Films

Germany 2026, 91 min
by Marie Wilke

The Bundeswehr has arrived at a decisive “turning point” (“Zeitenwende”): in Schnöggersburg, Europe’s biggest military model city, defending the nation and the alliance is not just rehearsed, but also directly taught. Marie Wilke’s sober, focused observational documentary puts together a 360-degree view of its subject, which captures the current state of the German army from different perspectives. Between press appointments, swearing-in ceremonies, visitor tours, roleplays and an artificial underground train tunnel, the process of adapting to the present becomes visible. With a sound grasp of representative situations and communication nodes, Wilke gets close enough to her subject to illustrate its complexity – while retaining exactly the necessary distance for open, critical engagement. The shots are mostly static and impartial, bearing witness to a Bundeswehr searching for its self-image while in the midst of grappling with the past, state-of-the-art war simulations and an uncertain future. Szenario is a portrait of an institution that just as equally depicts the society and politics that produce it. 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.

Austria, Germany 2025, 88 min
by Chiara Sambuchi

As a child, Alisa survived the Yugoslav Wars just a few kilometres from the border to Bosnia. Her father Sejfo, a Bosnian, and her mother, a Serb, remained in Srebrenica. Sejfo recorded messages for his daughter on VHS cassettes. We accompany her as she uses the material to search for traces of her father and thereby the genocide that took place.

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 2024, 90 min
by Richard C. Schneider

The state of Europe is bad. Right-wing populists are coming ever closer to power or have already taken it over. The fatal thing about this is that we only seem to realize, that a state is becoming autocratic, reactionary or even a dictatorship when it is almost too late. In this two-part documentary, we will look at Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and France, four countries that have already embarked on the path to illiberal democracy. What were or are the strategies used in these countries to destroy democracy - and do these steps possibly also serve as a blueprint for other countries?RISE OF THE POPULISTSRight-wing populists are on the rise around the world and are jeopardising liberal democracies. The issues they use to campaign are always similar: against migrants, against elites, in favour of the nation. Using the Netherlands and France as examples, the film shows how successful right-wing populists are in gaining power. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders was able to form a governing coalition, while in France, Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National party won the European elections and also made gains in the national parliamentary elections. Le Pen wants to win the presidential elections in 2027. The succession of crises is making people increasingly insecure and looking for simple answers: Islamist terror since 9/11, the economic crisis in 2008, the influx of refugees in 2015, the Covid crisis, the war in Ukraine and now the crisis in the Middle East are making people increasingly nervous as they see their prosperity and peaceful lives under threat. Right-wing populists are exploiting this situation by creating enemy stereotypes against which they want to defend and protect their respective nations.EROSIN FROM WITHINWhere right-wing populists are already in power, it is clear how they are eroding democracies from within. They take over democratic institutions and render them meaningless. Using Hungary and Italy as examples, the film shows how right-wing populists operate when in power. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán set the script from 2010 onwards: He changed the constitution, disempowered the judiciary and ruined the free press. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is now trying to do the same. This raises questions for all democratic parties in Europe: Are they able to stand together against the populist threat? Can they make the people of Europe a political offer that takes their concerns and fears into account and thus win back those who have not yet drifted ideologically to the far right in favour of democracy?

2024, 29 min
by Emil Silvester Ahlhelm, Konradin Schuchter

In FAHNENFLUCHT the focus is on the Ukrainian-Russian war. If you’re considered a man, you have only two options in war: stay and fight or leave to protect your life. Not everyone wants to sacrifice their life for their homeland, and everyone should have the right to choose. [64KFF PR]

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, 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.

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, 112 min
by Nathaniel Knop

The American photographer Nathan Farb is able to participate in a cultural exchange during the 'thaw' in the Cold War in 1977 and to photograph families in Novosibirsk. The fascinating series that made Farb famous shows proud and open people. Over 40 years later, the artist visits them again with his camera, this time on the eve of a hot war. (41 Kassel Dokfest, Livia Theuer)

Germany 2024, 89 min
by Askold Kurov

Putin started the war in Russia long before the invasion of Ukraine. Since 2012, a series of repressive laws have been passed, labelling all those who publicly oppose the official stance as “foreign agents”. In these circumstances, a group of independent Russian journalists and activists are trying to resist and to pursue their work. From the start of the war, however, their work became virtually impossible. Filmed over the course of a pivotal year, before and after the invasion, this new film by intrepid filmmaker Askold Kurov (THE TRIAL – The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov, Children 404) paints a portrait of the last defenders of democracy in Russia and offers a glimpse of hope for a different future. [FIFDH Geneve]

Polen, Czech Republic, Norway, Germany 2024, 92 min
by Konrad Szolajski

A pair of Polish filmmakers travel around Central and Eastern Europe and explore cases of hybrid warfare in this region. They show their investigation and the evidence they managed to produce in Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Moldova and Latvia - the countries of the post-Soviet camp. They do it in a cinematic way, creating a documentary in which they reveal what was supposed to remain hidden.They discover that behind-the-scenes activities of Moscow special agents have been carried out regularly since at least 2013. The full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is accompanied by intensive covert actions in neighbouring countries which are considered next targets. This seems to be a part of Putin’s plan to regain the former Russian zone of influence in Europe.2024 a.o.64 KFF – Krakow Film FestivalOne World Human Rights Documentary Festival 28 Ji.hlava IDFF

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?

Mozambique, France, Germany, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway 2024, 93 min
by Inadelso Cossa

Immersed in Mozambique's intricate history, I'm compelled to unravel the narrative woven into the film "The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder." Returning to my grandmother Maria's village, I'm driven by a personal quest to expose the untold stories of my childhood during the civil war.This film, a sensory exploration of personal and collective memory, originates from my childhood vacations amid the civil war's paradox. A rebel attack, concealed by my grandmother as fireworks, becomes the catalyst for my cinematic endeavor—an attempt to break the silence enveloping post-civil-war Mozambique.Maria, once a storyteller, now battles Alzheimer's, blurring the lines between truth and fiction. In her village, echoes of a former rebel mirror the haunting presence of perpetrators and victims, intertwining day and night, reality and imagination. The ghosts of war that still imhabits the former rebel are possesing the presence. Motivated by the need to dismantle societal denial, the film seeks to unveil authentic stories obscured by fiction, as I return to Maria's village armed with cinematic tools. Challenging conventional aesthetics, the film becomes a sensorial journey, symbolized by Moises, the boom operator. The audience is prompted to listen closely, transcending the visual to experience the haptic nature of memory—the smell of gunpowder, the touch of suppressed emotions.In this dance between truth and fiction, memory and forgetting, THE NIGHTS STILL SMELL OF GUNPOWDER stands as my testament to the resilience of human memory. I navigate the labyrinth of my past, and use cinema for a collective endeavor to reclaim lost fragments of history and confront the haunting ghosts persisting in the darkness of societal silence.

Germany 2024, 110 min
by Kathrin Jahrreiss

In her father's basement, the director finds letters and photos from her German-Jewish family history, in which three brothers are torn between the fronts of political ideologies from the Third Reich to divided Germany. DER DRITTE BRUDER is the grandfather of the filmmaker, who, in confronting her father, tries to understand where in the past the father's sense of family fell by the wayside.The cinematic journey also reveals how the third brother's decisions have shaped the family for generations and how repression and speechlessness about the Nazi era and a divided Germany have been passed on.

Germany 2024, 82 min
by Jonas Neumann

Eight decades after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp: The question of how to remember the Nazi terror is more urgent than ever before! How do the last survivors fight against forgetting? How can they and the memorial site combat increasing relativization and attacks from the far right? „Today is Tomorrow's Yesterday" shows the current every day struggle of this important institution.

Great Britain, Germany, Italy, USA 2024, 77 min
by Abel Ferrara

A film about performance, poetry, music and the experience of people at war. Searching for meaning in the never-ending suffering and conflicts that echo the past, TURN IN THE WOUND looks at the eternal quest for freedom in the face of oppression and military force. The voice of Patti Smith, reciting works by Artaud, Daumal and Rimbaud, joins the words of soldiers and people living in the combat zones in Ukraine and those of its President Volodymyr Zelenskyj. [74 BERLINALE]With: Volodymyr Oleksandrovyč Zelenskyj, Andrei Yermak, Patti Smith

Germany 2024, 29 min
by Pavel Mozhar

Using the streets of his Berlin neighbourhood as a backdrop, a filmmaker from Belarus investigates the systematic nature of Russian and Belarusian war crimes in Ukraine and explores his own responsibility for this war.Six months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army withdraws from some occupied regions and settlements, leaving a trail of shockingly similar traces of war crimes. In the reports from several human rights organisations and independent groups of journalists, there is increasing evidence that Russian and Belarusian troops in the occupied territories have also been pursuing the systematic destruction of the civilian population’s national identity. Based on accounts from civilian victims, the filmmaker addresses this system of oppression. The individual statements are voiced by two Ukrainian actors, while the streets of his Berlin neighbourhood serve as the film’s backdrop. To determine the responsibility he himself might bear for this war, the filmmaker reflects on his childhood and school education in post-Soviet Belarus. [74 BERLINALE]

Germany 2024, 86 min
by Elfi Mikesch

The film tells the story of a planned transformation of the former military base Wünsdorf into an ecological campus.Wünsdorf is a former military base in Brandenburg (Germany), which the Russian army had left in 1994. The First and Second World Wars were planned and executed from here as well as the Cold War. The architect, urban planner and pioneer of ecological urban development Prof. Dr. Ekhart Hahn stands up for a sustainable transformation. During the making of the film, the war breaks out in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion gives the former military site and the film a new meaning.with: Ekhart Hahn, Eva Mattes, Insa Winkler, Ahmad Winkler, Sieghard Auer, Hans-Albert Hoffmann, Mona Mur, En Esch, Gerhard A. Schiewe, Thomas Stern Kamera Thomas Ladenburger, Elfi Mikesch

2024, 87 min
by Yana Sad

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Yana’s deeply personal journey unfolds against a backdrop of chaos and constant feeling of war. She navigates heartbreak family conflicts and a blossoming love with Yaroslava who dreams of defying oppression while battling lung cancer. Their story evolves in a city consumed by violence and oppression.

Germany, Syria, Netherlands, Norway 2023, 95 min
by Lina

Young independent filmmaker and reporter Lina goes underground to document the Syrian revolution, adopting a series of aliases to avoid detection from the violent state. In Damascus, she is Lina, one of the many of the silent passerbys, but in Homs, she is Maya the war reporter and in Aleppo, she is Lama. In her debut, 5 SEASONS OF REVOLUTION, Lina uses video diaries of smuggled footage and memoir to share this personal story of her close group of friends – Susu, Rima, Malaz, and Bassel – as they are slowly pulled deeper into the struggle for freedom and autonomy against enemies known and unknown. One by one, they are detained and targeted by the regime and Lina ends up alone and isolated amidst the violence and chaos. She continues filming to find clarity. Months transform into years, and Lina – aka Maya aka Layla aka Lama – returns over and over again to the frontlines to witness the regime’s brutal crackdown and see her country morph into a staging ground of global proxy wars. When Lina is detained and held captive in Aleppo, she witnesses unspeakable suffering and torture, and barely escapes. Told over the course of a decade and against the backdrop of shifting historical forces, 5 SEASONS OF REVOLUTION is Lina’s story; the tale of becoming brave. [Deckert Distribution]

2023, 92 min
by Daniel Burkholz

According to Muslim belief every so called martyr (like for example the Hamas terrorists and murderers who attacked Israel on October 7, 2023) will be welcomed in Paradise by 72 virgins. Unfortunately the gates of Paradise will be kept closed for so called martyrs if they are killed in battle by a woman. 72 Feminists for Justice tells the story of the terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 and of Israel's war against Hamas seen from the women's perspective. (Photos: Israel Defence Forces, CC BY-NC 2.0)