Films

Germany 2026, 91 min
by Daniela Magnani Hüller

A film like a house full of dark chambers long closed. Yet every room will be opened: puppet shows, butterflies, colour, light! This autobiographical documentary debut sets out to deprive silence of its power. Fourteen years ago, the director survived an attempted femicide carried out by a schoolmate, who had harassed her before. An act whose subjective and objective inconceivability Daniela Magnani Hüller will not accept. In images of great sensitivity, she uncovers memories, makes her voice audible in voiceover, enabling herself to find a stronger, own perspective – on what happened, the present of the trauma, a future life without fear. She wants conversations to happen and conducts them in large spaces often shot with considerable distance, with a teacher, a school friend, a detective, the state prosecutor; trying to find out why each of them did (or did not) act the way they did. Matter-of-fact, consistent and impressively composed, she reconstructs events and failures and – years after the crime – poses the question of responsibility: to the individuals, the school, the justice system and society. Violence against women – the unfolding of an internal and external perspective. Source of Synopsis

Nigeria, Italy, Germany 2025, 22 min
by Karima Ashadu

With no single protagonist or linear narrative, the film immerses us in a spectacle of strength through an intimate portrait of bodybuilders in the slums of Lagos. Inflated muscles, bulging veins and luminous skin glistening with sweat fill the screen. Shot almost entirely in close-ups, the camera hovers so near its subjects, moving softly like breath on skin, that at times figures become blurred, abstracted forms. Karimah Ashadu’s slow, measured pans across backs, chests and arms meditate on visibility, drawing attention to the embodiment and representation of the Black male body without rendering it singular or fixed. The metallic clang of barbells is punctuated with guttural sounds of exertion set against the ambience of the streets. Breath and muscle move in syncopated sonic choreography, and the men’s commitment to the ritual of maintaining the body is evident. Source of Synopsis

Germany 2025
by Tanne Brodel

Etchika Pollex has lived in the wrong body for 62 years - Olaf's body at.But then he decides to have gender reassignment surgery and Olafbecomes a woman on the outside too.For two years, author Tanne Brodel sensitively accompanied Etchikawith her camera. She went with her to in search of traces of her memories, accompanied her to operations and experienced Etchika in manyexceptional situations. She documents insights into a dramatic life.The viewer experiences a traumatized youth who grew up in the GDR and struggles for 62 years to find his identity. Olaf goes through hopes and aberrations, becomes a rich businessman in West Berlin and finally a successful boxing promoter. But every stage of Etchika's life is associated with inner conflicts, suffering and a rollercoaster of emotions.The daily look in the mirror becomes the compass of her life.Etchika talks openly in the documentary:About drug use, hopelessness, sex in the wrong body, travesty and a longing for death.In the credible and sometimes humorous interviews, she conveys that the crises were and are also associated with the courage to make decisive changes.She says that she has still not arrived; there are unsolvable conflicts that remain.Despite everything, Etchika loves herself more today than she could ever love Olaf.

Norway, Germany, USA 2024, 84 min
by Julie Lunde Lillesæter

When Amy, Marina and Hanna’s rape cases are dismissed by the Austin police, all three women try to find a way to rebuild their lives. They join forces with twelve other women in a ground-breaking federal class-action lawsuit, the first to argue that sexual assault isn’t prosecuted because it’s a crime that predominantly affects women. The group is determined to hold police and prosecutors accountable for their inaction, but their resilience is tested as they face setbacks from the system they hope to change. Ultimately, AN ARMY OF WOMEN offers a hopeful look into a movement that aims to change the future for women everywhere.The film is produced with support from the Norwegian Film Institute, Fritt Ord, Still Water Foundation, Viken Film Center, Arts Council Norway, NDR Norddeutscher Rundfunk, NRK, SVT & DR.

Germany 2024, 77 min
by Daria Kuschev

Germany's only Russian Orthodox women's monastery is located in a small town near Munich. Under the lead of Abbess Maria, 13 sisters of international origin live there, following a strict hierarchical order. As servants of God, the nuns increasingly disappear from the normal world, almost as if they had already 'died'. Symbolically, they always wear black clothes.Nevertheless, the sisters also have to attend to worldly matters, such as everyday work in and around the building, receiving pilgrims and, last but not least, securing the future of their convent.

Germany 2024, 90 min
by Markus Stein

West Berlin, 1979. Jürgen Baldiga, son of a miner from Essen, has just arrived in the city and decides to become an artist. Working as a rent boy and cook, he writes poems and a diary. After learning that he has HIV in 1984, he discovers photography. He intends his images to stop time and capture reality. They reveal his friends and lovers, wild sex, life on the street and the camp queens from the SchwuZ gay club who become his adopted family. Oscillating between despair and desire, rebellion and the will to survive, Baldiga becomes a chronicler of the queer West Berlin subculture in the face of his own imminent demise. When he died at the age of 34 in 1993, he left behind thousands of photographs and forty diaries – a unique artistic legacy.Using poetic diary excerpts, stark images and memories from companions, BALDIGA – ENTSICHERTES HERZ depicts not only a ground-breaking photographer but also an AIDS activist and committed fighter against the stigmatisation of gay people’s lives. [74 BERLINALE, Panorama]202474 BERLINALE – PanoramaBFI Flare London Film Festival64 KFF – Krakow Film FestivalPremio Mariposa – Festival Mix México #mix28Seal of Approval ‘highly recommended’

2024, 103 min
by Carmen Kirchweger

Six young women defy gravity and open up new climbing routes on the steep inclines of Greenland’s mountains. They prepare fervently for their expedition and test their limits. 'Somewhere in the middle of nowhere' takes on a different meaning when life hangs in the balance hundreds of metres above the ground – dependent on ropes, physical strength and decision-making skills. A film about strength and confronting danger. [39. DOK.fest München, Morgane Remter]

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, 94 min
by Mala Reinhardt

Blackness, queerness, friendship and the differences that connect us.Queer, Ghanaian-German, polyamory and the desire for a child: protagonist Akosua is accompanied for three years by her friend and director Mala on her journey through Germany and Ghana. Together they experience the highs and lows of a life full of longings, relationships and personal growth. While Akosua is still thinking about how she can make her wish for a child come true, Mala becomes pregnant during filming.

Germany 2024, 85 min
by Rea Karen, re karen

Fasia Jansen (*1929; † 1997) – a powerful blues singer; daughter of an African king and a German working-class mother – grows up among antifascist dockers in Hamburg. She barely survives the Nazi regime's medical experiments and forced labour in a concentration camp. Yet, after the war, she begins to sing for peace and women's rights. Together with her spouse, Ellen Diederich, she becomes a driving force in the European women's peace movement of the 1980s. Today, she is an identification figure for Black Germans. This documentary is a newly edited version of the film first released in 1987.

Germany 2024, 94 min
by Niloufar Taghizadeh

Once a pop icon, then 20 years of house arrest – and finally an unexpected comeback. The moving story of Iranian singer Googoosh makes her a voice of resistance. We accompany her on her farewell tour.The singer and actress Googoosh has been an iconic pioneer of Iranian pop culture for over 50 years. Her father, an acrobat and artist, already put her on stage at the age of three and she quickly became a child star. Googoosh’s singing inspired Iranian composers to create a new style of pop music, mixing Persian poetry with blues, jazz, Latin, rock and disco music. Her chansons became international hits, and she was a cult figure on the Iranian pop scene in the 1970s. Under the religious regime of Khomeini, Googoosh’s career then came to an abrupt halt in the 1980s when she was put under house arrest and banned from performing. This documentary tells of her eventful life and her astonishing international comeback in the 1990s. It accompanies Googoosh on her farewell tour in 2022. When the young girl Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the Iranian vice squad in September 2022, Googoosh demonstrated public solidarity with the struggle of the young generation of Iranians rebelling against the regime. She is today a symbol of hope and resistance, her life a testimony to the Iranian struggle for freedom and humanity.

Germany 2024, 85 min
by Kristine Nrecaj, Birthe Templin

HOUSE WITH A VOICE tells the story of six Burrneshas who, for different reasons, have decided to take on the social role of men. They have done this to circumvent patriarchal structures, to avoid misogynistic attacks, to support the family economically, to avoid compelled marriage and to be free. Our characters communicate with us intimately as they talk about their lives and bring us closely into their personal journey. They speak about freedom and oppression, about the promise of sacrificing their lives for the sake of their families’ survival. But also about the breaking of gender barriers and the power of the human mind to decide who we want to be. The film turns stereotypes and projections of gender discussions upside down. The Burneshas expand our awareness of human life and its universal conditions but in the end their story shows that the essences of life, which are identified as female, are held as less valuable, even less worth living. And that this remains so, worldwide. [TiDF]

Germany 2024, 20 min
by Sarnt Utamachote

Fellow members of the Berlin queer community mourn together the loss of their dead friends due to substance abuse and the mental health crisis as well as the loss of urban safe spaces in general. By sharing personal materials, stories, and honest criticism about the club scene, working on this film becomes a means of healing for this group of friends. Resembling glow-in-the-dark fungi, they radiate light together as a network of support and care, they transform dead bodies and memories into a collective structure that sustains future living.

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 contemporary women’s involvement in Arctic research, such as those aboard an icebreaker in Greenland or preserving Inuit culture and language in Alaska and Greenland.

2024, 88 min
by Günter Atteln

Recognized early on for her exceptional talent, Joana Mallwitz was Europe’s youngest general music director before becoming chief conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, one of Germany’s leading classical orchestras, in August 2023. Over two years, the film follows her as she embarks on a decisive phase of her international career – with debuts in Munich, Paris, Salzburg, and Amsterdam. At the same time, she and her husband have to reorganize their lives after the birth of their first child.JOANA MALLWITZ – MOMENTUM offers a candid and detailed portrait of the musician. We experience Mallwitz as a perfectionist who works hard, a music mediator, and an energetic orchestra leader. Despite all her success, we feel the enormous pressure that the conducting profession brings with it, which, like a musical crescendo, steadily increases until her inaugural concert in Berlin.

Belgien, France, Germany 2024, 106 min
by Ilyas Yourish, Shahrokh Bikaran

Zahra was the first in her family to study in Kabul and researched the significance of the kamay plant as an animal feed used by the mountain farmers of Hazarajat. Her suicide hit her parents and siblings hard. In their grief, they fight against a thicket of discrimination, harassment and infringements of justice. In quiet, poetic and monumental images, KAMAY tells the story of an unknown side of Afghanistan. [39 DOK.fest München, Silvia Bauer]55VdR Interreligious Award jury statement: "The film’s poetry, unfolding in the narrative of a sister, embodies the relentless and courageous yet ultimately hopeless fight against an unjust and misogynistic regime. The family members remain united in their dignity and love for each other. The decision of the interreligious jury was unanimous. The visual language and unique storytelling of the awarded film, gradually impact the audience. Through observing the pain and suffering of Afghan women, the directors have created a unique work. The only response to it can lie in human dignity".

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, 104 min
by Judith Beuth

LOVE ALONE CAN'T MAKE A CHILD follows the emotional journey of two women, Maria (37) and Christiane (44), who like many couples share a dream of having a child of their own. But physical limitations, medical issues and a discriminatory system that raises legal matters make this a far more challenging undertaking. Filmed over many years with extreme candor, capturing moments both serious and humorous, it is an intimate exploration of the balance of dependency in a relationship under tremendous stress, where the limits of how far they are willing to go to achieve their dream are continually challenged.

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 own and making men jealous, while advising her to dress in a more “feminine” way and to join a cooking course. Blöcher’s mother brushed aside the advice. Years later still, she divorced her husband and stepped into the big wide world. In Mama Micra the mother is a figure made of felt who recalls, in her own voice, her powerful urge to find freedom: “I was a real vagabond,” she explains. She traveled to Syria and Beirut, and envied the nomads in the desert. During the last 10 years of her life she lived in a Nissan Micra, washing in the morning in hotel bathrooms and sneaking into breakfast rooms to eat. Her freedom came at a cost. She lost contact with her daughter, who counterpoints her mother’s account with her own recollections. But no harm is irreparable in this affectionate film. [IDFA]The jury: “The filmmaker’s personal and family story, particularly her mother’s life, unfolds through a narrative enriched by diverse animation techniques. These vividly reimagined moments beyond old photographs bring untold realities to life. Themes of personal freedom, aging, and abandonment are poignantly explored, forging a deep emotional connection with viewers. Through the visual magic of animation, the filmmaker delicately portrays her inner world, preserving the bonds of affection and memory, even in the face of absence.”

Germany 2024, 86 min
by Dietmar Post (play loud!)

Mona Mur was born in Hamburg and became a leading figure in the German underground scene of the early 1980s. Her career has traversed many musical territories, from post-punk/industrial to electronica, from piano-based punk ballads to hard, experimental guitar music, all with her own signature style. She has collaborated with En Esch (KMFDM), FM Einheit, Mark Chung, Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten), Nikko Weidemann, Dieter Meier (Yello), J.J. Burnel and Dave Greenfield (Stranglers), Ralf Goldkind, filmmakers Monika Treut, Elfi Mikesch, Fatih Akin, photographer Ilse Ruppert, as well as the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Mona Mur is also a composer and sound artist for films and computer games. The re-release of her early albums provides a good opportunity to revisit her previous oeuvre. Mona Mur answers questions from filmmaker Dietmar Post in a bare studio with a screen showing photos, film and music video excerpts from throughout her career, resulting in a rich portrait of a musician who has followed her own vision and overcome resistance.

2024, 104 min
by Doris Metz

Petra Kelly was one of the most influential political personalities of the 20th century, a figurehead of the peace movement and co-founder of the first green party to find success. Her life was one of achievements, its end a tragedy.Petra Kelly was one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century. In 1980, she co-founded the German Green Party, the world’s first green party to rise to prominence. She fought relentlessly for radical social change, disarmament and a society at one with nature. For Kelly, environment, peace and human rights issues were one. At the age of 44, she was murdered by her long-time friend and political companion. Raised by her mother and grandmother, she grew up in 1960s America and campaigned for Robert Kennedy’s election in the months before his assassination. Petra Kelly was convinced that a single person could change the world. Influenced by the American civil rights movement and Martin Luther King’s concept of “civil disobedience”, she campaigned to protect the environment and ban uranium mining, demonstrating solidarity with the peace movements in both the East and West. Today, her spiritual legacy is continued by many young climate activists. The issues that concerned her are more topical today than ever before. Close friends and companions talk about Kelly’s personal and political life for the first time. With previously unseen international film footage, the film paints a picture of a sensitive, unwavering woman who let no one -stand in her way. [NEW DOCS catalogue]

Argentinia, Germany, Switzerland 2024, 90 min
by Lola Arias

Who are the cis women and trans people that go through the prison system? How did they end up there? How do they transform their time there into something creative, where they can rewrite their own lives and invent a future?Reas is a musical film starring cis women and trans people who were detained in different prisons in Argentina. In what was once Caseros Prison, now abandoned and in ruins, they reconstruct scenes from their past lives and imagine their future, singing, dancing and performing.With: Noelia Pérez, Estefanía Hardcastle, Paula Asturayme, Yoceli Arias, Nacho Rodriguez, Carla Canteros, Cintia Aguirre, Jade de la Cruz Romero, Julieta Fernandez, Pato Aguirre Santangelo, Laura Amato, Silvana Gomez y Daniela BordaSUPPORTED BY INCAA, Idfa Bertha Fund, Sundance documentary Fund, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW P2, Bundesamt für Kultur - BAK, BKM Produktion, Film- und Medienkunst Basel

Germany 2024, 111 min
by Katharina Pethke

The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.How much does a place reveal about its history? How much can forbears and their descendants know about one another? And how much continuity is contained within progress? When Katharina Pethke became a professor at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts, it set in motion a process of reflection and research. Before, she had studied there, and so too had her mother and grandmother. Each of the women believed they were breaking new ground and yet, consciously or unconsciously, through stance or in protest, continued to carry on a legacy. This essay film examines the three generations caught between social determination and artistic ambition, self-will and motherhood, production and reproduction. The university building and its sole sculpture by a woman artist purchased by urban planner Fritz Schumacher, “Frauenschicksal” (Women’s Fate), become a mirror as well as showcase for enduring ambivalences. A virtuosic and astute work from an established filmmaker, Reproduktion explores questions of feminine and artistic identity through the lens of Pethke’s personal experience, interweaving her family biography with the architectural history of the art and media campus. [74 BERLINALE – Forum]

Germany 2024, 115 min
by Andres Veiel

A captivating insight into the private estate of Leni Riefenstahl, who became world-famous with her Nazi propaganda film TRIUMPH OF THE WILL but kept denying any closer ties to the regime.Leni Riefenstahl is considered one of the most controversial women of the 20th century as an artist and a Nazi propagandist. Her films TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and OLYMPIA stand for perfectly staged body worship and the celebration of the superior and victorious. At the same time, these images project contempt for the imperfect and weak. Riefenstahl’s aesthetics are more present than ever today - but is that also true for their implied message? The film examines this question using documents from Riefenstahl's estate, including private films, photos, recordings and letters. It uncovers fragments of her biography and places them in an extended historical context. How could Riefenstahl become the Reich's preeminent filmmaker and keep denying any closer ties to Hitler and Goebbels? During her long life after the fall of Nazism, she remained unapologetic, managing to control and shape her legacy. In personal documents, she mourns her "murdered ideals". Riefenstahl represents many postwar Germans who, in letters and recorded telephone calls from her estate, dream of an organizing hand that will finally clean up the "shit-hole state". Then, her work would also experience a renaissance, in a generation or two this time could come - what if they are right?