Films by Jule Katinka Cramer

2023, 118 min
by Regina Schilling

At 34, Igor Levit is an exceptional artist in the world of classical music. A young rebel, who - at the piano - transforms into a mature musician. At age nine he arrived in Germany, a Jewish immigrant of Russian descent. Having an opinion and publicly expressing it, is not a choice, it is a survival strategy. The film follows the artist over two years as Levit explores his “life after Beethoven“, as he searches for his next challenge, his identity as an artist. We observe him recording new pieces, his intense immersion into the music, his collaborations with conductors, orchestras and recording artists, his warm embrace of the audiences. And then Covid hits. Having booked 180 concerts all over the world, just to see them being cancelled, Levit is among the first to adapt, establishing a musical lifeline between him and his community on Instagram and twitter. And by doing so he discovers a new freedom, away from the constraints of touring, publishing and marketing.Over the course of two years the film accompanies the artist while he navigates between a traditional career in the classics, his need for activism and an uncertain path as a musician who connects and inspires. [GFQ 4 2022]

Germany 2023, 94 min
by Corinna Belz

Setting: a workshop. When it comes to Thomas Schütte’s larger than life sculptures, the work is hands on – and on an impressive scale. Sanding, sawing and milling are the order of the day. The artist, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, moulds the eyes of a figure with his own hands or sometimes uses computer simulation. Regardless of the machinery, technology or material, it becomes clear: art is hard work. [38 DOK.fest München, Anja Klauck]

Germany 2021, 72 min
by Yana Ugrekhelidze

The film is about love story of one couple Alexandre and Marie. Alexandre is a transgender and lives with his girlfriend Marie. Because of his trans identity and mark 'female' in passport, Alexander has to lead a secret life. Such people  like him are threatened with persecution and death in his homeland.In order to escape this hopeless situation, Marie decides to make a surrogacy. With this money, the couple wants to flee to Europe and finally live in freedom.With the time their pragmatical plan wrecks, because Alexandre and Marie fell in love with the child in Mari's belly.

Germany 2019, 93 min
by Luisa Bäde

A studio room. Puppets. Frank Karbstein.Reminiscent, reflective, playful, narrating. The 1980s of the GDR - the group around the puppeteer Frank is arrested for distributing pacifistic leaflets. After being sentenced to imprisonment, the defendants are offered the opportunity to go to the West through a secret buy out of political prisoners. Frank stays. But the question remains: Who betrayed them?Different truths and memories stand side by side. In the centre of this is a person who never tries to act from the mindset of a victim and who shows his very own personal way of dealing with the GDR dictatorship. The 1980s of the GDR – Frank’s puppeteer group is arrested for distributing pacifist leaflets. After being sentenced to imprisonment, the defendants are offered the opportunity to go to the West through a secret buy-out of political prisoners. Frank remains. The same goes for the question of who betrayed them? Different truths and memories stand side by side. The focus is on a person who never tries to act from an attitude of victimization and who depicts his very personal way of dealing with the GDR dictatorship. (53 IFF Hof)

2018, 6 min
by Lara Rodríguez Cruz, Jule Katinka Cramer

A group of women are leading a revolution in Valencia, Spain. With the help of their gods and goddesses, they are fabricating weapons for liberation, with their own hands. A MYTHOLOGY OF PLEASURE is a short documentary film. Shot in the BS Atelier in Valencia in 2016, it is a portrait of the workshop in which these women design, manufacture and package the sex toys that they successfully sell around the world.

2018, 90 min
by Beryl Magoko

As a child in Kenya, the filmmaker Beryl Magoko was subjected to a life-threatening ritual of which many girls become victims even today. At the time, “female circumcision” – a friendly, barely adequate term for the genital mutilation she endured with horrible pain – seemed to her like something that was an integral part of growing up. Today she knows that it doesn’t have to be that way. Knowledge alone doesn’t help her, so she meets other victims who, like her, waver between anger and shame and still suffer from the procedure decades later.With her personal and highly political film, Beryl Magoko sets out on a journey that leads her both into the past and the future. Strikingly frank, but without anger, she confronts her own family with questions and reproaches. At the same time she is facing the decision whether to undergo reconstructive surgery and begin a new chapter in her life. (DOK Leipzig, Luc-Carolin Ziemann)

Germany 2014, 78 min
by Johann Feindt, Tamara Trampe

December 1942. A snowfield behind the russian lines in WW II. This where my mother gave birth to me. She was a nurse in the Red Army back then. 70 years later I go back to find out. (Tamara Trampe)

Germany 2014, 90 min
by Annekatrin Hendel

He was the charismatic pop star of East Berlin’s oppositional literary scene in Prenzlauer Berg in the eighties, a close acquaintance of Christa Wolf, Franz Fühmann and Heiner Müller. He was also a zealous informer working for the GDR’s secret police: Sascha Anderson, born 1953. Twenty years on, the pain he inflicted on friends and colleagues is as deep-seated as ever and the finely woven web of lies, half-truths and legends he unfurled around him still raises tempers. Annekatrin Hendel sits Sascha Anderson down before a camera to ask him what prompted him to act as he did and discover what he thinks about it today. What convinced him to denounce others? What caused him to gamble with his own life? Does he feel remorse or the need to atone? The film questions Anderson’s one-time companions such as ceramicist Wilfriede Maaß, who separated from her husband on his account, former university classmates Lars Barthel and Thomas Plenert, poet and anarchist Bert Papenfuß as well as Roland Jahn, now Federal Commissioner of the Stasi Archive. Making use of these fragments of memories the film creates a document of an era bound by trust and betrayal which persists to the present day.

2014, 94 min
by Regina Schilling

Portrait of actress, author and director Adriana Altaras. Adriana Altaras is a director, actress and writer. And she is from a country which no longer exists: Yugoslavia. The daughter of Jewish partisans who fought for Tito and later started a new life in post-war Germany, in this lovely film she tells the story of her ’high maintenance family’. Adriana’s domestic situation appears unusual at first glance, but can be seen as typical of the generation born after the War. Despite a high standard of living, the wounds from her parents’ past can be felt, even to this day, and the search for her own roots are her constant companion.

Germany 2013, 78 min
by Anne Thoma

Today’s wars and conflicts are increasingly complex and incomprehensible. Often, they are caused by local civil conflicts with global repercussions in the power struggle over territories and resources. This is why politicians employ those who understand the language, have access to expert knowledge and know how to be discrete. They employ experts, who turned 'making peace' into a new, private business model. “If you want to put an end to war, you have to talk to the fighters!” An exclusive group of international consultants are dedicated to this idea - it is their business, and their mission. In her film, director Anne Thoma portraits three private mediators and their work, which they conduct in hotel lobbies, during business class flights and in secret conference rooms. The film follows the protagonists on their mission to put an end to armed conflict in the world. We learn to understand their motivation, share hopes and disappointment, the loneliness and their short, rare moments of triumph. We also get a glimpse into the every day chores of the job alongside war theatres – surprising and emotional insights into the private peace industry. With Dennis McNamara, David Gorman, Martin Griffiths

Germany 2012, 52 min
by Karin Jurschick

They are charming, they lie without scruples and are capable of manipulating their environment. Psychopaths murder and rape without remorse and can still come across as disarmingly pleasant. What’s going on in their minds? As can be seen in films, art and literature, evil - seemingly devoid of morals and law - exerts a fascination over us. Centuries ago, anatomists tried to open human skulls and penetrate the brain. Today, state-of-the-art appliances enable us to scan brains to make inner processes visible. In this documentary, experts present their theories, experiments and results: how can decent people become ruthless murderers?

Germany 2011, 97 min
by Annekatrin Hendel

Once with the Stasi, always with the Stasi? Once you were in the agent controller's grasp you could never escape - that's what they say, anyway. Writer Paul Gratzik was an unofficial informer for the GDR State Security Service for twenty years, broke with them in the 80's and exposed his identity. "Vaterlandsverräter" ("Traitors to the Fatherland") is a portrait of an exceptional man. On one hand it is a psychological profile of one of an extraordinarily paradoxical figure, a "man of extremes": satyr, seducer, radical and hermit. On the other hand it tells a story about the GDR, its critics and the Stasi of the kind that has never been told before in all the 20 years since the end of East Germany.