Films by Arne Birkenstock

Director, Screenplay, Producer
POL POT DANCING

2024, 99 min
by Enrique Sánchez Lansch

A star dancer at the Cambodian royal court lovingly raises her husband's little brother as her own son. Decades later, as a forced labourer under the Khmer Rouge, she discovers that her foster son is Pol Pot.Chea Samy was an outstanding soloist in the royal dance ensemble at the Cambodian Royal Palace in the 1930s. But she was also Pol Pot’s foster mother. After marrying Pol’s older brother, a low-level official at the royal court, she looked after the boy as if he were her own. They lost contact when he disappeared into the underground after his graduation. In 1975, like millions of other Cambodians, she was driven to the rice fields. Only after three years of forced labour did she learn that Pol Pot was the boy she had raised decades before. As one of only few dancers, she managed to survive his reign and returned to Phnom Penh as a dance teacher, thus preserving knowledge of the traditional dance. One of her first pupils was Sophiline Cheam, now a successful choreographer. Her ensemble incorporates events from Cambodia’s past in its dance routines. The starting point is a curious fact about Pol Pot’s career, which few Cambodians know about: the connection between Pol Pot and classical Cambodian dance. Artists and intellectuals, in particular, fell victim to the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge, whose leader ironically spent a crucial part of his childhood in the royal palace and gained access to higher education thanks to this dance.

Pol Pot Dancing

VIENNA CALLING

2023, 83 min
by Philipp Jedicke

Vienna, the former music capital of Europe, has become increasingly relevant again. With the wry approach that is typical of this city, the young underground music scene there romanticizes the raw and rabid. Hedonist and nihilist at the same time, the young Viennese artists embody the opposite of self-optimization. They are unadjusted, eccentric characters – and they are filling concert halls not only in Austria, but also in Germany and Switzerland. VIENNA CALLING starts with the aim of being a music documentary. But increasingly, the true protagonist emerges as the city of Vienna itself. Like a flâneur, the camera saunters by day and night through the lanes, bars and casual joints of Vienna, taking diversions, becoming lost only to find its way again. The strolling rhythm is instigated by the music, performed by Viennese artists and their famous charm or "Schmäh". Part documentary, part staged, interwoven with musical performances, the project gradually reveals itself as a mosaic of eccentricity. VIENNA CALLING digs deep into the catacombs of Viennese culture far from the mainstream. With its many performances and semi-fictional scenes, VIENNA CALLING is not a music documentary in the classic sense of the word, but rather a docu-musical. The film provides a stage for Viennese artists like the Turkish-Austrian duo EsRAP, who are first generation immigrants, non-binary rap artist Kerosin95, radical feminist authors Stefanie Sargnagel and Lydia Haider, songwriters Voodoo Ju?rgens and Der Nino aus Wien, and many more. VIENNA CALLING is a poetic approximation to the underground scene of an old European metropolis that experiences the current cultural changes and conflicts of our time. Viennese artists take the room they need for their art in a city that becomes increasingly gentrified. VIENNA CALLING is an homage to daring artists, it is about the hardships of creating art and art's need for space and independence.With: Voodoo Jürgens, Nino Aus Wien, EsRap, Gutlauninger, Kerosin95, Buntspecht a.o.

Vienna Calling

CAPITAL B. WHO OWNS BERLIN?

Germany 2023, 250 min
by Florian Opitz

The 5 part high-end documentary series CAPITAL B. WHO OWNS BERLIN? tells in an exciting and entertaining way how Berlin became what it is after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It has been a hip global metropolis for three decades, attracting artists, freedom lovers and young people from all over the world. But the way there was by no means preordained.And Capital B tells the story of how Berlin’s citizens have been fighting back ever since: against the sellout of their city, its displacement and against Berlin suffering the same fate as London, New York and Paris before it. To become a boring biotope for rich people and investors.In the 5 episodes we experience greed, corruption, the emergence of various youth and subcultures in the 90s and noughties, housing struggle, crime, and the rise and fall of greedy politicians.Capital B tells this story in a special way: multi-perspectival from the point of view of those who have shaped the city: Politicians, artists, entrepreneurs, squatters, club operators and clan members.Capital B is not the umpteenth true-crime series, but an unprecedented urban sociology in the form of an exciting, entertaining and highly topical documentary series. New in style, socio-politically relevant and excitingly told. Like Netflix, but public service. Or to put it immodestly: a mixture of House of Cards and The Wire, but for real, as a docu-series.With: Eberhard Diepgen, Klaus Landowski, Renate Künast, Sandy Kaltenborn, Marion Brasch, Peter Fox, Klaus Wowereit, Kool Savas, Dimitri Hegemann, Thilo Sarrazin, Pamela Schobeß, Franziska Giffey a.o.

Capital B – Who owns Berlin?

THE NEW GOSPEL

Germany, Switzerland 2020, 107 min
by Milo Rau

What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would his disciples be? And how would today’s bearers of secular and spiritual power respond to the return and provocations of the most influential prophet and social revolutionary in human history? With “The New Gospel”, Milo Rau is staging a “Revolt of Dignity”. Led by political activist Yvan Sagnet, the movement is fighting for the rights of migrants who came to Europe across the Mediterranean to be enslaved on the tomato fields in southern Italy and to live in ghettos under inhumane conditions. The director and his team return to the origins of the gospel and stage it as a passion play of an entire civilization. In Matera, in southern Italy, where the great Jesus films from Pasolini to Gibson were shot, an authentically political as well as theatrical and cinematic “New Gospel” emerges for the 21st century. A manifesto of solidarity with the poorest, a revolt for a more just, humane world.A production of Fruitmarket, Langfilm & IIPM – International Institute of Political Murder in coproduction with SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen / SRG SSR, ZDF in cooperation with ARTE in collaboration with Fondazione Matera Basilicata 2019, Consorzio Teatri Uniti di Basilicata and Teatro di Roma supported by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Bundesamt für Kultur (BAK), Zürcher Filmstiftung, DFFF - Deutscher Filmförderfonds, Kanton St.Gallen Kulturförderung / Swisslos, BKM - Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Volkart Stiftung, Suissimage Kulturfonds

The New Gospel

SUNSET OVER MULHOLLAND DRIVE

Germany 2018, 96 min
by Uli Gaulke

At the end of Mulholland Drive lies the Motion Picture & Television Fund. Its residents were once the backbone of the Dream Factory: actresses, producers, writers. The spry seniors still burn for movies and entertainment. And so, they share their best personal and professional anecdotes with us.A touching and lighthearted documentary about the glamourous residents of a very special retirement home, including actress Connie Sawyer (“Dumb and Dumber”, “When Harry Met Sally…”) three-time Emmy® Award nominated producer Joel Rogosin („The Virginian”, “Ironside”, “Magnum, P.I. and and producer Daniel Selznick ("American Grafitti"). [global screen]The palms in the garden of Motion Picture & Television Country House at Mulholland Drive sway soft in the light breeze under the evening sun. Here in Woodland Hills, a sleepy suburb nothwest of Hollywood, hides a fairly unique kind of home for quite special inhabitants – the refuge for the elderly of the US film industry. All those silent, invisible heroes who created classics such as “The Godfather“, "Blown by the wind", „The Appartement“ or “E.T.“ spend their time here looking back on a quite impressive and exciting life. Actors, writers, directors, cameramen, agents, make-up artists, costume designers and even big studio bosses end up here. Over 1000 elderly – more or less sprightly – live in this home strolling down memory lane. Famous Hollywood stars who are still in business, just like George Clooney, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, support the community with generous donations true to the motto: “We take care of our own“. [Fruitmarket]

Sunset over Mulholland Drive

NIGHT OF ALL NIGHTS

Germany 2017, 96 min
by Yasemin Samdereli, Nesrin Samdereli

The film of Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli portrays five couples from Germany, Turkey, India, USA and Brazil. All of them have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary together. Married couples who “made it” and accomplished something that today seems almost impossible: Staying together for a lifetime, in good times and in bad. When these people were “young” many rules of etiquette still existed that strongly dictated how “respectable” men and women were meant to behave. “Male and female” role models were clearly defined and breaking from the mold was hardly possible. While different in every society, the “rules” of proposing to a woman were often similarly “strict”. It was not possible to “just meet up”. Holding hands was considered scandalous. The wedding night was for most couples at that time the first sexual encounter with each other.Our light-hearted and humorous Documentary goes deeply into the secrets of partnership and love. How can couples manage to stay together for a lifetime, when they hardly knew each other in the first place. What can we learn from them in a time where Facebook tells us almost everything from each other, even before the first date?We also step back into those strange era, when our protagonist were young and when man and woman met and married almost anonymously. Award winning animation artist Izabela Plucinska will bring these times back to us thorugh her fantastic animations.

The Night of all Nights