Films by Eva Kemme

Germany 2018, 90 min
by Christin Freitag

Championships, the ticket to the world of pro-boxing. When he almost loses his first fight, his dreams are suddenly questioned. Malcolm's coach Jessie, still mourning his own shattered boxing career, fears to fail a second time. They intensify the training drastically, almost heading towards a path of destruction. It becomes clear that talent, passion and even hard work sometimes are not enough to succeed. It’s the family around you - nobody can make it alone. In LET THE BELL RING the classical story of a boxer’s dream becomes a generation’s tale about first and last hopes, set against the backdrop of Los Angeles. It´s about lonely roads that cross each other and creating something out of nothing. (zff)

Germany, Libanon, Syria, United Arab Emirates 2017, 85 min
by Ziad Kalthoum

In Beirut, Syrian construction workers are building a skyscraper while at the same time their own houses at home are being shelled. The Lebanese war is over but the Syrian one still rages on. The workers are locked in the building site. They are not allowed to leave it after 19.00 hrs. The Lebanese government has imposed night-time curfews on the refugees. The only contact with the outside world for these Syrian workers is the hole through which they climb out in the morning to begin a new day of work. Cut off from their homeland, they gather at night around a small TV set to get the news from Syria.Tormented by anguish and anxiety, while suffering the deprivation of the most basic human and workers rights, they keep hoping for a different life.

Germany, Qatar, Libanon, Syria 2017, 98 min
by Talal Derki

Talal Derki’s new documentary tells the story the young generation in Syria and asks about the future of children, who grew up in the war.If you want to tame your nightmares, you need to capture them first. That’s what Syrian documentary filmmaker Talal Derki learned from his father. As in his previous film RETURN TO HOMS, he returns to his homeland and becomes part of life in a war zone. For more than two years he lives with the family of Abu Osama, an Al-Nusra fighter in a small village in northern Syria, focusing his camera mainly on the children. From a young age, the boys are trained to follow in their father’s footsteps and become soldiers of God. The horrors of war and the intimacy of family life are never far from one another. At the nearby battlefront Abu Osama fights against the enemy, while at home he cuddles with the boys and dreams of the caliphate. Talal Derki sets out to capture the moment when the children have to let go of their youth and are finally turned into Jihadi fighters. No matter how close the war comes, there's one thing they've already learned: they must never cry.