Films by Angelika Levi

2023, 95 min
by Maria Binder

EREN portrays a woman who has been fighting for fundamental rights and peace in Turkey for more than 30 years. As a lawyer and human rights defender, Eren Keskin is one of the main actors and plaintiffs for women's, LGBTIQ and minority rights, opposing torture and sexualized violence. Her strong sense of justice knows no taboos, shaking even the foundations of the Turkish state. Now she has been designated an enemy of the state and has to defend herself. She faces a life sentence in more than a hundred criminal cases and could could disappear behind bars at any moment.

Germany 2021, 22 min
by Angelika Levi

From September 2001 to April 2002, Nan and Nancy, along with other Latino women, cleaned  in Manhattan for the asbestos company 'Branch' in the hermetically sealed zone of 'Ground Zero.' The women had neither work or residence permits in the United States, and their protective masks did not have asbestos filters. At the Ped-West border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, refugees perform their narratives. They play asbestos workers, US soldiers, Red Cross helpers and firefighters. They are migrants from Guatemala and Venezuela and Mexicans who were deported from the USA to Tijuana. They are all stuck at the border due to the 'Remain in Mexico' policy. Slowly, the film shifts images from New York to Tijuana.

2020, 96 min
by Tanja Cummings

Some of the world’s last remaining Holocaust survivors meet every week at Café Zelig in Munich, Germany. They get together to laugh and celebrate holidays, to argue and discuss various topics, but they also hold moments of silence and mourning. Some of them—and some of their children—undertake a journey into their past, back to their old home country Poland. And they talk about the difficulties they had—and still have—finding their way back to life in Germany.

Germany 2015, 54 min
by Angelika Levi

Rent Eats the Soul" documents during two years neighborly organizing and protest on the southern Kottbusser Tor. The film portrays movingly the protagonists of the protest. It links the housing problem to the history of migration and emphasizes a connection between racism and urban displacement.During the night of May 26 in 2012, some residents of social housing at Kottbusser Tor, a majority ethnic Turkish neighbors, built a protest house. They called it "Gecekondu", translated from Turkish means "built overnight".With this occupation of a public square in the center of Kreuzberg, the tenants initiative Kotti & Co began a until now visible daily resistance, and brought the issue of social housing and the massive displacement of long-term residents of the city on the political agenda.People with very different biographies and politically different views began to talk to each other and to share their stories. The separations and prejudices gave way to a positive uncertainty, neighbours became friends.The "Cottbus Choir" features in the film, a radically postideological choir, arranged and musically composed by Nicholas Bussmann.The choir sees itself in the tradition of leftist amateur choirs, but the normally hierarchical structure of a choir is broken and a musical track reflects the subject of the film: the relationship between collective and individual.

Indonesia, Germany 2012, 75 min

Srikandi is a female figure from the Indian Mahabharata epic that changes gender to live and fight as an equal among men. This character is a role model for eight highly personal perspectives on lesbian, bisexual and transidentity life in Islamic Indonesia. The film, which began as a collective project, moves from personal essay into a radical conceptual exploration of queer politics and maps out self-confidently the situation in which a generation of women are beginning to find a voice. Politics, identity, the search for substitute families, the fear of violence, even among lesbians, the social exclusion of minorities and self-imposed silence are some of the topics addressed, as are the deliberate eschewal of labels for one’s own life and one’s personal religious beliefs and the wearing of the hijab. Making use of local forms of storytelling, the film also demonstrates that indigenous role models exist for strong women and alternative gender identities. Javanese shadowplay links and interweaves the different stories of the protagonists, but ANAK-ANAK SRIKANDI is goes far beyond being a typical episodic film.HELLO WORLD Imelda TaurinamandalaJLAMPRONG Eggie DianVIA SKYPE CoS CollectiveACCEPTANCE OjiEDITH’S JILBAB Yulia Dwi AndriyantiA VERSE Winnie WibowoIN BETWEEN Hera DanishDECONSTRUCTION Stea LimNO LABEL Afank Mariani