Films by Birgit Gudjonsdottir

Germany 2021, 58 min
by Anja Krug-Metzinger

What do animal emotions tell us about ourselves? Where did the human begin and the animal end? This science documentary takes you on a moving journey through the history of feelings and the intellect - with Jane Goodall, Frans de Waal and Volker Sommer.Chimpanzees wage war, behavioural experiments demonstrate that they also show compassion, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity. They reconcile after fights and comfort each other. Chimpanzee societies have customs and traditions that vary from place to place. Is the emergence of morality and culture not a purely human achievement after all?

2020, 96 min
by Doris Metz, Imogen Kimmel

We accompany a world-renowned transgender surgeon and his patients, each in a different stage of gender reassignment. A film full of feeling that unfolds the full spectrum and radicalness of this transition.Transgender people or those who do not fit into rigid gender assignments have always existed. For them, sex reassignment surgery is often the most important step towards feeling like their “true self”. The surgical methods are constantly improving. People who feel that they belong to the “wrong”, i.e. not their biological gender, are still a mystery to science. Why would anyone consciously harm their healthy body in order to change their sex? We accompany trans people in different phases of their transition over a period of one year. They are all patients of Dr. Schaff, an international luminary who has carried out over 6,000 gender reassignment operations. He is a trailblazer who is constantly improving and perfecting his surgical methods. We observe him at work in Munich and accompany him to San Francisco, where we glimpse the future of transgender surgery. A radically different picture presents itself in Moscow, where trans people live in social isolation and Dr. Schaff can only operate undercover under almost antediluvian conditions. (NEW DOCS)

Germany 2011, 88 min
by Christoph Roehl

In 2010 a scandal at the Odenwaldschule, arguably the most renowned boarding school in Germany, created a media storm. Not only were there the revelations that generations of children had been systematically abused for over three decades but it also became clear that when two former victims came forward in 1999 saying that “they were not the only ones”, their claims were ignored. In his film, director Christoph Roehl, who spent two years at the school himself, tries to explore how this shocking case of abuse could happen in the first place and then how the revelations were swept under the carpet in a conspiracy of silence. He interviews teachers and former pupils but most importantly gives voice to several victims who tell their story with rarely seen honesty and candidness.