Films by Carsten Gutschmidt

2022, 90 min
by Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Carsten Gutschmidt, Ina Kessebohm

Embedded into the turbulent history of the 1980s with HIV epidemic, cocaine wave and Ronald Reagan's fight against organized crime, REEPERBAHN SPECIAL UNIT 65 tells the story of Germany's famous red-light district and the cat-and-mouse game between Special Unit 65 and its illustrious adversaries: the 'Godfather of Reeperbahn' Wilfrid Schulz, the US Mafia and corrupt police officers, rivaling pimp gangs, Hells Angels and youth gangs as well as serial killer Werner Pinzner, whose murderous spree is mind-blowing to this very day and who shoots directly into the heart of Special Unit 65.

Germany 2017, 90 min
by Christian Frey, Carsten Gutschmidt

During the Leningrad Blockade the conductor Karl Eliasberg receives an unbelievable assignment: surrounded by hunger, cold, and death he must conduct Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony with his surviving orchestra. Against all odds he accomplishes the impossible: For a short moment the war is interrupted by the sounds of the ’Leningrad Symphony‘ waft through the city all the way to German trenches. It is the heroic story of an orchestra and the symbolic triumph of art over the savagery of war. September 8th, 2016 marks the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Leningrad Blockade.