Films by Katharina Pethke

Germany 2024, 111 min
by Katharina Pethke

The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.How much does a place reveal about its history? How much can forbears and their descendants know about one another? And how much continuity is contained within progress? When Katharina Pethke became a professor at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts,

Germany 2022, 45 min
by Katharina Pethke

Lale is 26 and has been working as a model for years.But working on the superficiality is increasingly exhausting her. She finally wants to turn her attention to the important things in life - by having her physical body scanned and transformed into a virtual avatar. In the course of this moral and legal precedent, and facing her very real SELF, Lale has concerns. The film poses thequestion of identity in the age of self-dramatization andcertificates of authenticity.

Germany 2021, 65 min
by Katharina Pethke

Due to an actor, the life of the documentary filmmaker is thrown into existential turmoil: While for him everything in life is a game, she still firmly believes in reality.When she begins to document their joint encounter, however, the initial fascination is already over: between closeness and distance, the two protagonists sometimes repel, sometimes attract each other.Their triangular relationship with the camera and the sound device resembles a power struggle in the joint struggle for interpre

Germany 2019, 30 min
by Katharina Pethke

Elsa is 20 and graduated from high school last summer. She spends her days sleeping. Reading. Thinking. Everyone else has made up their minds: Voluntary social year, world trip, studies. Elsa simply can't do it.Anything but being confronted with thefact that the future is a wide field - undescribed and directionless. Between "luxury" and a real problem, her attitude to her own situation changes. Completely free and unbound, easy and carefree and infinitely burdened by the serious decision: Who d

Germany 2009, 64 min
by Katharina Pethke

Ever frequently, irritations, anxiety disorders, burn-out, depressions, and other psychological illnesses have become a reason for employees to obtain a sick certificate. How are 24/7 availability, multitasking, or the abolition of regular working hours linked to this phenomenon? In her graduation film for Cologne Academy of Media Arts, Katharina Pethke portrays the blurring of boundaries at work and the insecurities provoked by this. BURNING WITHIN shows people looking for help: seminars and co