Films by Cornelia Böhm

Germany 2023, 79 min
by Julia Fuhr Mann

If history is written by the victors, where does that leave those who were never allowed to be part of the game? A collective of queer athletes enters the Olympic Stadium in Athens and sets out to honour those who were excluded from standing on the winners' podium. They meet Amanda Reiter, a trans* marathon runner who has to struggle with the prejudices of sports organisers and Annet Negesa, a 800m runner who was urged by the international sports federations to undergo hormone-altering surgery. Together they create a radical utopia far from the rigid gender rules in competitive sports.With: Annet Negesa, Amanda Reiter, Caitlin Fisher, Daniel Marin Medina, Chun Mei Tan, Eva Maria Jost, Jakob Levi Stahlberg, Oumou Aidara, Greta Graf

Germany 2022, 71 min
by Marina Hufnagel

Edda is overcome with solastalgia, the pain of the destruction of our planet. In her refuge on the North Frisian island of Pellworm, she meets Sophie, a young farmer who is suing the federal government for her right to the future.

Germany 2021, 52 min
by Rebecca Zehr

Does freedom only exist beyond your own parents' legacy? Marja took over for her late father at legendary Krautrock band Embryo. When she plays an instrument, she lives within the music. Carefully arranging sounds and images from both past and present, A SOUND OF MY OWN merges into a composition of its own.She first appeared on stage at the age of eleven with the legendary Krautrock band “Embryo”. Her father Christian Burchard founded the band in 1969 and led it until 2016. Today – in her mid-thirties – Marja Burchard is the bandleader in this project, which has become a kind of family for her. But what seems so simple and organic is far from self-evident in an extremely male-dominated sphere, as Rebecca Zehr shows in her precisely observed and designed film.This strictly and yet lightly composed melange mixes archival footage, psychedelic animation sequences and everyday observations of the normal life of a female musician between organisation and inspiration. With the visual level restricted to black and white and thus deliberately restrained, all the more attention is focused at the sound. The – who wonders? – outstanding score never takes the music for granted but works robustly with our perception. It’s the lucid, calm images and the narrative that is always anchored in the here and now that let this film stay incredibly haptic despite its concentration on our sense of hearing. Rebecca Zehr is not interested in portraying a musical legend, but in showing us what it could look and feel like to not only make music but live in it. [ Luc-Carolin Ziemann, 64 DOK Leipzig]

Germany 2021, 53 min
by Johanna Seggelke

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” Even though Sky and Johanna definitely did not have this quote by Mark Twain in mind, it’s written in the stars of the two young women’s journey through South Africa. A chance acquaintance turns into a relationship that shimmers in all the colours of love. Between Marmite toasts, joints, selfies and music they explore each other inside out. But what happens when the journey ends?In this deeply personal piece, filmmaker Johanna Seggelke chooses a very different approach to its predecessor, “Bibi Must Go” from 2020. She questions herself, her feelings and memories and almost casually unfolds an enchanting coming-of-age story about a love that emerges and fades in the seemingly endless summer. With a light hand, the film maintains the delicate balance between shimmering beauty and incidentality and manages to make the complicated dialectics of intimacy and strangeness palpable. The outstanding montage interweaves feathery holiday videos with an extraordinary score and the director’s sometimes wonderfully quirky, sometimes wise reflections. A delightfully direct film which preserves the rough edges of the moment and at the same time tries to outwit the undeceivability of one’s own emotions – at least for the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. (64 DOK Leipzig, Luc-Carolin Ziemann)

Germany 2021, 90 min
by Serpil Turhan

KÖY (Turkish for village) is about the longing for home, for belonging and the freedom of the self. Three women from three generations are united by their Kurdish roots. All of them originate from villages in eastern Turkey and live in Berlin. Against the background of the political changes in Turkey, Serpil Turhan held intense discussions over a period of three years. KÖY captures each woman’s emotional world and shows fragments of the ordinary. Hêvîn, Saniye and Neno do not meet, but their stories are linked when it comes to self-determination and belonging.

Germany 2018, 65 min
by Mieko Azuma, Susanne Mi-Son Quester

Five people between the ages of 10 and 84 talk about why they had to leave their home and what it was like to arrive in Germany. What is different? What do they miss? Between scenes of daily life at the new school and on the football ground the lives that Ahmad, Frau Schiller, Leila, Lena and Cacau left behind and the stories of the flights they lived through come alive in animated sequences. (DOK.Leipzig, Marie-Thérèse Antony)

Germany 2018, 52 min
by Benedikt Schulte

Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin), Martin Schleske (master luthier) How can we describe the intimate connection between an instrument and its player? How can a piece of wood become „the love of my life“, as Frank Peter Zimmermann calls his 1711 Stradivarius „Lady Inchiquin“? The instrument, worth 6 million Euros, was locked away in a safe for more than two years - due to bankruptcy of its lender, a German bank. This documentary follows the world renowned violinist as he reunites with his beloved violin.Zimmermann’s story is intertwined with another master’s search for perfection. We look behind the scenes and witness the creation of a contemporary violin by the “21st Century Stradivari”, Martin Schleske."What makes an exceptional violin and how does it enter into a relationship with a musician? A double portrait of the violinist Peter Zimmermann, who lost his Stradivari and then got it back again, and the master violin maker Martin Schleske, who is working on the instrument of his life." DOK.fest Munich