Films by Alex Tondowski

Hungary, Germany 2021, 54 min
by Balint Revesz

What does the world’s most watched mega-event and a remote indigenous community have in common? A forgotten indigenous tribe in Borneo is devastated by a merciless logging company. Determined to find the source of the forces ravishing their ancestral forest, three tribesmen take matters into their own hand and follow their stolen wood. This sets in motion a quest which will take them to Tokyo, and the heart of the Olympic phenomenon.

Germany 2020, 90 min
by Sharon Ryba-Kahn

Sharon's relationship with Germany has always been conflictual to say the least, at the same this was something she had just accepted. This is true although, she was born in Munich and currently lives in Berlin. Sharon is Jewish and a third generation Shoah survivor. When her estranged father Moritz contacts her again after 7 years, it becomes an impetus for her to reconstruct her father's family history.  From here on a journey begins in which Sharon, tries to understand who her father is and who his parents were. After having survived the Holocaust her father's parents, who were originally from Poland arrived in Munich, in the American zone. They remained in Munich for the longest time. Sharon travels from place to place, from person to person trying to understand, how has the Shoah impacted her father's family. The past leads her always back to her own life, after all she is living in Germany. Little by little she also confronts her non-Jewish German environment.

Germany, Austria 2019, 100 min
by Marayam Zaree

Born in Evin follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world. Exactly forty years have passed since the monarchy of the Shah of Iran was toppled and the Islamic Republic declared. In the 1980’s Ayatollah Khomeini, the so-called religious leader, had tens of thousands of political opponents arrested, persecuted and murdered. Among them the filmmaker’s parents who, after years in prison, managed to seek asylum in Germany. The family never talked about their persecution and imprisonment. Maryam Zaree faces the decades-long silence and explores her own questions about the place and the circumstances of her birth.She meets other survivors, talks to experts and looks for the children born in the same prison. She tries to find answers to her personal and political questions. What are the personal consequences of persecution and violence when the same perpetrators remain in power while the victims internalize their stories? And what does it mean, politically, to face the silence within the family. The political is private and the private political. With this conviction, Maryam Zaree works through the complexities of trauma and denial.

Finland, Belgien, Germany 2019, 79 min
by Reetta Huhtanen

The Molenbeek district of Brussels. In media seen as jihadi capital but home sweet home to the 6 year-old boys Aatos and Amine. Together they search for answers to the big questions. Aaatos envies Amine’s Muslim faith and looks for his own gods, although his classmate Flo questions him; she is strongly convinced that anyone who believes in God is completely nuts.The threat of the adults world suddenly interrupts the children’s play as terrorist bombs explode in a metro station nearby. The streets are filled with tanks, armed soldiers and policemen. Bedtime stories now evoke images of violence and even friendship is put on trial until an expected twist reshapes their lives for good. REVIEWS:The filmmaker has cleverly made a film that puts the magic of childhood in the foreground as a comment to the world around the two boys. It’s charming, it’s what we remember from our own childhood, it’s what a grandfather like me sees so often, it gives hope, doesn’t it? This film will travel the world. (Tue Steen Müller, filmkommentaren.dk)Gods of Molenbeek is a wonderful portrayal of childhood friendship, inquiry and the creation of meaning in a chaotic time. (Göteborg International Film Festival)