Films

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, 91 min
by Hendrik Löbbert

Can we trust our own memories? An American psychologist with expertise in the brain's ability to make up its own truths takes us into her fascinating field of research.Elizabeth Loftus has been researching the unreliability of human memory since the 1970s and is one of the most influential psychologists in the world. ‘Memory Wars’ is based on a series of high-profile US trials where Loftus regularly acts as an expert for the defense.Here she proves that allegations based on unreliable memories cannot serve as evidence. A line of work that highlights the tension between truth and justice, but also has profound implications for larger social issues. In a world of so-called post-truth and fake news, her work as a researcher is more relevant than ever, and no less controversial.Because maybe we are more impressionable than we want to believe. The brain loves a good story – even if it has to make it up.

Germany 2024, 94 min
by Iris Pakulla

Ainur, a young Mongolian woman and erotic dancer in Ulaanbaatar, feels haunted by dark forces. On the advice of shamans, she returns to the Gobi Desert, the land of her ancestors, to make contact with nature spirits. During her journey through Mongolia, she is confronted with the destruction of the breathtaking landscape. Is this the chaos that is stirring the spirits?Anthropologist Iris Pakulla has lived and researched in Mongolia for many years. In her hybrid documentary film, she weaves together scenes of Ainur’s everyday life with staged dream sequences. The result is a cinematic artwork that reflects not only Ainur’s search for healing but also the fragile balance between humans and nature.

Germany 2024, 52 min
by Herbert Ostwald

Up to 150 species are disappearing every day. Species extinction could be even more decisive for the survival of humankind than climate change. But what was once considered science fiction is no longer out of the question. We accompany ambitious scientists worldwide in their attempts to revive extinct animals or to give those on the brink of extinction a new chance using state-of-the-art genetic engineering. What is driving the human ambition to bring back extinct species? Should it be allowed or are we playing God with unpredictable consequences for our entire planet?

Germany, USA 2024, 87 min
by Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck

Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product."I wanted to see if he was okay," explains Christi, one of the users of Project December. With this innovative software, users can communicate with a virtual version of the deceased through a chatbot that simulates the dead person’s conversation patterns. Hers was an attempt to check on her first love. Others may simply miss someone, seek permission to move on, or want to rid themselves of guilt.Little is known about the effects that this kind of generative AI might have on our brains, hearts, and wallets. The filmmakers, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck (THE CLEANERS, 2018 Sundance Film Festival), do not claim to have the answers, but instead bring up various emotional and moral complexities we should be aware of. Eternal You poses important questions about algorithmic immortality, and the need to take a closer look at our future 'digital remains.' — AT [source sundance catalogue 2024]

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.

Canada, Germany, USA 2024, 98 min
by Jeremy Xido

THE BONES traverses the globe alongside paleontologists on a quest to unearth dinosaur fossils that may hold the key to save humanity from extinction. It’s a race against time before the bones disappear into the hands of fossil dealers, who stand to make millions by selling them on the open market. A cinematic adventure that reaches from the Mongolian Gobi Desert to the floor of a Paris auction house, THE BONES exposes the clash between science, post-colonial reckoning, and hard-headed capitalism.THE BONES is a stunning, cinematic exploration of the high-stakes world of dinosaur bone trading, where obsessive collectors compete with museums, scientists, and high-end auction houses to own a piece of the past. It’s a story of intrigue, an illicit caper at the collision of science, commerce, and a dark colonial legacy. Paleontologist Bolor Minjin, the first scientist to ever repatriate fossils that had been stolen from Mongolia, travels through her homeland training the next generation of Mongolians to be the guardians of the bones. In Morocco, Nizar Ibrahim leads a team into the Saharan desert on a quest to unearth the next great scientific discovery, but must negotiate with fossil dealers who want big money for the same bones.Meanwhile, French collector and fossil dealer Francois Escuillier introduces us to the questionable world of buying and selling dinosaur bones, which today can be worth millions of dollars. And eminent paleontologist Jack Horner—the man upon whom Jurassic Park is based—changes the concept of a fossil’s value by breaking them open, searching for molecular clues that will help him resurrect an actual dinosaur.Part international thriller, part meditation on the nature of existence, the film reveals the hidden world of passionate, globetrotting scientists and fossil dealers battling over the meaning of THE BONES…and our uncertain future.Press"Fascinating excavation of the true value of dinosaur bones to finders, collectors, museums and scientists…As engagingly entertaining as it is informative" - Screen International “Entertaining look at the fossil trade” - Variety

Germany 2024, 90 min
by Nina Koshofer, Christian Twente

The exciting story from the beginning to the specialization of surgery, a fascinating journey through time from antiquity to the first performed heart surgery. This documentary was filmed on the most important places in the history of surgery in Germany, Austria, Great Britain, Italy, France, Hungary and USA. With the help of reenactments, outstanding archival footage and international interviewees the two films bring various medical pioneers to life and allow the audience to experience key events in the history of surgery.

Germany 2024, 99 min
by Klaus Stern

Digital capitalism and AI are changing the world. But who are the people at the top steering this development? And what are their ethical principles? The film is a portrait of one of the most mysterious and mightiest men in the Silicon Valley – Alex Karp, a billionaire with a doctorate in philosophy, a self-proclaimed neo-Marxist and pacifist, as well as CEO of PALANTIR whose most successful software is used by police forces to predict crime and by the military to occasionally 'kill people' – in Karp's own words.

Germany 2024, 73 min
by Eva C. Heldmann

Free-floating yet rigorously structured, this essay film presents botanist and educationalist Catharina Helena Dörrien and her time in Orange-Nassau in the 18th century. Via regulations and floral formulas, nature philosophy and social policy converge. [74 BERLINALE – Forum]

Germany 2023, 52 min
by Rosie Koch, Roland Gockel

Although garden dormice are at home in large parts of Europe, hardly anyone really knows these rodents with their Zorro mask and those beady eyes. Hence, only few people initially noticed when the animals began to suddenly and inexplicably disappear throughout the entire continent. But when even classic garden dormouse strongholds, like the Bavarian Fichtelgebirge, reported them missing, researchers and conservationists sounded the alarm. Hurriedly BUND Friends of the Earth, the Senckenberg Research Institute and the University of Giessen got together to form a task force of unprecedented size and scope. The Dormouse Detectives strive to find out how many, where and why the garden dormice are disappearing. In their effort to gather as many clues as possible, the investigators even enlist the help of the general population. While citizen scientists work with garden dormouse monitoring devices or report sightings, students equip garden dormouse undercover agents with transmitters to learn more about sources of danger in the daily lives of the nocturnal omnivores. While a veterinarian examines corpses of garden dormice, wildlife stations care for their orphans. And toxicology experts analyze tissue samples in search for environmental poisons and pesticides. Other special forensic units rifle through stomach contents for decisive clues or analyze genetic samples. Time is of the essence. Only if the Dormouse Detectives manage to solve this puzzling case fast, may they still be able to save the species.

2023, 12 min
by Wolfgang Schmiedt, Lutz Hofmann

The documentary delves into the life of a patient with an artificial heart who had experienced a heart attack and underwent the implantation of a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) to ensure her survival. It features a conversation between the patient, a heart surgeon, and a scientist who researches artificial hearts. That trio discuss the situation currently faced by patients with severe heart diseases, the lack of heart transplants, and the alternative: artificial hearts. They then share their hopes for the future of artificial heart technology.The documentary includes footage of a real heart surgery, and – in a kind of parallel universe set to haunting orchestral and experimental music – we see a dancer who makes the patient's struggle for survival artistically compelling, whilst exemplifying the relentless pursuit of innovative solutions to overcome the existing limitations of artificial heart technology.

Germany 2023, 90 min
by Harald Pokieser

The endless expanses of the Indian Ocean are home to the last natural paradises: Remote atolls surrounded by coral reefs in crystal clear water.Whole regions of this ocean are still unexplored, many reefs are not marked on any map. The departure of the research vessel Agulhas II from the island of La Réunion marks the beginning of one of the greatest scientific adventures of our time. The expedition, initiated by Monaco Explorations with the support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, lasted six weeks and led into the Western Indian Ocean along the Mascarene Plateau. On board are one hundred experts who are among the world's elite marine scientists. On their mission, they discover never-before-seen creatures like the Dumbo Octopus and fabulous animals like the State Jellyfish, which resembles a floating work of art. Several hundreds of gigabytes of data are still waiting to be processed, but one thing is already certain: the expedition will help to better understand the physics and biology of the oceans and thus the consequences of global warming.

Germany 2023, 52 min
by Reinhart Brüning

Are nuclear power plants (NPP) safe in war torn Ukraine? Author Reinhart Brüning has exclusive access to the situation at three NPP: He is exclusively present at a secret exercise simulating a missile attack on a NPP. He as well gains first hand insights into the situation at Chernobyl during the Russian occupation – a normal night shift turning into a long nightmare. And he gets to know heroic Aleksandr Pintielin from NPP Zaporizhzhya, who manages to escape from impacting shells but goes back to work under the occupation – until he catches the eye of the Russian military police…

Germany 2023, 104 min
by Mi-Yong Brehm, Verena Feige

The sun impacts climate, time, biorhythms and the growth of all organisms on this planet. In Europe the influence of the sun is most remarkable in the Arctic Circle, in northern Scandinavia. The extreme alternation of light and darkness shapes nature as well as the everyday lives of the people and animals who call this place their home.The 2-part documentary follows the sun of Scandinavia in the northernmost countries of Europe, tells stories of day and night and goes through the year from the fixed points winter solstice on 21 December and the summer solstice on 21 June.

Germany 2023, 52 min
by Herbert Ostwald

With 27 bones each, our hands are an anatomical marvel. We can write and create things with them; thanks to their fine motor skills, hands are a perfect multifunctional tool.The film follows children in the difficult process of learning to write, observes an experienced pianist in her fine-motor performance and shows how our lives are literally in our hands: Bouldering. What happens in the hands and in the brain in milliseconds?

2023, 90 min
by Ulli Wendelmann, Denis Kliewer

The Ebers Papyrus, the world’s oldest medical manual, takes us back to ancient Egypt and to the turbulent times in the late 19th century, when the Western world was obsessed with finding oriental treasures.The film tells of the discovery of the world’s oldest medical manual. Georg Ebers, a German Egyptologist, came upon the 3,500-year-old work in Luxor in the late nineteenth century and carried it back with him to Saxony in a spectacular manner. The book contains more than 800 formulas, along with clinical pictures and texts for medical education, making it an invaluable find. For the first time, we can learn of how Egyptian healers conceived of human life and health almost four thousand years ago. This unique amalgam of empirical knowledge, religion and magic was set down on a papyrus scroll almost twenty metres long. The documentary also sheds light on the outstanding historical significance of papyrus as a writing material. For thousands of years, papyri recorded the cultural developments in the country, preserving the changing relations between Orient and Occident for posterity. The film also recounts the orientalism hype that gripped the West in the nineteenth century and the often illegal hunt for ancient trophies in the land of the Pharaohs. European and African experts are today engaging in an international dialogue in an attempt to advance our knowledge of both the writing medium of papyrus and the development of the art of healing.

Germany 2023, 16 min
by Volker Schlecht

Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them. Karen sets out to find them – and encounters a horrible truth. Mysterious deaths occur all over the planet and have a similar pattern. Why have so many species vanished? And what does it all have to do with us?

Germany 2022, 52 min
by Daniela Schmidt-Langels

Many famous people, from Albert Einstein and Picasso to Steven Spielberg are known to be dyslexic. Hardly any aspect of school-based learning has been researched as extensively as dyslexia over the last 130 years. But researchers still have no clear idea of what causes the condition and how it can be treated. The film shines a spotlight on the difficult and psychologically challenging situation faced by people with dyslexia in everyday life in Germany, Great Britain and France. It looks at success stories and highlights researchers’ tireless efforts to identify causes and find suitable therapies.

Denmark, Germany 2022, 85 min
by Lars Henrik Ostenfeld

The ice at the poles is melting, which will result in enormous rises in sea level and have major consequences for the world. But how fast will it really go?In the Greenland ice sheet we can see our future. The film travels with three pioneering glaciologist on their expeditions INTO the inland ice of Greenland. Top-notch science meets breathtaking visuals when one of them descends into a 200 meter deep moulin hole to find out about the bottom of the ice sheet. What they find may sound the alarm for our planet's climate and is a clear call to act now.

Germany 2022, 45 min
by Daniel Harrich

Scientific data proves that the American west is increasingly threatened by water scarcity. Massive conflicts are emerging – defined by the struggle for our most precious resource.An investigative journey with renowned NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti on the trail of America’s biggest climate change-induced threat: the megadrought. We have the exclusive opportunity to accompany one of the world’s most respected hydrologists on his journey through the western states of the US. Famiglietti has spent the past 20 years analysing satellite data for NASA's GRACE mission, which prove this region has lost water at an alarming rate. He shows us what this means for communities, the environment and the economy. The reservoirs that supply major cities in the western states have reached record low levels, and some towns and cities already rely on supplies from water tanks. The people there are struggling to survive, while elsewhere private agricultural enterprises or industrial sites in the middle of the desert still treat water resources unsparingly. Conflicts of biblical proportions are emerging, with devastating consequences for flora and fauna – and prospects of a future that will be shaped by the struggle for our most precious resource unless we learn to use it sustainably.

2022, 49 min
by Larissa Klinker

Over 150 different mRNA-based therapies and vaccines are currently being developed around the world. Is mRNA technology the new game-changer in medicine – or is it just hype?For many years, mRNA technology seemed unsuitable as a therapeutic approach. But today, it is expected that in the future mRNA will be used to treat a wide range of diseases – including cancer, HIV, malaria, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. But how does it work exactly? mRNA vaccines transport the blueprint of a viral protein into cells which then begin to produce the foreign biomolecule. The immune system ramps up its defences against the virus, even though it only knows a small, harmless part of the pathogen. What sounds simple on paper is almost as complex as a landing on Mars in a living organism. Scientists started investigating mRNA a good three decades ago with the aim of developing individual therapies to treat cancer. Today, clinical studies are looking at how heart muscle regenerates immediately after a heart attack with an mRNA-based therapy. People with autoimmune diseases or HIV could also benefit from mRNA preparations and vaccines. Influenza viruses are constantly producing new strains. An mRNA vaccine could be adapted more quickly than conventional vaccines – and would therefore be more effective.

Germany 2022, 52 min
by Anna Pflüger

They are the unsung heroes of crime investigation – forensic scientists. We meet Europe’s leading experts in forensics. We learn about the newest methods in their profession and take a closer look at their most exciting cases.We take a closer look at the ones working behind the scenes when it comes to solving major crimes. Here, in high tech laboratories in the cellars of Europe’s Universities, hospitals and forensic institutes, is where they work on their crucial share in figuring out what has happened at a crime scene. They are forensic scientists, the unsung heroes of crime investigation. They did not choose a job in the area of criminal investigations. First and foremost, they are scientists. A great interest in their topic is what brought them to where they are today. Like the forensic entomologist Jens Amendt in Frankfurt, Germany, who was fascinated by insects and decided to study them. It was years into his professional career before he became a specialist in forensic entomology. Botanist Martina Weber in Vienna followed her teacher into the field of forensic pollen analysis, and just recently solved a case regarding the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeji some 2000 years ago. Lorna Dawson from the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen solved a murder by following the traces of soil on the suspect's car and boots. Philippe Esperanca in Marseille even developed a new mixture to make wiped away traces of blood visible again. Professionalism and curiosity, and the eagerness to unravel whatever mystery is put in front of them, is what makes scientists so great at what they do. Whenever a capital crime happens, forensic experts of different fields get to work with the traces left behind at the crime scene. The results of their investigations, put together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, are the ones that help investigators figure out how and when exactly a crime went down. For this documentary, we meet Europe’s leading experts in forensics. We learn about the newest methods in their profession, what made them choose their path, how they became involved with law enforcement, and we take a closer look at their most exciting cases.

Germany 2022, 52 min
by Anna Pflüger

What is soil made of, how does it come about? And how can we use and preserve it as sustainably as possible? A scientific look below the surface of the earth provides the latest findings on the DNA of soil.Our soil is the basis for food production, habitat for humans and animals, it manages water resources and protects our groundwater. Soil is also of key importance to climate protection. But how does soil actually come about? What is it made of and why is our soil a threatened resource? We meet one of its most important inhabitants, sometimes known as an "ecosystem engineer", the earthworm. The earthworm guides us through the film and takes us to different locations. In Scotland, a government project is dedicated to rewilding moorland. This is an important step in the fight against climate change – moorlands are terrestrial ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon. In Leipzig, scientists are investigating the impact of climate change and soil usage on soil health. High up in the mountains in Kaunertal, Austria, specially developed seeds with microbacteria are being used to combat erosion. These projects have one thing in common: they want to understand soil better and protect and preserve soil for as long as possible. It takes thousands of years for one metre of organic humus to develop. This makes soil a non-renewable resource – one that is under threat.