, 97 min
by Jialing Zhang

China is in the process of establishing a dictatorship based on Big Data. The film accompanies people who are fighting against an all-controlling surveillance system and in danger of being crushed by it. Thanks to exclusive and intimate access, this long-term observation shows the lives of several activists fighting for human rights, who live under extreme surveillance and traumatisation. At the same time, the film's scope broadens to include ordinary citizens whose daily behaviour is registered and evaluated by an experimental scoring system.

Germany, USA 2023, 92 min
by Ibrahim Nash’at

When the United States withdrew from its twenty-year 'forever war' in Afghanistan, the Taliban retook control of the ravaged country and immediately found an American base loaded with weaponry—a portion of the over $7 billion in U.S. armaments still in the country. Unprecedented and audacious, director Ibrahim Nash’at’s HOLLYWOODGATE spends a year inside Afghanistan following the Taliban as they take possession of the cache America left behind—and transform from a fundamentalist militia into a heavily armed military regime.Golden Eye Jury statement: HOLLYWOODGATE is the portrait of two Taliban military men, the head of the Taliban airforce and a lieutenant. The director Ibrahim Nash’at flew into Afghanistan risking his life two days after the US it’s allies evacuated the country. In succeeding to win the trust of his two main subjects and following them around for one year, he exposes a shocking world that is otherwise inaccessible. As an audience it is a privilege to become first hand witnesses to the process of the Taliban establishing their regime. Despite the restrictions placed upon him Ibrahim Nash’at, also manages to inform us about the world he wasn’t allowed to catch on camera and what this regime means to the whole country, especially women and girls.

Germany, Mexico 2020, 112 min
by Ai Weiwei

Vivos is a documentary feature film by artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei, portraying the human impact of Mexico’s ongoing crisis of enforced disappearances.On the night of September 26, 2014, a convoy of students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in drug cartel-afflicted Guerrero state, travelling in buses in the city of Iguala, were brutally attacked by police forces and other masked assailants. In the course of the night, six people were killed, dozens more were wounded, and 43 students were forcibly disappeared.Featuring interviews with family members and surviving classmates, as well as human rights experts and international investigators involved with the case, Vivos depicts the emotional impasse the families experience. As they face the still unaccounted-for absence of their loved ones, their family lives irrevocably fractured, the pain of their loss is compounded by the investigating authorities’ repeated attempts to mislead and to obstruct the official investigation.The latest of Ai Weiwei’s films highlighting issues of systemic injustice, Vivos documents the aspirations, communal solidarity, and day-to-day lives of the grief-stricken but determined families, as they demand the authorities provide answers about the crimes committed that night and disclose the whereabouts of the missing students.United behind the rallying cry, ‘Alive, they took them! Alive, we want them back!’, the families’ tragic but defiant struggle embodies the psychological and emotional toll of endemic violence on Mexican society, where disappearances have become a national crisis, with over 40,000 persons officially missing as of 2018. Wrestling with the gross abuses of institutional power that pervade Mexican society, with its staggering contrasts of power and poverty, and the crimes and impunities that permeate public life, the mass demonstrations led by the families of the missing 43 students blossom as a defiant assertion of life. (Cinephil)Featuring: The families of Felipe Arnulfo Rosa, Benjamín Ascencio Bautista, Doriam and Jorge Luis González Parral, Jhosivani Guerrero De La Cruz, Aldo Gutiérrez Solano, Julio César Mondragón Fontes, Mauricio Ortega Valerio, Carlos Iván Ramírez Villareal, Christian Rodríguez Telumbre and Daniel Solís Gallardo; Ximena Antillón Najlis, Francisco Cox Vial, Kate Doyle, Enrique Diego García “Cartílago”, John Gibler, Témoris Grecko, Ernesto López, Portillo Vargas

Germany 2019, 73 min
by Sylvia Nagel, Sonya Winterberg

The untold story of the women of Block 10. Some 70 years ago, gynecologist Carl Clauberg conducted sterilization experiments in Auschwitz on women and girls. Were German companies involved in these crimes? Most of the few women that survived became sterile, only some could later still bear children. Clauberg's cruel research on birth control and infertility is part of the medical canon to this day. Meet the last survivors of the infamous Block 10 who speak candidly about their experience and how they rebuilt their lives after Auschwitz.

Germany, Brasil 2018, 88 min
by Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck

When you post something on the web, can you be sure it stays there? Enter a hidden shadow industry of digital cleaning where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn’t like.. violence, pornography and.. political content. Who is controlling what we see and what we think?

Italy, Germany 2018, 80 min
by Francesca Mannocchi, Alessio Romenzi

In wars it is not uncommon for the defeated to bury their weapons before retreating, hiding arsenals waiting for better times. The weapons that Isis has left in inheritance for the future are hundreds of thousands of children educated in violence and martyrdom. In Isis’s ideology children are the most effective weapon to bring into the future the idea of a great universal Caliphate: successors of one goal, creating a world divided in half, on the one the Jihadists and on the other the infidels to be exterminated. 500 thousand minors lived in Mosul alone, during the three-year occupation of the Islamic State. Isis, Tomorrow traces the months of war through the voices of the children of militiamen trained to become suicide bombers, but also of their victims and those who fought them. Today, fighters’ descendants are children who bear the burden of having been educated to kill their neighbours and to make the ideology survive so that it can be reborn from the ashes of the fathers. Isis, Tomorrow follows the destiny of the surviving families of the fighters in the complexity of the post-war period, a post-war time of marginalisation and stigma, in which battle blood leaves room for daily revenge and retaliation, for violence as the only response to violence. (La Biennale di Venezia)La Biennale di Venezia 2018 - world premiere 201926 Hot Docs Toronto34 DOK.fest MunichHuman Rights FF Berlin

2017, 90 min
by Duki Dror

The documentary brings the viewer deep into the intimate and personal experiences of former Mossad agents and uncovers the personal truths that lie behind the myth of the Israeli Mossad. When speaking of the Israeli Mossad, one of the most esteemed intelligence agencies in the world, it is near impossible to separate fact from fiction, to understand where the mythology that surrounds the Mossad ends and the real story begins. As the film exposes the personal experiences of the operatives, their mental preparations, internal anxieties and moral dilemmas, it ultimately asks: does the Mossad truly live up to its myth?

2014, 89 min
by Matthias Bittner

War of Lies is the story of an Iraqi refugee, whose information about portable weapons of mass destruction passed through the hands of the BND, MI6 and CIA. This information was ultimately used by the US government to legitimize the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Today we know the war was based on a lie. The press blamed Rafed Aljanabi, he, though, proudly presents himself as the man who helped remove Saddam Hussein. Was Aljanabi really able to walk all over the world´s intelligence services and how did this lie become a convenient truth?