Films

2026, 120 min
by Yulia Lokshina

In one of the poorest regions of Paraguay lies Caazapá, the “city of magic and legends”. Here, two young Paraguayan students are searching for happiness, gold and a magic bird. Behind the fences of a gated community, European dropouts are seeking freedom, healing and salvation from Armageddon – for themselves and their savings. Separating them are 12 kilometres of red-earth road which transforms into a quagmire every rainy season. Around them hovers the humid heat and choruses of cicadas. Step by step, the film explores the new community of settlers and the local population; the camera drifts through construction sites, schools, treatment rooms and shooting ranges, gazes up at the sky and into the internet. While the newcomers experience turf wars and loss, the locals follow their own myths which hark back to the country’s missionary and colonial history. They all have a version of paradise. Source of Synopsis

Germany, India 2026, 105 min
by Madhusree Dutta

Spurred by her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother’s strange evocation of home-invading tigers, filmmaker Madhusree Dutta travels to Assam, India. Here, she learns about the Flying Tigers: US aircraft that transferred military supplies during WWII across the perilous Himalayas, from Assam to Kunming in China. So begins a globetrotting, decades-spanning docufiction essay on the human-scale experience of monumental logistical phenomena, featuring small histories that unfold in the quiet shadows of History writ large. Teaming up with Kunming-born media theorist Mi You and Assam-based researcher Purav Goswami, Dutta contrasts the smooth international flow of goods today with increasing restrictions on people’s movement across borders. Her film reveals how lived realities of frontier populations have always been fluid and malleable, refusing the homogeneity demanded by cartographic political imagination. Appropriately, Dutta adopts a heterogeneous, genre-defying form, mixing interviews, archival material, performances, animation and musical numbers to craft a personal, wide-ranging work at once intimate and colossal. Source of Synopsis

Germany, Great Britain 2026, 15 min
by Daniel Mann

In 1904, European leaders of the Zionist Organisation secretly surveyed the Ugandan highlands as a potential “New Promised Land” for the Jewish people. Supported discreetly by British colonial administrators, who described East Africa as a barren and blank imperial canvas and were eager to rid England of its Jewish population, one Jewish delegate began mapping the terrain, climate and life in Uganda towards a new Jewish settlement. What occurred on that mountain that led the explorer to vow never to return remains unknown. Drawing on present-day film location scouting and an email exchange with an Ugandan scout, The Recce meditates on cinema’s ties to land and its entanglement with (neo)colonial imagination. Through the recce, land becomes vital both to filmmaking and state-building. It is sought after, colonised and constantly reimagined as elsewhere. At the core of the recce lies a potentially violent act: the erasure of one place in creating another. The recce, as this test is often called, is seldom regarded as a film, but embodies this very violence and the ongoing shadow of coloniality in its form. Source of Production

Germany 2026, 16 min
by Vika Kirchenbauer

At a time when elements of fascisation are becoming ever more apparent, ever more pervasive, artist Vika Kirchenbauer takes a personal look at what is in the air in present-day Germany. This Suffocating Now witnesses the historical present as a condition marked by vectors of violence that have continuously and habitually existed, and puts its focus on the fault lines that have most explicitly exposed the illiberal underbelly of a liberal state and society in recent years: Palestine solidarity as well as queer and trans rights. Drawing from a vast variety of source material, the 16-minute essay film flows in an uneven rhythm through still and moving imagery. Observations from the past three years – such as the increased police presence and recurring police violence, which Kirchenbauer captures from her balcony in Berlin – are viewed within a broader German historical framework. Over mundane images of her home improvement efforts, the artist problematises her own social ascent to becoming a university professor and civil servant. This personal reflection serves as an entry point to addressing the intimate relation between state and contemporary art in the German cultural system as a whole. Source of Synopsis

2025, 30 min
by Nana Xu

The “Fruit Farm” is the home of Nana Xu, who is studying in Hamburg - a place that initially only had a number, not a name. It lies behind high mountains in southwest China and in her memory is characterized by dry air, burial mounds, ghost stories, policemen and prisoners. The historical contours of the place are outlined by sound recording, Nana Xu returns to the real place by bus and finds people of advanced age who, perhaps for the first time in their lives, reflect on this very place for someone from the outside. Guochang is the oral history of a non-place: the “fruit farm” was set up as a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution - built by prisoners, including the director's father. Later, all traces were erased. First the place was a mixture of village and prison, then a drug treatment center. A temporary solution as a permanent state for many. For Nana: family history, ghost story, nightmare, dream. Little by little, this courageous film against forgetting and concealment also reveals the ghostly history of violence in the People's Republic of China. An open journey home. Conversations with the last witnesses in their homeland, which is marked by a repressed past.

2024, 95 min
by Petra Hoffmann

On July 19, 1979, the Sandinista People’s Revolution in Nicaragua overthrew the brutal dictator Somoza and made the world dream. The construction of a new, more social and just society “between the blocks” seemed possible. Tens of thousands from all over the world travel to the small Central American country to support the young government and rebuild the plundered country.From what was then West Germany alone, over 15,000 supporters made their way to the small Central American country. In international brigades, they harvested coffee and cotton, built schools, kindergartens and health centers to rebuild the maltreated country. The purchase of “Nica coffee” becomes a symbol of international solidarity with the country. The Contra, which is supported by Somoza supporters and the USA, attempts to overthrow the revolution and restore the old balance of power. The civil war costs the lives of 50,000 Nicarguans and German “reconstruction helpers” are also kidnapped and killed by the Contra in the 1980s.And then the unbelievable happens: in April 2018, students protested against the former revolutionary hero and current president Daniel Ortega. Over 400 people were shot dead by paramilitaries. The country sinks into a bloodbath. Ortega’s international supporters are also increasingly being targeted. They have been collecting money for projects in Nicaragua for 45 years. Today, they fear for their lives and are fleeing the country. Those who remain no longer dare to raise their voices against the former revolutionary hero.

2024, 78 min
by Kamal Aljafari

During the military intervention in Lebanon in the summer of 1982, the IDF seized the archive collection of photos and film from the Palestine Research Center in Beirut. Kamal Aljafari reclaims these images, which have been stored by the Israeli army and Ministry of Defense, thwarting this attempt to erase a people deprived of their visual memory. Reel B75-92 shows scenes of orange-picking in Qalandia in 1957, which, according to the Hebrew description, are images of “terrorists”… They come from a collection of films and photos that were kept at the Palestine Research Centre in Beirut, until it was looted by the Israeli Army during the invasion of Southern Lebanon in 1982, and transferred to the archives of the Hebrew state's army and Ministry of Defense. It was only in the 2010s that academic circles - in Tel Aviv, in particular - began to question the aims of this systematic plundering of the entire Palestinian visual memory, which became war booty in part renamed for ideological reasons: the occupying power de facto ensuring control of the captured material. In A Fidai Film, Kamal Aljafari(An Unusual Summer, VdR 2020) turns this primordial plundering against those who perpetrated it. By revitalizing these lost images through his vibrant editing process, he unleashes the subversive power of a counter-narrative that has been erased over the decades, portraying life in Palestine before and after 1948 - particularly during the British mandate of the 1920s-1930s, when the tangible signs of future spoliation, humiliation and violence were already apparent. The Palestinian filmmaker thus meditates with a unique space-time depth of field on the fate of images produced by a people doubly dispossessed, both of its land, and of its history. [55 VdR catalogue, Emmanuel Chicon]

Germany, France 2024, 98 min
by Victor Kossakovsky

From filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky (Gunda, Aquarela) comes an epic, intimate and poetic meditation on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward.Centering on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele de Lucci, Kossakovsky uses the circle to reflect on the rise and fall of civilizations, capturing breathtaking imagery from the temple ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to AD 60, to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in early 2023.Rocks and stone connect the disparate societies, from ghostly monoliths stuck in the earth to tragic heaps of concrete rubble waiting to be hauled off and repurposed anew. Through Kossakovsky’s inquisitive lens, the grandeur and folly of humanity and its precarious relationship with nature posits the urgent question: How do we build, and how can we build better, before it’s too late?With: Michele de Lucchi, Mauro Mella, Davide Alioli, Nick Steur, Abdul Nabi Al-Afi

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’

Germany, Canada 2024, 90 min
by Larry Weinstein

In early 2023, filmmaker Larry Weinstein set out to make a documentary about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was supposed to be about how far we have come in the two hundred years since it was written. But when world events pull Larry into his own film, the question becomes a deeply personal one. BEETHOVEN'S NINE is a documentary about music, but also about war and hope. It follows nine unique individuals, including Ukrainian musicians, a deaf composer, a Polish rock star, a best-selling author, a legendary cartoonist and Weinstein himself, as they try to better understand the legacy of Beethoven’s Ninth, the composer’s own struggles, the inspiration music can provide and how humanity continues to look for hope even in the darkest times.With: Gabriela Lena Frank, Keri-Lynn Wilson & The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, Brodka, Charles M. Schulz, Leonard Bernstein, Franz Kranke, Steven Pinker, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Germany 2024, 145 min
by Irina Heckmann

2017 – I am travelling to Russia with a German tour group. I take the diary of Wehrmacht soldier Buff, killed in action in 1942 when he tried to give first aid to a Russian soldier, as my travel reading. Our itinerary intersects with places where he fought. I grew up in Russia. My grandmother toiled in Stalin's camps. 2022 – the conflict that Russia's attack on Ukraine triggered in me runs through the film. The journey to Russia was characterised by encounters between people whose parents' or grandparents' had common experiences – those of the Second World War. In brief moments of rapprochement, many questions remain unanswered – especially about the purpose of war.

Germany, Canada 2024, 97 min
by Oliver Schwehm

'Born to Be Wild' made the band Steppenwolf famous overnight and around the world. The song, synonymous with the cult film EASY RIDER, became the anthem of a generation. What’s less well-known is that singer John Kay and bassist Nick St. Nicholas come from Germany. This documentary traces their journey from their war-ravaged homeland to the streets of Toronto to the pinnacle of the music world. [41 FILMFEST MÜNCHEN]

Germany 2024, 91 min
by André Schäfer

In 1905, Thomas Mann made his first plans for a novel about an impostor. The first volume of “Confessions of Felix Krull” was not published until 1954. No literary figure has accompanied Thomas Mann for as long as Felix Krull. Both Krull and Thomas Mann are masters of deception. Thomas Mann was a literary superstar with an upper class façade. His world fame meant everything to him – but it cost him an enormous amount of energy to maintain this appearance.Thomas Mann’s diaries reveal an insecure, often depressed man who suppressed his desires throughout his life: Thomas Mann was homosexual. Nevertheless, he chose a married life with six children.The film follows in Felix Krull’s footsteps to Eltville, Frankfurt am Main, Paris and Lisbon – and uses archives, letters and diary entries to trace Thomas Mann’s own journey during the creative process. The work on the novel accompanied Thomas Mann through the Nazi regime, McCarthyism in the USA and the new Europe after the Second World War.In this hybrid documentary, director André Schäfer and actor Sebastian Schneider blur the lines between Thomas Mann and his alter ego Felix Krull, telling the story of a titan of German literature from an entirely new perspective.

Germany, Austria 2024, 184 min
by Alexander Horwath

A personal essay about the United States, viewed through the life and work of a movie actor. Henry Fonda and the roles he played merge into a dazzling and conflicted figure. A very private man who thought he had "no good answers to anything" becomes the unlikely anchor of a parallel history. His voice, recorded in 1981, and his onscreen avatars guide us through America's past and present – on a road trip from the village of Fonda, NY, across the Midwest to the Pacific; from 1651 to the 1980s and the presidency of another movie actor. It takes many places and times and characters to imagine an invisible republic – the United States of Fonda.

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.

Germany 2024, 52 min
by Wilfried Hauke

Three hundred years after the birth of philosopher Immanuel Kant in April 2024, this documentary takes us back to 18th-century Königsberg.Immanuel Kant, born in Königsberg in 1724, was already one of the key Enlightenment thinkers during his lifetime and is still one of the most influential figures in Western philosophy today. Kant wanted to explain the world, but at the same time he was aware that he himself – like all human beings – only had a limited capacity for understanding. He never left his native Königsberg, learning all he knew about world affairs from the books he had sent over to him from England and France. And everything he knew about people was the result of the relentless observation of his environment and his own emotional life. He combined all this knowledge into a complex system of concepts, categories and matrices. The result is a moral philosophy whose universal validity he tested constantly. Marking three hundred years since his birth – in April 2024 – the film shows for the first time just how closely Kant was connected to his native town of Königsberg, which is taken back to the 18th century using sophisticated animation techniques. Many of the pressing questions that plagued people 300 years ago are posed anew in the film, in the face of the climate catastrophe and war in Europe.

2024, 93 min
by Emerson Culurgioni, Stefanie Schroeder

Who owns the land? Legend has it that ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi stole a dune in Sardinia, while the locals are fighting for their land and struggling with their dependence on tourism. La Duna is an irresistibly cathartic and humorous documentary that intertwines a portrait of a community with absurd almost-fairytales. [55VdR]

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 Fascist collaborators.

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]

Germany 2024, 110 min
by Michael Wech

The documentary MOSES tells the life story of one of the greatest track and field athletes of all times.Edwin Moses grows up in a segregated America. As African-American athlete he overcomes obstacles life throws at him. Without a coach and without support he teaches himself the toughest discipline in track and field, the 400-meter hurdles – depicted as "maneater" by athletes and runners alike - and creates a historic winning streak that leaves his competitors, fans and journalists puzzled. 9 years, 9 months, and 9 days.Sporting success is one part of his story. The other is Edwin Moses' fight against inequality, injustice, and doping, for equal rights and equal treatment of people regardless of skin color and gender, and for adequate payment of athletes.The documentary enhances Moses' personal narrative by juxtaposing it with pivotal moments in world history, demonstrating how his triumphs mirrored significant global and societal changes. Featuring exclusive interviews with Moses himself, the film offers intimate insights into his thoughts, motivations, and the formidable challenges he faced.Contributing to the depth and perspective of this story are cultural icons and luminaries such as Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lonnie Bunch of the Smithsonian Institution, Anita de Frantz, along with sports figures like Karsten Warholm, Tommie Smith, Mike Shine, Andre Phillips, Michael Johnson, Donna de Varona, and Danny Harris.Edwin Moses came to athletics rather by chance, his passions being engineering and his physics studies at the famous Morehouse College in Atlanta. His time as a Morehouse Man was particularly formative for his personality and sporting success. Moses developed into an outstanding athlete with a unique and self-invented running technique of 13 steps that gave him a huge advantage in races and left his competitors far behind for years. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses remained unbeaten in 122 consecutive races.Even during his career, he was a strong advocate of the fight against doping in sport. He was involved in the introduction of stricter doping controls and guidelines. His commitment helped to raise awareness of the issue and to this day, he remains a role model for fairness and integrity beyond the world of sport.Following his active career, Edwin Moses dedicated his life to being one of the Founding Chairmen of the Laureus Sport For Good Foundation. Nelson Mandela's famous speech at the foundation's launch is still a guideline and incentive for Edwin Moses today: "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does."202415 DOC NYCFFCGN Filmfestival Cologne

Germany 2024, 117 min
by Arne Körner

Dietrich Kuhlbrodt: Hitler boy, film critic, actor, senior prosecutor, screenwriter, punk musician, temporary porn commissioner, and family man! What kind of life, can it be, where all this just happens? On an adventure trip that takes us through the third reich, the nazi poisoned post war BRD, Paris and the reunited Germany we dive into Dietrich’s incredible biography. A trip that shows how to live five different lives at the same time with ease.

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]

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?

2024, 45 min
by Fabian Wolf

Havana is a dazzling metropolis in the middle of the last century: music clubs, casinos, shows - the city's nightlife is legendary. Havana is known as the "Paris of the Caribbean". Its flair and pleasant Caribbean climate attract writers such as Ernest Hemingway, celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra and even political greats such as Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. But the city is controlled by the American mafia. And the excessive party life contrasts with the bitter poverty on the island. Revolution is only a matter of time.