Films by Max Mönch

Germany 2023, 16 min
by Volker Schlecht

Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them. Karen sets out to find them – and encounters a horrible truth. Mysterious deaths occur all over the planet and have a similar pattern. Why have so many species vanished? And what does it all have to do with us?

2019, 52 min
by Max Mönch, Alexander Lahl

A comprehensive documentary about sea level rise and its global impacts.How high will the oceans rise? Estimates that were considered panic-mongering just a few years ago are now in the realm of possibility. Already in 2100 the coasts of our planet could look different. The crucial question is: How will Greenland and Antarctica develop? Science is just beginning to include the complex dynamics in its forecasts. The results will determine how the coasts prepare for the impending threat. Up to what level can we protect ourselves? When will we have to think about abandoning areas because the cost of protection is no longer proportional to what is to be protected? Countries like Britain have already decided to abandon whole regions.

2018, 7 min
by Alexander Lahl, Max Mönch, Falk Schuster

They had a normal father-daughter relation. One day she told him to set off for a wedding party in Denmark. But that was a lie. A few months later she started her new life. As the wife of a djihadist living in Syria.

2015, 52 min
by Max Mönch, Alexander Lahl

Who owns the oceans? They are human heritage. But this could change soon. Countries with coastlines already claim huge portions of the sea. So far around 10 %, absolutely legally. But this is just the beginning. Geologists are hired by those countries to prove their ownership. A scientific race has started.OCEAN’S MONOPOLY is a crime-thriller starring a small group of geologists who help us to uncover the backgrounds in a global fight for territories. The results of their research decide who will own the oceans. This makes them the most powerful scientists on the planet. How objective can they be when economic and strategic interests are at stake? Then a whistleblower shows up, a mighty geologist who changed sides. While we’re peeling the onion, new questions emerge until we finally discover the core of the big game.

Germany 2013, 44 min
by Max Mönch

Footprints of War explores two antaoginistic logics: one of strength and conflict versus the logic of life and balance. Beyond the physical scars let on a landscape, our planet is confronted by serious side effects of modern warfare that are more than just expensive to clean up. What does a war mean to our ecosystem and how is the global eco-balance affected? Can a modern war be eco-friendly? What does it mean when a military machinery is put into motion, what resources are needed and how much are used?  A search around the globe and through history: the battlefields of World War I as the birthplaces of modern ecocide.

Germany 2009, 82 min
by Philip Vogt

Zef Sokoli is the Bajraktar of the Dukagjin - "he who holds the flag", who calls his men together with a rifle shot and leads them to war when someone threatens his mountain villages in Northern Albania. He still receives members of various tribes in the house of his ancestors, mediating between them when there are arguments - or another blood feud. But his kingdom is falling apart. More and more mountain people feel the call of the valleys. Even the Bajraktar's heirs, his three sons, are down in the city looking for work and a future. But one of them must inherit his father’s legacy - it’s tradition. Documentary about a once powerful clan-leader and reconciler in blood-feuds in the Dukagjin, northern Albania, and his family, and their search for a future between migration and tradition. original Albanian version with German or English subtitles available