Films

Germany, Georgia 2026, 31 min
by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

A speculative documentary essay connecting the filmmaker’s medical history with post-Cold War geopolitical shifts and their impact on contemporary politics. The film originates from the filmmaker’s diagnosis with a rare form of cancer, T-cell lymphoma, a condition that causes the failure of the immune system and the body’s defence mechanisms. The medical treatment unfolds in three stages: 1. Remission of cancer cells; 2. Immune transplantation; 3. Adaptation to a new immune system. The film adopts these three stages as a framework to mirror the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the introduction of the free-market economy as a new system of governance, and a prolonged process of adaptation marked by chronic side effects. Far from claiming that biology offers a model of perfect social order, Graft Versus Host uses medical terminology to grasp complex geopolitical transformations of recent history and the layered roots of today’s unsettling political reality.

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

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, Serbia 2026, 17 min
by Mina Simendić

Treating language as a device of meaning, the film deals with the transposable power inherent in language itself – the value that derives from the device, rather than from the meaning. Given the opportunity to work with alluring and costly 16mm film stock within a restrictive political climate, a filmmaker reflects on the transactions made in the process of immigrating to Germany. What does one have to give up to be able to live in the “promised land”? By conceiving analogue film itself as a linguistic device, the film turns back on its own means of communication, questioning the use of film stock in current times. Source of Synopsis

2025, 90 min
by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

With Ancestral Visions of the Future, filmmaker Lemohang Mosese presents a deeply personal work. Using a fragmented narrative style and mythical images, he reflects on experiences of uprooting and belonging. Appearing are: The puppeteer, a man who grows herbs that are supposed to extend people's lifespans. And the market vendor, a mother who keeps the language of dreams alive - in a city that has forgotten how to speak it. The film also explores Mosese's childhood and his relentless efforts to escape death and wrest meaning from loss. From the dusty dirt roads where he played with cars as a seven-year-old to the gray streets of exile where he dissolved into anonymity, Mosese confronts moments that shook and shaped him. His memories intertwine with the presence of his mother as a figure of vigilance and defiance. But Ancestral Visions of the Future is more than the story of a man who went into exile - it is an elegy for a city and people caught between the weight of memory and the inevitability of loss. And it is a poetic ode to cinema.

2025, 30 min
by Jakob Krese

Hazira survived the massacre in Srebrenica. She has lived in the Ježevac refugee camp near Tuzla for 29 years. She was never able to return to her home village in the mountains above Srebrenica. Today it is located in Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The political and social conditions force Hazira to wait, her days are characterized by routines that ensure survival. She collects firewood, cleans obsessively and defies the harsh conditions of camp life. With black humor and quiet resilience, she faces the trauma of a war that continues to define her life. To prevent it from becoming too painful, Hazira is constantly on the move, always on the run from her memories, but also from the present and the fear that everything could start all over again. This state of affairs is symptomatic of the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica and the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia. The film is a tribute to all those people who are still suffering from the consequences of this war.

2025, 132 min
by Marcin Wierzchowski

2025, 74 min
by João Pedro Prado, Anton Yaremchuk

2025CPH:DOX2025DOK.fest München – German Competition2025Kraków International Film FestivalA warm film about a hot topic. Is nuclear power the future, or...? The locals of two small European towns throw themselves into the discussion in a film with humor and heart, even though the stakes are high.The climate crisis, Germany’s nuclear phase-out and Russia’s war against Ukraine are just three of the heavy pieces in the dramatic game about the future of energy. A game with global and unpredictable consequences far beyond where the electricity will be coming from tomorrow. And in the middle of the game we find two small European towns with barely a thousand inhabitants each.Gundremmingen in Bavaria is located around a deactivated nuclear power plant, while the small Polish town of Choczewo will open its first nuclear power plant in 2033. What do the good people on the ground think about it all? ‘Fission’ is a stylish film with humor and heart, all of which is a rare sight in films about science, big politics and – ultimately – the future of the planet.Directors João Pedro Prado and Anton Yaremchuk waste no time in their joint debut, which takes a multi-faceted look at the deeply divided debate on nuclear power in particular, fueled by decades of pent-up emotion.

2025, 14 min
by Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhluktenko

In 1970, an entire small town was built in Munich for the Summer Olympics. In addition to the subway station, stadium, indoor swimming pool and housing estate, the largest shopping center in Europe at the time - the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum - was also built. Many migrant workers, so-called guest workers, are employed on the construction site. 2016: Nine people are murdered in a right-wing terrorist attack at the Olympia shopping center. All the victims come from families with migrant backgrounds. 1982: Sohrab Shahid Saless, an Iranian director, makes the film Recipient Unknown in response to the rapidly increasing racism in Germany. In the film, people repeatedly walk past houses, walls and facades smeared with right-wing extremist slogans. The colors flare up brightly and then fade again. In retrospect is an attempt to look back and find connections in the history of a place.

Germany 2025, 97 min
by Martina Priessner

Thirty years after the racist attacks in Mölln, survivor İbrahim Arslan discovers hundreds of forgotten letters of solidarity. The film follows him and his family in their struggle to foster a new, victim-centred culture of remembrance. [75 BERLINALE Panorama]With Hava Arslan, İbrahim Arslan, Namık Arslan, Yeliz Burhan.

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]

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, 92 min
by Johannes Blume

Berlin is teetering on the edge of complete gentrification. The punk movement is fading, and the remaining left autonomous and anti-fascist spaces are facing an existential threat. Gentrification jeopardizes their very existence, eradicating the once vast diversity in Berlin’s urban landscape.The capitalistic structures driving gentrification prioritize individual wealth and financial growth, undermining the importance of solidarity. The squatter scene — or the heritage of it — is the antidote. House communities live in and share what would normally be considered personal possessions: the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room — everything is communal. Activities and conflicts are resolved through consensus, and interaction with others is inevitable. Living in a house community is a full-time commitment, a synthesis of people, work, materials, and history.BERLIN EVICTION aims to rediscover the relevant values of the subculture for today’s society. We engage with people who have a rich history and are willing to speak candidly on camera, free from masks and control. We explore places and individuals that have repeatedly captured the attention of the national and international press due to their fight against the system and eviction, such as Rigaer Straße, Liebig 34, Syndikat, Drugstore, and many more. The imminent evictions of Potse and Köpi Wagenplatz, both iconic symbols of the autonomous and punk scene, serve as the pivotal narrative structure of the film, emphasizing the scene’s ongoing struggle throughout the years.MAX OPHÜLS PRIZE: BEST FILM MUSIC"Quotation from the film: "We had our time and now it's over." Music plays a very important role in this film, it is an expression of protest, anger, sadness and transports the content of the film. With a convincing interweaving of original music and film score, the film tells of the almost lost struggle for freedom beyond conventions and beyond capitalist constraints." say the members of the jury Jide Tom Akinleminu, Wolf-Maximilian Liebich, Andrina Mrancikar

USA, Germany, Denmark 2024, 113 min
by Connie Field

Three brave women are fighting to expose the corruption and incremental destruction of democracy in Viktor Orbán's Hungary – a white nationalist regime that is the envy of authoritarian movements around the world. Few politicians in the 21st century have been as corrupt and adept at undermining democracy as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán is a hero to his country’s Christian conservative population, and a role model for the right-wing political movement in Europe and for Donald Trump in the US. Orbán takes careful, methodical steps to dismantle Hungarian democratic institutions while maintaining his popularity with a majority of citizens. Oscar-nominated director Connie Field follows three courageous women – opposition politician Timea, journalist Babett and nurse Nikoletta (Niko) – who fight tirelessly to expose the lies and corruption embedded in Orbán’s government. But they face a well-funded and sophisticated opposition in Orbán’s ultra-conservative Fidesz party, which has a strong influence on voters and has already changed key democratic constitutional laws to further cement one-party rule. [21 CPH:DOX]

Germany, France 2024, 216 min
by Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell

Taking its title from the tactical protest strategy of the same name – "an action that seeks to achieve an end directly and by the most effective means" – DIRECT ACTION is a contemporary portrait of one of the most important militant activist communities in France – a 150-person strong rural collective that survived multiple violent eviction attempts by the French state, successfully resisted an international airport expansion project, created an autonomous zone from 2012-2018, and spawned a remarkable new ecological movement in 2021. Through a collaborative and uniquely immersive observational approach, DIRECT ACTION documents the everyday of a diverse ecosystem of activists, squatters, anarchists, farmers and government-labeled 'eco-terrorists' – so as to better understand how the success of a radical protest movement can offer a path through the climate crisis facing us all."The jury wants to salut the very patient and non judgement dedicated approach. We deeply enjoyed the quality of observation of this radical film." Tizza Covi, member of the jury said at the award ceremony.

Germany, Turkey, France 2024, 97 min
by Asli Özge

Faruk, a man in his nineties, increasingly becomes the protagonist in the film his daughter is making about the impending demolition of his block of flats in Istanbul. In the hope of delaying the demolition of a building he has been living in for decades, Faruk regularly attends building management meetings. As the daughter films her father, the boundaries between reality and fiction begin to blur. Shot in authentic locations and based on real characters and events, Aslı Özge’s new film offers an insight into the life of an elderly man in the bustling metropolis of Istanbul. Alongside exploring the implications of gentrification, the work also delves into the complexities of a father-daughter relationship.

Germany 2024, 92 min
by Daniel Burkholz

Heart of Darkness tells the story of the terror attacks on Israel carried out by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. Moreover, the film also tells the story of the aftermath of these attacks and of Israel's war against Hamas.When Hannah Arendt reported from the Adolf Eichmann Court Case, she introduced the term Banality of Evil. We think that was only partly correct: It's the Heart of Darkness. We started with the making of the film shortly after October 7, 2023 and we finished it by the end of 2023, to make a contribution in support of the hostages abducted by the Hamas terrorists. (Photos Gaza Border and Tel Aviv Under Attack by Israel Defence Forces, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Germany 2024, 90 min
by Andreas Pichler

Steel giant Thyssen Krupp in Germany and cargo ship operator Maersk in Denmark are investing huge sums of money with public support to convert their huge and dirty energy consumption to ‘green’. Hydrogen plays a central role in this. At the same time, countries in Africa such as Morocco and Namibia are gearing up to become giga-suppliers of the new energy source. But does it all make sense? Why not just produce green steel in Africa? And what's the story behind the blue hydrogen that is supposed to come from Norway via pipeline? The film follows pioneers on breathtaking projects and shows that the energy transition is more complicated than expected and holds many surprises in store.

2024, 94 min
by Paul Raatz

Demographic change hits the small town of Loitz [lø:ts] in Western Pomerania with full force. Since 1990, the once thriving community has lost a third of its population – by 2030, it will be half. A future-project led by the Berlin couple Annika and Rolando now aims to counteract the town's demise by creating a place for encounters. A group of music enthusiasts is also trying to see the vacancy as an opportunity and set up a festival. Does it need external impulses like these or has a decisive process of encounter already begun? Infinite Place tells the story of people who fill a dying town with their lives – a cinematic examination of a development that can be observed in many places in Germany and around the world.

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".

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]

2024, 82 min
by Jennifer Mallmann

The controversial conviction of six refugees for the fires at Camp Moria marks the beginning of a moving search for humanity – uncovering the dark sides of an oppressive, often inhumane system. In September 2020, six refugees are sentenced in a questionable trial for burning down the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos. The director begins a correspondence with Hassan, one of them. At the same time, a new high-security camp emerges, a symbol of the dehumanizing gaze with which so-called civilized Europe views migrants.DISTRIBUTION GermanyCINE GLOBALhttps://www.cineglobal.de/moriasix/WORLDSALESFEELSALES https://feelsales.com/en/catalogo/moria-six-2/

Germany 2024, 90 min
by Joana Georgi

For her documentary film NEVER ALONE, ALWAYS TOGETHER, filmmaker Joana Georgi accompanies five Berlin activists through their everyday lives for a year. Quang, Patricia, Simin, Zaza and Feline are young, idealistic and organized. They are involved in 'Fridays for Future', 'Deprivatise Deutsche Wohnen & Co.', are fighting in the Berlin hospital movement for better care work and are committed to counteracting racial violence. They look after the community, make political art and stir up social media. By means of Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, they are connected globally and bring their ideas via smartphones to the hearts of their peers. In an increasingly divided and polarized world, they are showing ways out of political lethargy and represent a new generation that is raising their voices, free from thought prohibitions and dogmatic legacies to stand up for a fairer future.With NEVER ALONE, ALWAYS TOGETHER, director Joana Georgi provides an authentic look at the difficult path that activism often entails and directs the focus on the loving, everyday stories of the struggle for social change. In doing so, she breaks down clichés about social movements and creates a hopeful film whose protagonists firmly believe that radical change is not only possible, but necessary.