Films by Hans-Robert Eisenhauer

Israel, Germany 2020, 70 min
by Anat Tel

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest Christian site, is shared by six dominations fighting each other for every square meter. Two Muslim families, guardians of the entrance key to the church, argue who is the true key custodian. Jonny, an Israeli police officer in charge, is trying to preserve the ancient, fragile Status Quo.

Georgia, Germany 2019, 90 min
by Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili

An old railway platform in a remote valley of Georgia suddenly becomes a site for a big change, when hundreds of Chinese settle around it to build the New Silk Road.A scarcely populated mountainous gorge is a mysterious place. Protected by mountains and forest all around, it looks like being frozen in time: old railway platform, wooden houses, wild nature. Old local train rattles around twice a day – the only mean of communication for most of the villagers. But when echoes of explosions reach the village, it becomes obvious that things are going to change here for good. A big black hole appears in the mountain as a sign that newcomers have arrived. Hundreds of Chinese settle in a remote Georgian village to build a modernized railway that will link China and Europe.An extraordinary closeness, a sense for the visual atmosphere ... a film that says a lot about our current period of geopolitical tensions, contested identities and a globalized world of work and capital. Dramatic but never exaggerated, the film identifies the events of a small village as a clash between past and future, between those who have and those who have not, in which we all have a role [Jury Report, Best Movie Grand Prix in Trento Film Festival]Previously known with its working title The Platform, it was shortlisted for the Hong Kong Film Financing Forum and benefited from support by IDFA's Bertha Fund.

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.

Syria, Germany, Sweden 2013, 91 min
by Talal Derki 

Filmed between August 2011 and August 2013, this is a remarkably intimate portrait of a group of young revolutionaries in the city of Homs in western Syria. They dream of their country being free from President Bashar al-Assad and fight for justice through peaceful demonstrations. As the army acts ever more brutally and their city is transformed into a ghost town, the young men become armed insurgents. The protagonists are two friends: Basset, the charismatic 19-year-old goalkeeper of the national soccer team whose revolutionary songs make him the voice of the protest movement, and the 24-year-old media activist and cameraman Ossama. The close-up camerawork takes the viewer right into the group. Scenes of lively protest parties make way for panicking civilians on the run, followed by grim battles in a deserted city, and rising numbers of fallen loved ones. Basset's a cappella protest songs are the only soundtrack, apart from the "silence, interrupted only by birds and bullets." From time to time, the director makes a comment in voice-over: "The world is watching how we are getting killed one by one, while it remains silent as the grave."