Films

Germany, Spain, Peru 2025, 10 min
by Anne Thieme

The Peruvian Amazon is the all-encompassing monster that swallowed Melisa, who disappeared without a trace while playing on her doorstep. The fragments of lives she might have lived haunt her loving parents, who are left to deal with the loneliness of her absence.

2024, 27 min
by Boris Dewjatkin

The film directs the viewer's attention to the 'Museum of the Inconspicuous', which unveils itself on the urban material. The material becomes a medium and an impactful protagonist. The narrator uses his experience of the urban space of Berlin to describe a subjective paradise in which man-made systems of order are repeatedly overwritten by the chaotic force. A homage to chaos, inconspicuous signs and the city as palimpsest.

Germany 2024, 110 min
by Students of the HFF Munich

ELEVEN TOMORROWS is part of BERLINALE MEETS FUßBALL, a special project contributing to the cultural events of the UEFA EURO 2024. Young footballers from all over Germany are the protagonists of short documentaries made by students of the HFF Munich.

2024, 29 min
by Emil Silvester Ahlhelm, Konradin Schuchter

In FAHNENFLUCHT the focus is on the Ukrainian-Russian war. If you’re considered a man, you have only two options in war: stay and fight or leave to protect your life. Not everyone wants to sacrifice their life for their homeland, and everyone should have the right to choose. [64KFF PR]

Germany 2024, 15 min
by Bernadette Hauke

There is a lot of garbage on the bottom of the sea. Freddy has seen this during his dives. He wants to salvage the old nets that fishing boats have lost in the Baltic Sea, because they are a danger to marine animals, which get tangled up in them and die. Freddy trains to salvage these ghost nets so that he can clean up a piece of the sea aboard the special ship SEEKUH with diving professionals.

2024, 90 min
by Jens Becker, Dorothea Braun

JOSEPHINE PEARY, wife of North Pole conqueror Robert Peary, promoted his work and contributed much to his success.ADA BLACKJACK, the sole survivor of a terrible expedition to Wrangel Island during the early 1920s.LOUISE AMER BOYD, a millionaire and the first woman to finance her expeditions to map East Greenland and a (part-time) secret agent. Three extraordinary stories of women, risking life, health, and money to explore the Arctic deserts – but in our days forgotten. We also aim to highlight

Germany 2024, 30 min
by Daniel Burkholz

Lore Krüger was a German-Jewish photographer and a political activist. She was also a buddy of Lisa Fittko. Together they managed to escape from the French concentration camp Gurs. Lore catched the last steamer over the Atlantic, just before the Nazi-Wehrmacht took over in Marseille. Lisa Fittko saved many refugees, artists, intellectuals, etc., many of them having a Jewish background, by bringing them over the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain – out of reach of the German Nazis and their French Fasci

Germany 2024, 24 min
by Rebecca Blöcher

My mother has led a very unorthodox life, which has taken her both to palaces and under bridges. She lived in her small car for over 10 years until she could no longer walk and the car gave up right after that. [Rebecca Blöcher]The mother of animation director Rebecca Blöcher didn’t want to live an ordinary life. She wanted 'something more,' she explains in this stop-motion film. The people around her didn’t understand—in a letter written in 1968, a girlfriend criticizes her for going out on her

2024, 30 min
by Sarvnaz Alambeigi

An Afghan teen girl, with immigrant parents in Iran, strives to pursue her dream of becoming a professionel Muay Thai boxer despite her family's conservative mindset, enduring physical abuse, and anti-immigrant surroundings. Working day and night, she finances her Thai Boxing classes without her family's knowledge. Through this sport, she aspires not only to succeed in the ring but also to overcome life's obstacles. MAYDEGOL portrays the perseverance of Generation Z to escape their seemingly ble

2024, 20 min
by Oliver Stiller

On the night of 26 to 27 September, students from the University of Ayotzinapa were attacked by Mexican security forces in the city of Iguala/ Mexico. Forty-three students were kidnapped. Six people died during the night. Most of the kidnapped people are still missing. Ernesto and Eduardo were among the victims of the night. Unlike their abducted fellow students, they survived the attacks. To this day, they have not let go of that night and their lives have changed dramatically.

Germany 2024, 66 min
by Michael Hilger

The New Spirit of Whisky is a documentary about women, about taste and about Scotland. We follow six female protagonists who are distillery founders or work as master blenders in the Scottish whisky industry, focusing on their craft and their challenges such as climate change, all while casually changing the perception on who is making whisky and whom it is made for.

Germany 2024, 29 min
by Pavel Mozhar

Using the streets of his Berlin neighbourhood as a backdrop, a filmmaker from Belarus investigates the systematic nature of Russian and Belarusian war crimes in Ukraine and explores his own responsibility for this war.Six months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army withdraws from some occupied regions and settlements, leaving a trail of shockingly similar traces of war crimes. In the reports from several human rights organisations and independent groups of journalists, ther

Germany 2023, 16 min
by Natalie Katharina Fischer

Between deep conversations and silly sidewalk fights, between becoming a woman and wanting to stay a child, between sexist Instagram comments and Germany's next Topmodel... In this portrait, we dive into the world of a group of female friends, discover well-known problems and new challenges, and experience first-hand what it's like to be an adolescent and read as a woman in the year 2022.

Germany 2023, 31 min
by Anna Zett

A German police state of the past is the setting for the pulsating short film thriller Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid Doesn’t Exist). In it, Anna Zett collages video and audio material from the Berlin Archive of the GDR Opposition, partially taking the perspective of a sensitive child. Based on her own intimate involvement, the artist traces a successful, yet mostly unknown act of resistance at the very end of the GDR, while at the same time opening up an associative space for connecting with exper

Iran, Germany, Czech Republic 2023, 21 min
by Mohammad Valizadegan

With rhythmic fluidity, Saba’s body moves to the music. Dancing is what she lives for, how she expresses herself – yet she is not free to do so in her own country. In a film dancing the line between documentary and fiction, a moving portrait emerges of a generation of young Iranians hemmed in by the Islamic republic’s rigid rules. When Saba rebels in a poetic act of defiance, the boundaries between fiction and reality finally dissolve. [73 BERLINALE]

Germany 2023, 20 min
by Ewelina Rosinska

Polish filmmaker Ewelina Rosinsksa explores the textures and landscapes of her homeland, a place of contrasts and parallels, where Catholicism and the natural world swirl in a baroque gesture. A delicate, melancholy history weaves through the details of this poetic and poignant impression. [IFFR, Fiona Armour]

Germany 2023, 3 min
by Werner Biedermann

The three-minute short film AXIOM, in a mirrored film image, explores the phenomenon of a visual echo.

Germany 2023, 29 min
by Gretel Ribka, Jonas Riedinger

If you sit in a tractor all day, you have a lot of time to think. When Jürgen took over the farm from his father, he gave up rearing bulls and set up a contracting business. Agricultural machines now stand where there were animals in the past. Worn down by economic constraints, social expectations and hard blows of fate, the single father carries on working – day in, day out. He says: "Every farming father wants his son to take over one day." But what if the son’s health is in the balance?

2023, 17 min
by Juliane Ebner

Siren-like singing and rhythmic light reflections segue into a lyrical text and sketched silhouettes of coastlines and waves. Delicate lines and soft shadings on superimposed transparent foils form many-layered networks of shapes and structures. What is offscreen creeps into the frame through reflections and blends in with the visual design of the film. Then and now meet and merge into a poetic narrative about a childhood in Stralsund, at a time when the city was still part of the GDR. A fenced-

Egypt, Italy, Germany 2023, 17 min
by Basma al-Sharif

Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif makes experimental films and installations about cyclical political events and conflicts. Her latest film Capital sees her taking a slightly different direction. This combination of fiction and futuristic design draws exuberantly on the Telefoni Bianchi (“white telephone”) films of the 1930s and 40s. The Italian genre took its name from what was a status symbol at the time. These glamorous and escapist films promoting conservative values were ofte

Germany 2023, 28 min
by Julius Gintaras Blum

Chemnitz used to be an East German industrial metropolis and for the young people the path to adulthood was usually well defined - they obtained their training and sometimes remained in the same company for decades. Nowadays, the young generation has big dreams and all the possibilities, at least in theory - but they also have parents who experienced the exact opposite back in their youth. So it's very easy for both generations to feel misunderstood. Chemnitz is no longer what it once was, but t

Germany 2023, 14 min
by Lutz Stautner

The louder the glacier, the stronger the melt. The creaking, cracking and rippling is the voice of impermanence. Sound artist Ludwig Berger shows how important it is to listen to the world that surrounds us. The film follows him on one of his numerous visits to Morteratsch glacier in the Swiss Alps where he collects fascinating sounds that might disappear forever. "Climate change has always been visible to me, but had something abstract and not directly tangible. With the idea of recording the i

2023, 39 min
by Maximilian Karakatsanis

A cinematic journey between times and places. About a so-called guest worker from Greece who went to Germany. About life in a small Greek mountain village, family and personal loss. [21 doclisboa]

Germany 2023, 30 min
by Martin Per Åhlin

In the ancient land of Egypt, Thoth, the deity of wisdom, cherished the power of written language, guiding civilizations through time. Far across the oceans, Ulsan in South Korea witnessed industrial growth, forging new alliances and shaping its destiny. Meanwhile, the rich oil reserves of the Middle East wove a complex web of global influence, stirring tides of power and conflict. Amidst this tapestry of history, a smart city named Neom emerged, driven by the consequences of oil production. For