weltfilm GmbH

Germany 2022, 138 min
by Sobo Swobodnik

Ramba Zamba: a theater with handicapped and non-handicapped people/actresses and actors, which has been living and working on inclusive integrative togetherness impressively every day for thirty years now. The film accompanies the mentally and physically impaired actresses and actors for six months through the theatrical production of the play GOLEM, from the beginning of rehearsals to the premiere.In doing so, the film is also partly influenced by the portrayed persons themselves, quasi inclusively co-determined, by them capturing their own view and perception, their view of reality itself on film.

2022, 90 min
by Kristof Gerega

Through the stories of three prominent Ukrainian politicians, from 2013 to the present day, we witness the country’s struggle for democracy, autonomy and geopolitical stability.Since Ukraine broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, the young nation state has been a pawn in a game controlled by the major political powers, while at the same time searching for its own identity. Over a period of several years, we follow three of the main protagonists of the Euromaidan Uprising as they evolve from activists to politicians in a fragile democratic system, to defenders of their country against the Russian invasion: Mustafa Nayyem, Svitlana Zalishchuk and Serhiy Leshchenko – also referred to in Ukraine as “the three musketeers”. Through their stories, from 2013 to the present day, we witness Ukraine’s struggle to achieve democracy, autonomy and geopolitical stability between the forces of east and west. All three had a powerful impact in the country as initiators of the Maidan Revolution, but also as political leaders trying to reform Ukraine from within and integrate it into Western alliances. The 2019 election changed many things. The former revolutionaries of the Maidan became representatives of the "old system" in the eyes of the next generation. Caught between post-Soviet forces and the EU and faced with both triumphs and setbacks, their struggle for democracy in 2022 takes on a whole new dimension following the Russian invasion.

Germany 2022, 24 min
by Alexandra Gulea

The author's grandparents were Aromanians, a Balkan minority of nomadic shepherds, without ter­ritory and written language, wandering between mountains and seas. Their story is told from the subjective point of view of the artist, who passionately reproduces in staged scenes this perpetual tragic wandering, also full of hope and courage to live.

2020, 96 min
by Tanja Cummings

Some of the world’s last remaining Holocaust survivors meet every week at Café Zelig in Munich, Germany. They get together to laugh and celebrate holidays, to argue and discuss various topics, but they also hold moments of silence and mourning. Some of them—and some of their children—undertake a journey into their past, back to their old home country Poland. And they talk about the difficulties they had—and still have—finding their way back to life in Germany.

Germany 2019, 102 min
by Andreas Wilcke

After 25 years the era Castorf comes to an end. During the last season of the Volksbühne the film allows us to witness the everyday life of this outstanding theatre with a reputation all over the world. From the first draw of the scenery till the final curtain we are watching how the monumental theatrical production of Goethes Faust comes to life. Thus we take a close look at the director, his actors and the people who work behind the scenes and get an impression of what has been grown together here. We are also on tour with them in Paris and Athen and see extracts of other plays developed by Castorf and his team.

Germany, Russia, Austria 2019, 26 min
by Marko Mijatovic

North of the Arctic Circle in the port city of Murmansk, Yana has just finished school. At the same time, former military personal are building a dacha settlement near to Yana's hometown in the tundra. While Yana wants to leave the city and move out into the world, the dacha settlers feel the need to create a safe haven. Although these two narratives appear divergent, they have something in common: both Yana and the settlers are following their dreams and must overcome the obstacles in their paths. Both are searching for an autonomous living space and see an economically viable habitat for themselves.

Germany, Uruguay 2018, 237 min
by Kristina Konrad (weltfilm gmbh)

Uruguay 1987-89. The filmmakers are on the streets of Montevideo, and in the country with farmers, talking with the people and asking them about their opinion of the referendum and plebiscite on the law of impunity for the human rights abuses committed by the military and police over the past 20 years, a law adopted by Parliament in 1986 during the transition from dictatorship (1973-85) to democracy. They listen to and observe the people as they contemplate what peace and democracy means to them – the first time they can express their views aloud after years of silence. A film about the power of discourse to shape history.Berlinale catalogue:What does peace mean to you? And justice? Following 12 years of military rule (1973–1985) and the accompanying silence, it couldn’t be taken for granted that people in Uruguay at the end of the 1980s would discuss such questions in such lively fashion in public. Two women take to public spaces across the country a U-matic camera and ask these questions of countless passers-by. The reason is a controversial amnesty law passed in 1986 that grants impunity for human rights violations and crimes committed by the police and the military under the dictatorship. Enthusiastically conducted conversations on the street are at the heart of this stirring film, which documents the mobilisation of civil society from collecting signatures for a referendum to the day of the actual vote. TV ads and campaign spots from the time supplement the smartly edited video footage, which has never been used previously. One can hear a plurality of opinions, experience a society in upheaval and recognise the importance of the public sphere as a stage for political debate. An example of democracy in action, of the kind that once again needs defending in many places in the world today.

2017, 32 min
by Marko Mijatovic, Luka Papic

“The Prostitute”, “The Addict”, “Gay Man”, “The Bitch” are the titles of 75-year-old recreational poet Slobodan Stevanović’s most popular poems. And popularity – in the Serbian provinces just like everywhere else – is measured by click figures. Slobodan and his son Bojan send his works into the world via YouTube. Poetry conquers new spaces, while the tube TV set in the old space next door is flickering and the “cevapcici “are frying. (DOK Leipzig, Lukas Stern) Serbia is a transitional country on the “spiritual” edge of Europe.Somewhere on the outskirts of Serbia lives Slobodan, a hypersensitive, hyperproductive 75 year old poet.Reality in Serbia is ephemeral, everything is constantly changing. In Slobodans surroundings history and present intertwine, so as local folklore legends with horrors and curiosities of a transitional society and for him the only way to cope with it is to write. Althou he has written over 10000 poems, outside his hometown, he still remains unknown. Luckily his son Bojan has found a perfect output for his fathers poetry - Youtube. Webcam for them is a magical portal, a tool that penetrates the barrier of their surroundings, and puts his poems directly in front of those who want to hear them.

Germany 2016, 82 min
by Andreas Wilcke

Berlin is changing. From London to New York it is considered "the place to be". And Berlin is cheap compared to other European capitals. Everybody wants to live here and many want to buy a flat to put their money into a save haven with the banksystem in crisis. This is creating a conflict with the original residents. Rents are rising rapidly and neighborhoods are changing drastically.Over a period of 4 years, the author interviewed and accompanied real estate agents and investors during their daily routine and filmed tenants struggling to cope with the situation. He provides the audience with the opportunity to experience the turnaround of a whole city virtually at first hand.

2016, 79 min
by Frank Amann

„Even with no input, or maybe especially with no input, the brain keeps creating images." Pete Eckert, blind photographerSHOT IN THE DARK is an intimate portrait of three successful artists who have one thing in common: visual impairment as a starting point for their visual explorations.This film poses fundamental questions about seeing and the imagination.Three blind photographers.It is as if through the slow working methods of these blind photographers something about the creation of photographic images and the phenomenon of light becomes visible to me for the first time. It is something performative, dynamic and very filmic.Watching SHOT IN THE DARK will introduce three extraordinary people. These blind artists insist on participating in the world of visuals. At the same time they question this world with their work, in which nothing is taken for granted.Pete Eckert (56) practises a photographic technique he calls "light painting". Because he can no longer see in which "decisive moments" he should trigger the camera, he lights in complete darkness all elements of the image how he imagines and would like to see them. To orient himself in his studio he uses the echo of his voice reflecting from the walls. He is living quite secluded with his Japanese wife Amy in a wooden cabin in a Californian city, and for this film he will create a series which reflects on the precarious togetherness between blind and sighted lovers and partners. What consequences will this work have for his own relationship?For Bruce Hall (59) the sky of his childhood was black. He saw the stars for the first time when he was nine, through the telescope of a school friend. "I think all photographers take pictures in order to see, but for me it's a necessity. I can't see without optical devices, without cameras." He uses a snapshot camera to magnify elements of his surroundings in order to read or recognise them. He can only perceive facial expressions when facilitated, like the expressions of his profoundly autistic twin sons Jack and James (13), who never or barely speak. Like a tragical twist of fate the invalidity of his sons brought to him the long sought subject for his photographical passion and his artistic abilities to life.Sonia Soberats (77) unexpectedly lost her eyesight at the age of 56. Her portrait photography resembles a theatre-stage and still is extremely intimate. She builds minimalistic backdrops from her imagination. Like a visual hunter she moves with flashlights around her models. Sonia Soberats lost her vision after fostering both her children and her husband who died from cancer within a few years. "I went through hell." Existence determines ...the images and imagination too?Inspite - or maybe because of – their medical lack of vision these three photographers have been invited to exhibit not only in the US but also internationally (Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, South Korea and Spain).How and why are these photographers able to advance their work so consistently? How does this intuitive approach to images by these visually impaired photographers differ from mine as a cameraman? Can less be more?

Germany 2015, 54 min
by Angelika Levi

Rent Eats the Soul" documents during two years neighborly organizing and protest on the southern Kottbusser Tor. The film portrays movingly the protagonists of the protest. It links the housing problem to the history of migration and emphasizes a connection between racism and urban displacement.During the night of May 26 in 2012, some residents of social housing at Kottbusser Tor, a majority ethnic Turkish neighbors, built a protest house. They called it "Gecekondu", translated from Turkish means "built overnight".With this occupation of a public square in the center of Kreuzberg, the tenants initiative Kotti & Co began a until now visible daily resistance, and brought the issue of social housing and the massive displacement of long-term residents of the city on the political agenda.People with very different biographies and politically different views began to talk to each other and to share their stories. The separations and prejudices gave way to a positive uncertainty, neighbours became friends.The "Cottbus Choir" features in the film, a radically postideological choir, arranged and musically composed by Nicholas Bussmann.The choir sees itself in the tradition of leftist amateur choirs, but the normally hierarchical structure of a choir is broken and a musical track reflects the subject of the film: the relationship between collective and individual.

Germany 2013, 62 min
by Andreas Bolm

Northern Germany. An ageing hippie couple endures an isolated, ghostly existence in an old country house. A boy wanders aimlessly through a forest, building a lair for himself. And a story about a never-ending escape from catastrophe. THE REVENANTS - a film about desire, loss, and endlessly returning. A ghost story.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany, Austria 2012, 61 min
by Clarissa Thieme

THE PLACE WE LEFT is a film about six people all born in Sarajevo who left the city mostly due to the war. some stayed abroad some came back after years.
they talk about their experiences leaving their city settling down somewhere else or being caught in the middle. THE PLACE WE LEFT concentrates on their personal attempts to give sense to circumstances they surprisingly found themselves in when in 1992 Sarajevo a european metropolis became under siege.
blocks of talking heads are accompanied by pure visual shots: 'still shots of them facing the camera, shots of apartments' interiors

Romania, Germany 2024, 89 min
by Alexandra Gulea

Maia (Alexandra Gulea) was born into a semi-nomadic population under ethnic cleansing. Her granddaughter has produced a vivid visual reconstruction of her journey through the 20th century. Her history blends into the larger History.The Aromanians (Rrãmãnji) are an ethnic group found mainly in today’s Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. For filmmaker Alexandra Gulea, this question of heritage is connected to the name she shares with her grandmother, who was born into a traditional Aromanian life, and is fluent only in an Aromanian language. The older Alexandra's father suffered a violent death in an uprising for his people's rights, which forced the family out of Greece and into a politically treacherous Balkan landscape deep in the throes of nationalist upheavals, until finally, they found a home in Romania.Through early documentaries from the period, ethnographic objects and importantly, through her own imagination, Alexandra begins her journey back into her grandmother's world. Maia – Portrait with Hands delights with a mix of techniques which include proto-animation (the drawing of sheep on a meadow tacked against the side window of a car), puppetry (the play with the floating velvet dress) and simple reenactments, all lending her journey a desire for a lost simplicity, an earthiness. [53 IFFR, Olaf Möller]

Argentinia, Germany 2022, 84 min
by Leandro Listorti

In a journey into botanical and film preservation, HERBARIA explores, in its almost invisible processes, the artistic and political derivations that connect the two worlds. Based on a narrative where time and space seem to merge, the images invite us to the fascinating universe of preserving the beauty and memory of a world that insists on disappearing. [Kino Rebelde]

2022, 90 min
by Raphaël Grisey, Bouba Touré

Using rare cinematic, photographic and sound archives, Crossing Voices recounts the exemplary adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative created in Mali in 1977 by western African immigrant workers living in workers’ residences in France. The story of this improbable, utopic return to the homeland follows a winding path that travels through the ecological challenges and conflicts on the African continent from the 1970s to the present day. To tell this story, Bouba Touré, one of its principal actors, returns to the heart of his personal archives. They document peasant struggles in France and Mali as well as following the personal stories of migrant workers over many decades. Furthermore, the film is a story of transmission, kinship and cinematographic geographies. It is the story of Bouba Touré with filmmaker Raphaël Grisey, who became Bouba’s spiritual son, but it also chronicles Bouba’s relationship with militant filmmakers such as Sidney Sokhona or Med Hondo. Throughout the film, voices come to accompany Bouba and bring forth the narrative of a forgotten memory leading towards the future.Over the course of the film, different voices enter the sound-scape to accompany Bouba Touré’s voice; they bring the tale of a forgotten memory toward a possible future sung by an electronic griot storyteller.