RFF Real Fiction Filmverleih e.K.

Germany 2025, 97 min
by Martina Priessner

Thirty years after the racist attacks in Mölln, survivor İbrahim Arslan discovers hundreds of forgotten letters of solidarity. The film follows him and his family in their struggle to foster a new, victim-centred culture of remembrance. [75 BERLINALE Panorama]With Hava Arslan, İbrahim Arslan, Namık Arslan, Yeliz Burhan.

Germany, Jordan 2024, 92 min
by Rand Beiruty

TELL THEM ABOUT US is a coming of age story following seven teenage girls adjusting to their new life in Eberswalde, an East German provincial city. Over the period of four years, we witness them steer through friendships, school, finding a career and even marriage. The girls grapple with the pressures and conflicts of being immigrants and refugees while simultaneously navigating their roles as young women within their families and communities.Next to following them in their daily life, the director organizes writing, music and acting workshops where the girls reflect upon their circumstances and future goals and dreams. Afterwhich, they write scenes in order to stage in front of the camera. These scenes are turned into dream sequences where the girls envision themselves in the future as a way to work through painful experiences and playfully translate them into future perspectives under the cover of fiction.

Germany, Japan 2024, 86 min
by Andreas Hartmann, Arata Mori

Every year, thousands of people vanish without a trace in Japan. Known as the Johatsu, or 'the evaporated,' they abandon their lives for various reasons, a troublesome relationship, mounting debts or threats from the mafia. Some get support from so-called 'night moving' companies, which help people to disappear and start a new life somewhere else. Taking an intimate look at the phenomenon of 'evaporating people,' JOHATSU – INTO THIN AIR depicts the inner conflicts and attempts at reconciliation of those who have disappeared and those who have been left behind.

Germany 2024, 93 min
by Marc Wiese, Juan Camilo Cruz

Corruption and mismanagement has turned Venezuela into a failed state. Over six million people have fled in recent years. Around one million children were left behind by their parents. This remarkable film follows two single mothers and their children over several months as they do what it takes to survive.In the barrio Santa Rosa de Agua, health care has collapsed and children are dying from hunger. Carolina has set up a foundation to help feed them. But the barrio is so violent, she’s had to send her own daughter, Victoria, to a children’s home. The home is an oasis in the midst of violence and deprivation but many of the children, who haven’t seen their parents for years, are traumatised. They struggle with feelings of rejection.Most people in the barrio survive by violence, prostitution, begging. “I’ve had to do lots of things for my kids,” confides Kiara. “Selling drugs, stealing, prostituting myself. Everything a woman can do for her children”. Her eldest son, Yorbenis, 14, has already joined a gang and is on the verge of his first kill. Desperate, Kiara decides to leave the country for Colombia. She takes her small children with her while Yorbenis’ remains behind. Now she’s terri!ed that he will be murdered in her absence. She knows he is being hunted by rival gangs, as well as the police….

Germany 2024, 89 min
by Jörg Adolph, Edgar Reitz

In 1968, a classroom in a girls’ high school in Munich is transformed into a film studio under the direction of the young Edgar Reitz. The film lesson begins: the first documented attempt in cinema history to teach film aesthetics as a stand-alone subject. In 2023, Edgar Reitz, now world-famous as the director of the film epic Heimat, is approached by an elderly woman who identifies herself as one of his pupils from 1968. The two arrange a class reunion. Compiled from a documentary made about the project at the time, the Super 8 films shot by the pupils and the filmed reunion in 2023, a kind of long exposure of the last 55 years of film history is created. Are the personalities of the pupils already evident in the exercise films? And what do the women have to say now about contemporary film culture? Filmstunde_23 is a declaration of love for filmmaking.[74 BERLINALE]

Germany 2024, 79 min
by Katharina Köster, Katrin Nemec

The media call their son the 'patient killer.' He was given a life sentence for his numerous crimes. Life goes on for his parents Ulla and Didi Högel but nothing is the same as before. They must accept the bitter truth, figure out how to cope with everyday life and reposition themselves in relation to their child. A compelling, precisely observed film about parenthood and love. [39 DOK.fest München, Ysabel Fantou]

2023, 86 min
by Britt Beyer

Coal mining has shaped Lusatia for generations. In the GDR it was still an important industrial location but, after the fall of communism, companies shut down and livelihoods were destroyed. With the planned phase out of coal, the region is facing another upheaval. Britt Beyer takes a sensitive look at the people who must deal once again with the collapse of existing structures and points of reference. [38 DOK.fest München, Ina Borrmann]

2023, 90 min
by Moritz Springer

Far beyond merely offering an alternative model for agriculture, a collective of potato-growers straddles the line between an inspiring vision and sobering reality.Over a period of nine years, this documentary observes the Kartoffelkombinat, a collective of potato-growers in Munich, on its way to becoming Germany’s largest agricultural cooperative. The efforts of the organization’s two founders have been in service of a grander vision: finding an alternative to the capitalist mode of production. But the road there is rocky, and suddenly the project is on the verge of failure. [40 FFMUC]

Germany 2022, 91 min
by Frank Wierke

A gentle stroll through the life and thoughts of a great intellectual of our time.Michael Krüger has not only shaped the landscape of publishing in Germany over the past 50 years, he has also created a diverse and inspiring body of work as a writer. In the film we follow him from his final year at Hanser Verlag to him stepping down from his role as President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. In the process, Michael Krüger appears astute and full of life even at the age of 75. [37 DOK.fest Munich, Anne Thomé]

2022, 103 min
by Thomas von Steinaecker

“Nothing is typical for Werner, only the atypical is typical for him.” This is just one of many attempts to characterize Werner Herzog. Documentary filmmaker Thomas von Steinaecker spoke to actors, directors, directors of photography and producers who have worked with Herzog over his long career—including directors Chloé Zhao, Joshua Oppenheimer and Wim Wenders, singer Patti Smith and actors Nicole Kidman, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson.We also hear from Herzog himself, with extraordinary anecdotes about film locations and shoots, his admiration for Lotte Eisner, and his eternal search for beauty. Herzog’s wife Lena, his brother and his ex-wife provide the inside stories. The interviews are carefully punctuated by archive footage of Herzog never seen before, iconic excerpts from his feature films and documentaries, and his cameos in cartoon series such as The Simpsons. Together they create a kaleidoscopic image of a radical visionary and dreamer, and of his very own “Werner World.” [35 IDFA]

Germany 2022, 94 min
by Birgit Schulz

A smart and unsparing documentary portrait of art adviser Helge Achenbach. It starts with him being sentenced to jail for defrauding his clients for tens of millions. The emerging character is fascinatingly complex and controversial, brokering extremely expensive and giant artworks first to banks and corporations, then to celebrity billionaires. It's no wonder his life's story is closely related to the absurd developments of prices for modern art over the last forty years. [FFCGN 2022]

Germany 2022, 98 min
by Sabine Lamby, Cornelia Partmann, Isabel Gathof

Probably for the last time former SS-guards recently faced trial for their role in German concentration camps, as for a long time Germany's justice system had difficulty dealing with its countless unpunished Nazi crimes. However, already in 1963 General State Prosecutor and Fritz Bauer (1903-1968) aptly indicated that one should also prosecute small cogs in the machines of industrialized mass murder. Interspersed with stirring and moving first hand witness accounts of concentration camp survivors Fritz Bauer's Legacy not only reveals a fascinating history of why it took so long for justice to find its way into German courts but it also effectively illustrates its significance for a future without mass murders and flagrant injustices.

Germany 2022, 85 min
by Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski

The Hamlet Syndrome depicts the young Ukrainian generation scarred by war and political breakthroughs. The film's starting point is the preparation for a play based on the motifs of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which, combined with an intense glimpse into the lives of the characters, creates a powerful portrait of a generation having to confront their war trauma and tackle the painful past, which now after the Russia's invasion of Ukraine becomes their present and future alike.

Germany 2021, 90 min
by Daniel Andreas Sager

Two years after exposing the Panama Papers, the investigative journalists at Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung are facing new challenges: the political murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galicia and a mysterious arms dealer linked to the Iranian nuclear missile programme. Then a secret video is leaked to them in the spring of 2019, uncovering a new scandal involving Austrian Vice Chancellor HC Strache. For the documentary film BEHIND THE HEADLINES/HINTER DEN SCHLAGZEILEN, Germany's largest daily newspaper opens the door to its world-renowned investigative department for the first time, providing insight into work processes that are otherwise strictly confidential. With: Bastian Obermayer, Frederik Obermeier, Edward Snowden a.o.

Germany 2021, 118 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken, Michael Chauvistré

WE ARE ALL DETROIT - WHAT STAYS AND WHAT DISAPPEARS follows the explosive development of two cities on two different continents and its effect on the people who live there.These two very different cities - Bochum, in Germany's Ruhr region, and Detroit, in the US Rust Belt - have something ver important in common: both Detroit and Bochum were substantially shaped by the automobile industry. And both the beginning and the end of Bochum's auto industry can be traced to Detroit.Following the end of the industrial age, the people on both sides of the globe are in search of a new identity. The audience is introduced both to the active players – planners, scientists and politicians – in the transformation, all announcing promises ans visions for a future that is more than uncertain. Despite all their differences, the residents of Bocum and Detroit are connected by their desire for a dignified and happy life and this cinematic journey through the two cities becomes a journey into the hearts of their people.

Germany 2021, 98 min
by Daniela Abke

Paris, Belleville: a neighbourhood that epitomises migration, music and struggle. At the corner of Rue des Envierges echoes of the Paris Commune of 1871 resonate, as neighbours and strangers alike sing old French popular songs together at Le Vieux Belleville, one of the city's last remaining café musettes. An ensemble of truly emblematic characters pays tribute to the French revolutionary spirit - echoes of a bygone era perhaps, yet radically fresh. with Joseph Pantaleo, Lucio Urtubia, Minelle Guy, Riton la Manivelle, Robert Bober, S.C. Turne