Films

2025, 86 min
by Julia Lemke, Anna Koch

Santino is a circus kid. He travels around the country with his family and animals in a caravan - here today, there tomorrow. Home is not a fixed place for him, but rather his parents Angie and Gitano, his brother Giordano, countless uncles and aunts, cousins and especially his great-grandfather Ehe, one of the last great circus directors in Germany. Ehe tells Santino wild stories from his long life: about the magnificent bull elephant Sahib, his own first steps as a clown and the feeling of freedom for which it is worth putting up with all the hardships. On Santino's eleventh birthday, Ehe asks what Santino would like to show in the circus ring one day - after all, he has something to contribute to their community. But how do you find out? Circusboy tells the story of the lives of the last nomads in Germany. About growing up in an extended family, with the animals, and a life without a safety net. A documentary road film with animations about the power of belonging and community.

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.

Germany 2024, 70 min
by Lara Milena Brose

August 2021. The world watches as the Taliban come back to power in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people flee. Many of them end up trapped in the non-EU state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.Like Nahid, a 15-year-old girl who is stranded in this nowhere place after a nerve-wracking flight from Herat. The voice messages from home increasingly sound like a distant echo. But there is no time for nostalgia in this daily life between illegality and pushbacks. There is just one goal: get her family away from this ramshackle camp. Luckily, there are people like Ferida and the shady but good-hearted coffee shop owner Elvir in town.Ferida lives right at the border and as she watches people return humiliated from their attempts to cross the border, memories of her own past slowly come back to her.While Ferida loses herself in reminiscence, Nahid discovers that the cycle of war and loss connects her to the place more than she expected.

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.

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.

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]

Germany 2024, 300 min
by Karin de Miguel Wessendorf

Everything revolves around football for Chayenne, Eriona, Liv and Pauline. They play in the U15 squad of SGS Essen, one of the few clubs that gives priority to women’s football. This season it’s all or nothing for the players now they are stepping up their performance and fighting to make it into competitive football, even to the Bundesliga. Football mania and high stakes guaranteed! [38 DOK.fest München, Ysabel Fantou]

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 bleak destiny, asserting their rights, especially as women, seeking freedom in life despite the risk of losing it. It also serves as a mirror for them to recognize their strenght, find inspiration, and gain confidence.With Maydegol, Mohadesseh, Farzaneh

Germany 2024, 90 min
by Jan Hendrick Lübbers

Through the vibrant neighborhoods of Ghana's capital Accra, this coming-of-age film follows the four basketball friends Barnabas, Raphael, Jumaih, and Garvin as they face the challenges of growing up. In the confusion of wavering plans for the future, complicated father-son relationships, conservative gender roles and the fear of the end of innocent childhood, the basketball court proves to be a place where the four can forget the problems of their everyday lives for a moment and open up, but above all to be allowed to be children again.

Polen, Germany 2024, 84 min
by Agnieszka Zwiefka

When her mother dies in the forest on the Polish-Belarusian border, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl Runa has to quickly grow up to take care of her 4 younger brothers and helpless, depressed father. The family deals with trauma in a refugee camp and tries to establish a new life in Poland. Runa's greatest fear is being forced to return to Iraq, where Kurds face the threat of ISIS. She wants to live like her newfound European friends and become a lawyer. But just as her dream of going back to school comes true, another threat appears – the threat of deportation. Runa’s escape from everyday problems is a sketchbook filled with drawings that express what she feels. Gradually, her drawings come to life. The film is a partially animated coming of age story in the times of the global refugee crisis.

Germany 2024, 97 min
by Clara Stella Hüneke

"Germany has so much bling, why not let everyone in? Why 'women's push-ups' and 'not bad for a girl'?"Over three transformative years, Jamila(9), Rachel(11) and Faseeha(12) of the rapcrew SISTERQUEENS challenge societal norms and battle gender expectations. They live in the center of Berlin and spark poignant questions about what self-determination means to them. Faseeha confronts artistic boundaries, Rachel explores self-empowerment and Jamila questions the role of the police. Together, they craft rap verses that skillfully disrupt conventions redefining feminism one verse at a time.

Germany 2024, 91 min
by Daniel Abma

When parents can no longer fulfil their duty of care, the children’s world often falls apart. Nothing stays as it was. Suddenly it is no longer mum or dad who are in charge but the youth welfare system. Daniel Abma followed a youth housing group in a rural area over several years, showing professional educators who want to give five boys between the ages of seven and fourteen what they need most urgently, day by day: security, orientation, a home.The documentary focus is not on the children but on those who take the parents’ place. They sometimes remind us of Don Quixote tilting at the windmills, for there is a diffusion of responsibility between school, youth welfare services, and absent mothers and fathers. Words fail when adults do not keep appointments, when those in charge capitulate in the face of racist bullying and propose some “time out” – for the bullied boy – in a psychiatric facility. It would be easy to denounce these mechanisms, but that is not the point Daniel Abma wants to make. His observation, both emphatic and reserved, looks questioningly into the gaps in the system – with those who are in danger of falling through and those who try to fill them with affection. He makes us suspect that the answer is not to close all the system’s gaps. It is people who are there for other people and take responsibility. [67 DOK Leipzig, Luc-Carolin Ziemann]

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….

2023, 86 min
by Antje Starost, Hans Helmut Grotjahn

13 years after the premiere of 7 OR WHY I EXIST we meet them again: the 7 children from all over the world. How did they find their way into becoming adults?The film shows their philosophical context to the life and future of a generation between 20 and 30. As children, they impressed and inspired us with their curiosity about "difficult" questions. As young adults, they allow us to share in their feelings and thoughts. They give us the opportunity to watch them reflecting and “in the process of the gradual production of thoughts while speaking” (Heinrich von Kleist).That's the charm. Then as now.

Germany 2023, 79 min
by Julia Beerhold

Two siblings. The parents love and encourage them, but also use brute force against them. No contradiction for them. Blows, even on wounds, slaps when they fall down. Sometimes without reason. The siblings are the director and her brother. The film documents the story of a family and makes an attempt to talk about something that is usually kept quiet: The abuse of their own children. [57 Hof IFF]

Germany 2023, 72 min
by Sylvain Cruiziat

The Gen Z friends Maxime, Julian and Vilas live in Munich in late adolescent carefreeness – their everyday lives consist of studying, partying and Playstation. Slowly, the three begin to move in different directions, but they all face a common challenge: the path to adulthood. Their special intimacy with each other seems unaffected by stereotypes of becoming men. The three of them naturally cuddle up in the daybed and introduce us to a new concept of male friendship. Maxime will soon leave the group to study abroad. Leaving is hard, but staying behind is even harder.

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-in, circumscribed childhood, framed by nocturnal floodlights, the bawling of drunk sailors and the crumbling plaster of facades and walls gone grey. The narrator manages to leave this oppressive fortress behind, but she can never escape completely. The memories that have settled like grey dust on her interior will stay with her forever. [66 DOK Leipzig, Franka Sachse]

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 that is also nothing new - and if it realized this fact, the young generation could be its future.

Germany 2023, 90 min
by Nele Dehnenkamp

When Michelle married her friend from her youth on a prison visiting floor, she was determined to prove his innocence and share a happy family life with him and her children in freedom. Seven years later, her long-awaited dream could finally become reality. "For the Time Being" is an intimate long-term observation of love, devotion and female resilience.

Germany 2023, 86 min
by Benjamin Rost

Imad, Nourdine, Walid and Hamza live in a stone cave under a lighthouse in Melilla. Every night, the Moroccan teenagers break into the nearby port. There, they try to climb unnoticed onto ships bound for the Spanish mainland. They and dozens of other children have formed their own community under the protection of the rocks. Director Benjamin Rost documents the impressive lives of the young people over a period of five years. The film's title describes the widespread practice of illegal North African immigrants burning their papers, and thus their identities, when apprehended by police. A poignant documentary that offers a glimpse into an unknown world. [19ZFF]

Germany 2023, 67 min
by Annika Mayer

A family in the 60s on Super8. Stories of a violent husband fifty years later. A film about the invisibility of domestic violence.Director Annika Mayer searches for clues, and interviews her grandmother ROSE about old family Super8 recordings from the 50s and 60s. They show a family in the time of the 'German Economic Miracle': a fancy house with a garden in a small German town, a vacation at the North Sea, a Sunday trip to the National Garden Show. These are images that have inscribed themselves in the collective memory of the Federal Republic; it is a social expectation that is captured on film – you record what you want to see.But behind the facade, memories come up, fragments of a bygone era that still resonates. The film addresses the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Upon closer examination of the material, the doubts that are awakened in the viewers make the invisible visible. Through Rose’s narration, the image of post-war West German family happiness is dismantled piece by piece.

Ireland, Germany, Libanon, Great Britain 2023, 92 min
by Stephen Gerard Kelly, Garry Keane

Filmed over four years with unique access to the families within these largely no-go areas and co-directed by Stephen Gerard Kelly (debut film) and Garry Keane (Gaza, 2019), In The Shadow of Beirut is marked by a deep intimacy with its subjects and a bold cinematic style, with much of its visual and character-led storytelling sharing creative DNA with the team’s earlier film, Gaza. Co-Director Stephen Gerard Kelly built up his relationship with the families at the centre of the film over a six-year period.The film follows its protagonists through the pandemic and the deteriorating economic crisis engulfing the country daily. However, given the storied neighbourhood’s tough history and challenging living conditions, the struggles of the film’s central protagonists began long before the deadly 2020 port explosion rocked the city in which they were born. [REAL FILMS]

2023, 15 min
by Marie Zrenner

Two young girls are drifting in the water of a public swimming pool. The film adopts this drifting attitude as it follows them through nocturnal Montreal and their daily life. Sometimes the two speak English, sometimes Inuktitut. Kathy and Teresa come from a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada. They show each other smartphone pictures of gees and bears they killed themselves. They read about the special relationship between the Inuit and their sledge dogs, which has lost its importance today. Home assignments are done in a park – the scent of the trees reminds them a little of home. They close their eyes. With great tenderness, the camera captures the deep bond between the two best friends who share the same heritage and language. Kathy has written a moving song in Inuktitut. In simple, clear words, she sings of the feelings and yearnings of a young Indigenous woman. [66 DOK Leipzig, Anke Leweke]

Chile, Germany 2023, 74 min
by Tana Gilbert

They are women. They are mothers. They are prisoners serving long sentences in a correctional facility in Chile. Their children grow up far from them, but remain in their hearts. In prison, they find affection in other partners who share their situation. Mutual support among these women becomes a form of resistance and empowerment. Malqueridas constructs their stories through images captured by them with banned cell phones inside the prison, recovering the collective memory of an abandoned community. [38SIC]