LICHTBLICK FILM

Switzerland, Germany 2024, 89 min
by Heidi Specogna

Claudia Andujar escaped the Holocaust as a child and became a multiple award-winning photographer. She travelled the Amazon since the 1960s, and developed a profound relationship with the Yanomami people. From Claudia, they learned to fight against the exploitation of the rainforest and their extermination. Former victims are now activists.

France, Germany 2024, 87 min
by Orkhan Aghazadeh

Since losing his son in an occupational accident, Samid has been struggling with feelings of loneliness and melancholy. Bringing his village cinema back to life becomes an obsession, an endeavour in which he has no trouble encouraging the young and brilliant Ayaz to join him. Together, they must climb hills to find signal and order a bulb, convince the village to build and sew a screen, weld old video recorders, get past the censorship committee and ignore the rumours surrounding the project, al

Germany 2023, 92 min
by Lisa Wagner

Who says that women can't break dance? Frieda, Viola and Jilou are three of the most successful women in the male-dominated breaking world. At different points in their sports careers, the three friends are facing new challenges and life-changing decisions. DANCING HEARTBEATS accompanies the dancers during their hard training, international battles and their fight for recognition and equal rights. WithB-Girl Jilou – Jilou RasulB-Girl Frost – Frieda FrostB-Girl Viola – Viola Luise Barner

Switzerland, Germany 2022, 81 min
by Maurizius Staerkle Drux

With his gestures and facial expressions alone, the mime Marcel Marceau captured audiences around the globe for decades. But the tragic background behind his work has remained hidden for a long time. THE ART OF SILENCE sheds new light on his life and unique art form, which his family and companions keep alive to this day.With: Louis Chevalier, Daniel Loinger, George Loinger, Camille Marceau, Aurélia Marceau, u.a.

Austria, Germany 2020, 94 min
by Harald Friedl

The simple staple bread has become a branded product with a countless number of varieties and providers. But do we actually know what we eat every day? The film BREAD gives an authentic and unique insight in today's world of bread. We meet small craft bakers who stand up for their quality with sustainable ingredients but we also meet corporate CEOs who professionally work on the daily bread as an industrial mass product which becomes increasingly artificial. How can traditional bakery skills sur

Germany, Belgien, Israel 2020, 122 min
by Carl-Ludwig Rettinger

The Red Orchestra was a most important resistance net in Nazi Germany, which also collected military information. With the assistance of a Jewish espionage ring in Brussels and Paris, they passed it to the Soviets. After locating their radio transmissions, Hitler set off a deadly hunt. During the Cold War, the legacy of the Red Orchestra got ground down between the propaganda of East and West. Two large-scale feature films were launched on both sides, each telling merely half of t

2018, 80 min
by Benedikt Schwarzer

Leo Wagner was a co-founder of the CSU and a member of the German Federal Parliament in Bonn. During the day, the wartime generation of politicians did their duty at the political front of the Cold War, at night they relaxed in Cologne’s bars with women and champagne. The families left at home were often a façade. For Leo, this way of life came at a cost. He became involved in dubious affairs and contacts with the Stasi.Now, his grandson and film maker Benedikt Schwarzer exposes the political an

Germany 2017, 89 min
by Timon KOULMASIS

With the German Occupation in Greece from 1941 to 1944 as a background, this film unfolds the love story between my father, an assistant professor at the mysterious German Scientific Institute of Athens – financed by the occupying power, Germany, but in reality a refuge for resistant students – and Nelly, a young student in Fine Arts. The film also traces the portrait of their friend Rudolf Fahrner, founder of the Institute, comrade of the Stauffenberg Brothers and one of the few conspirators of

Germany 2017, 95 min
by David Sieveking

David Sieveking’s autobiographical feature doc FAMILY SHOTS tells the story of a loving couple and the challenges they face when their first baby is born. Confronted with the extensive vaccination schedule for newborns they realize they do not agree on this issue. To solve their conflict and insecurity David sets out on a research trip to unearth the facts and dispel the myths surrounding vaccinations. Constantly torn between his family duties at home and his investigations David travels through

Germany 2014, 88 min
by Maurizius Staerkle Drux

Gottfried Böhm is widely regarded as Germany’s preeminent architect. The son of a master builder of churches, he is the patriarch of a modern architecture dynasty to which his sons Stephan, Peter und Paul now belong. By realizing prominent buildings of their own, the Böhm fils have managed to step out of the shadow of their famous father. But the crisis in the German construction industry, among other things, has stoked the fires of competition between the brothers. Gottfried, now 94, still cont

2013, 88 min
by David Sieveking, Catrin Vogt

In FORGET ME NOT, David Sieveking portrays the domestic care of his mother Gretel, who, like millions of others, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.David’s parents were active in the student movement of the 1960s and led an „open relationship“, which is now being tested in a dramatic way through the mother’s illness.The changes taking place within the mother forces the family to deal with its own conflicts and even teaches them new ways to express their feelings and experience intimacy, bring

Germany 2013, 91 min
by Antje Schneider, Carsten Waldbauer

Krista is Germany’s top model: She is Miss Germany. Discovered by a young farmer in East Frisia, she is about to be built the trademark of the European agri-food industry. But her down-to-earth nature keeps balking at its recovery operations. With loving care and empathy, the documentary expolores the folly of Krista’s career – the story of a German high-yield cow.

Germany 2013, 85 min
by Markus CM Schmidt

European bluefin tuna can grow to the size of a passenger them migrate from the Atlantic to spawning grounds in the Mediterranean. Fact is that tuna stocks face collapse. Yet they are still being fished during spawning season. The fishermen, too, are facing extinction: They can only service the loan debt on their boats by continuing to fish. While some have used questionable means to secure fishing licenses for still plentiful Libyan waters, the rest are left to trawl the already overfished area

Germany 2012, 74 min
by Regine Dura

 September 8, 1948. The overseas landing stage of Cape Town harbour is crowded with a group of middle aged men waiting for children from  Germany. The fathers-to-be are members of the right-wing Broederbond, stalwart believers in 'Apartheid'. Behind the children’s transport stands an unprecedented adoption scheme: Nazi elite offspring of 'Aryan blood' shall insure 'good genes' and help to 'stay white on a black continent'. The film tells the life stories of Werner Schellack and Peter Ammermann,

Germany, Austria 2010, 97 min
by David Sieveking

The young filmmaker David Sieveking follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM). It is a journey that leads him to the movement's founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the one-time guru of the Beatles. By the time he died 2008, Maharishi had expanded TM into a global conglomerate and offering courses that promised world peace and yogic flying. How does this chime with the somber films of David Lynch? Inspired by his idol, the young director

Germany 2010, 100 min
by Jennifer Fox

For twenty years, award winning filmmaker Jennifer Fox has been following the high Tibetan master, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and his Italian-born son Yeshi, with her camera. MY REINCARNATION tells the compelling inside story of one of the last reincarnate teacher to be trained in Tibet and his son's stubborn reluctance to follow in his father's footsteps. Rinpoche escaped Tibet in 1959 and settled in Italy, where he married and had two children. As the story progresses, we see Yeshi mature from 18