Films by Martin Roelly

Switzerland, Germany, Georgia 2021, 91 min
by Salomé Jashi

The opening shot of filmmaker Salomé Jashi’s striking environmental tale captures a tree as tall as a 15-story building floating on a barge across the vast Black Sea. Its destination lies within a garden countless miles away, privately owned by a wealthy and anonymous man whose passion resides in the removal, and subsequent replanting, of foreign trees into his own man-made Eden.With astonishing cinematic style,Taming the Garden tracks the surreal uprooting of ancient trees from their Georgian l

2021, 89 min
by Laurentia Genske, Robin Humboldt

Two Syrian sisters, on the verge of adulthood and trans *, are looking to find their way in their new home-country Germany. This film not only tells the moving story of a family that sticks together despite all hardships, but also poses the question of one's own identity. A coming-of-age documentary about the search for one's individual place in society.

2021, 85 min
by Aicha Macky

The wind-swept town of Zinder in the heart of the Sahel region of Niger is a place travellers only pass through.Kara-Kara, the former lepers’ quarter, is the pariahs’ district of this town. Gangs referred to as the "Palais” have sprung up in this area and are spreading their influence throughout the town. Obsessed by a culture of bodybuilding and violence, the gang members induce fear in the population.Outside the moments spent together in a body-building camp, some of them follow the path that

Romania, Germany, Finland 2020, 86 min
by Radu Ciorniciuc

For two decades, the Enache family—nine kids and their parents—lived in a shack in the wilderness of Bucharest Delta: an abandoned water reservoir, one of the biggest urban natural reservations in the world, with lakes and hundreds of species of animals and rare plants. When the authorities decide to claim back this rare urban ecosystem, the Enache family is evicted and told to resettle in the city—a reality they know nothing about. Kids that used to spend their days in nature have to learn abou

Switzerland, Germany, Polen 2020, 94 min
by Eliza Kubarska

When a Sherpa family is asked by a group of westerners to lead a trek up the never-conquered east wall of the imposing Kumbhakarna Mountain in Nepal, they’re confronted with a dilemma. Not only is the summit reputed to be more challenging than Mount Everest, but according to the local Kirant religion, it’s a sacred mountain that is not supposed to be ascended. While the father would like to earn the money necessary for his son’s education, the mother, a fierce woman who supports her boy’s dream

Germany 2020, 81 min
by Valentin Riedl

Carlotta cannot recognize faces, not even her own. For her, human faces are no bastion of trust, but places of fear and confusion. She is one of the 1% of all people whose part of the brain responsible for facial recognition does not work properly. With his film LOST IN FACE, neuroscientist Valentin Riedl travels through Carlotta’s universe, full of anthropomorphic animals, lucid dreams and bumpy false paths. He peels back her charming, idiosyncratic solutions that she employs to be able to join

2019, 84 min
by Pia Hellenthal

"I dedicate my life to showing the world that one can pretend to be whoever they want." Eva, 25 - drifter, Berliner, pet-owner, poet, sex worker, virgo, recovering addict, housewife, feminist, model – declared privacy an outdated concept at the age of 14. This is the tale of a young woman growing up in the age of the internet, turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, challenging you on what a woman 'should be'. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a genera

Germany 2019, 106 min
by Julia Horn

Markus Becker is hit by a car and falls into a coma. The doctors don't believe the 45-year-old will survive the next five to ten days and his father begins making funeral arrangements. Markus' brother Michael refuses to accept this fate. With an unwavering perseverance, creative ideas and humour, Michael manages to get his brother out of the vegetative state. For ten years filmmaker Julia Horn accompanied the two brothers with sensitivity and persistence and was also there do document the moment

2019, 88 min
by Sobo Swobodnik

Thomas Walter was part of the Berlin autonomous scene. In 1995 he and two co-perpetrators were accused of having attempted an arson attack on an uninhabited deportation prison in Berlin-Grünau which was prevented by the police. Arrest warrants for the three as members of a leftist terrorist association are still valid today. They went underground for decades. It is only in 2017 that Walter contacts his family in Germany again – from Venezuela, where he has applied for asylum.Thomas Walter is als

Germany 2019, 94 min
by Christoph Hübner, Gabriele Voss

AFTERMATH tells the story of three former youth talents of the German football club Borussia Dortmund.The film encompasses a trilogy shot across 20 years, portraying the end of their career and asks the questions: what was, what is, what comes next?

Germany, Austria 2019, 83 min
by Gesa Hollerbach

The last school has shut its doors, every other house is empty, there are only rapeseed fields as far as the eye can see. The last holdovers in the country are faced with the decision: stay or go?  "All for the Countryside" traces a host of societal phenomena that are caused by changing dynamics in rural areas and follows four individuals over the course of several years, each of whom give unexpected impulses to life on the countryside. The quartet consists of a mayor who's stuck between the fro

2019, 85 min
by John David Seidler

In 1981 Taiwan hosted its first Women's World Cup, at a time when the German Football Association did not promote but rather grudgingly tolerated women's football – in Germany it was officially banned until 1970.Since establishing a women's national team was of no interest to the German Football Association, the invitation to the Women’s World Cup in Taipei went straight to the reigning club champions SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach. In the film the former players talk about the absurd conditions in wh

Germany 2012, 74 min
by Carolin Genreith

Getting old is nasty. Getting old makes you hot and cold. Getting old gives you wrinkles and sagging breasts. When a woman’s menopause begins, she stops looking in the mirror; libido and beauty will soon become things of the past. All you can do is accept the course of time, hide your extra padding under a big sweater and prepare for your new role as a grannyto-be. At least that’s what 28-year-old director Carolin Genreith is absolutely convinced of. She is all the more shocked when, in the mid