Films by Christoph Boekel

Germany 2021, 119 min
by Christoph Boekel

My father’s diaries and the letters he wrote to my mother guide me to the places in Belgium, France, Tunisia, Germany, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina where my father served as a Wehrmacht officer, between 1942 and 1945. My images of those original sites today meld into a vivid, personal inside view of the War and its mental and emotional destructiveness. In 2017, my brothers and I discuss for the first time the profound effects this war had on our family and our personal lives.

Germany 2018, 100 min
by Peter Heller (c/o filmkraft)

The film tells from the personal perspective of the filmmaker the history of the Munich district cinema 'Maxim'. The Maxim was centre of his private and professional life. The cinema had been managed for 40 years by the lone fighter Sigi who persistently opposed all trends. The Maxim was a venue, catalyst and home of political documentary and a birthplace of the Munich International Documentary Film Festival. But the political weapon "Maxim" had become dull time by time. The old cinema corner lo

Germany 2010, 115 min
by Christoph Boekel

My loved ones in Moscow, fifteen years ago and today - seven people close to me, whom I accompanied with a camera, first throughout 1993 and then in 2008/2009. During the span of these fifteen years, Moscow underwent tremendous change, transformed by almost incomprehensible social and economic upheaval. It was important to me to view and portray the fates of my Moscow relatives and friends in the context of political developments. What has become of their lives and loves, their dreams and hopes,

Germany 2006
by Christoph Boekel

April 26th 1986. The day a nightmare scenario became horrific reality: the day reactor block 4 of the Chernobyl atomic power station exploded. The early summer heat, insufficient security measures and lack of knowledge and training exposed the emergency workers to extreme risk. One of them was the young artist Dmitrij Gutin. During the last days of his military service he was posted to the highly contaminated 30 km. zone around Chernobyl. He died just short of his 40th birthday, after many painf