Films by Matt Sweetwood

Germany, Canada, Finland 2022, 99 min
by Rick Minnich

A 76-year old engineer is on a mission: to connect the United States and Russia with a 100-kilometer long train tunnel beneath the Bering Strait.THE STRAIT GUYS follows Czech-born mining engineer, George, and his fast-talking protégé, Scott, along the proposed route of the InterContinental Railway through Alaska, to the Bering Strait and onward to Russia. The “Strait Guys” endeavor to convince international governments, corporations, and indigenous tribes to green-light their $100 billion railwa

Germany 2012, 85 min
by Matt Sweetwood

Matt Sweetwood hails from the Midwest. He has lived in Germany for over ten years, but still the people and their culture remain a mystery to him. He undertakes a last-ditch attempt to figure the place out: By exploring the heart of German culture, their beer. If he delves into their rites and rituals, explores all the contradictions and stereotypes, will that make him, finally, a part of them? The infinite variety of beers, breweries and beer fests, the age-old history of beer, is more overwhel

Germany 2010, 80 min
by Angela Zumpe

West Berlin, Lankwitz. In May 1968, my 21-year-old brother Reinhard announced to my father, my mother and myself that within a few days he would be moving over to the GDR and applying for East German citizenship. Contacts were broken off. My brother committed suicide in January of 1969, on a sunday morning, while my father, a Berlin minister, read the sermon to his community. The film is a search for traces - in the time between reception camp and his death8 months later, for possible stations o

Germany 2009
by Alexander Biedermann

In his debut, Alexander Biedermann encounters five hackers and questions both their very existence and the impetus for their actions. The film portrays hackers, who constantly re-define borders of computer systems. They all associate their experience with a particular feeling of power: Only a few command lines enabled them to manipulate crucial features of modern society. Though regarding themselves as keepers and guardians, the legal grey area and the conflicting individual goals and social nec

Germany 2008
by Rick Minnich

One week after a seemingly harmless car accident, a 45-year-old man suffers total amnesia. Christening himself the “New Richard,” he embarks upon a new life with a new wife far away from his family. Sixteen years later, his oldest son returns with a camera to investigate why his father’s memory never returned.

USA 2008
by Rick Minnich

One week after a seemingly harmless car accident, a 45-year-old man wakes up with total amnesia.The doctors and family are baffled, as there is no evidence of brain damage or other physical causes.Sixteen years later, filmmaker Rick Minnich returns to his native California with a camera in search of answers to why his father's memory still hasn't returned. He talks with his family members, and reconstructs in detective-story fashion the period of time before and the years following the accident.

Germany 2005
by Rick Minnich

Hillbillies haven’t died off; they’ve simply become neo-hillbillies. Three families of musicians in the Ozark Mountains of Southwestern Missouri give new meaning to the word “hillbilly.” Float down the backwaters, soak up some old time religion, savor a washboard duel, and bask in the neon lights of the pseudo-hillbilly showtown Branson. Lean back and merge into hillbilliness.