Films by Michael Loeken

Germany 2021, 118 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken, Michael Chauvistré

WE ARE ALL DETROIT - WHAT STAYS AND WHAT DISAPPEARS follows the explosive development of two cities on two different continents and its effect on the people who live there.These two very different cities - Bochum, in Germany's Ruhr region, and Detroit, in the US Rust Belt - have something ver important in common: both Detroit and Bochum were substantially shaped by the automobile industry. And both the beginning and the end of Bochum's auto industry can be traced to Detroit.Following the end of

Germany 2014, 99 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken

Dortmund is a city in the Ruhr region, one of Europe's largest industrial centres.Until April 2001, this was one of the most important locations for heavy industry in the world.On the enormous site of the former Phönix-Ost steelworks, which has lain dormant since the plant was closed in 2001, and in the middle of a working-class district, a luxury housing development has now been built up around a newly created, artificial lake: Lake Phoenix.The development includes a marina and piazza.The descr

2012, 89 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken

ARBEIT HEIMAT OPEL profiles six young people, aged 16 to 19, who began their apprenticeships as industrial mechanics at the Opel plant in Bochum, Germany in 2009. While they must learn to cope with a new phase in their lives, the start of their professional careers and approaching departure from the security of their parental homes, Opel itself is being sucked deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of the international financial crisis and facing ever-increasing economic pressure. We follow Jerome

Germany 2010, 45 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken

Mark Constantine, bird lover and alternative entrepreneur, made his fortune from cosmetics and fragrances. 15 years ago, he and a couple of friends opened the first of his incredibly bright soap shops with the unusual name of LUSH. Like the founder himself, the cosmetics firm is dedicated to global ecological issues. Everything that he does and defines is characterised by unconventionality, creativity and individuality. In the interim, he has become a leading name in the world of bioacoustics an

Germany 2006, 96 min
by Michael Loeken, Ulrike Franke

Dortmund: former steel capital of Germany. Here 400 Chinese workers are dismantling a monumental industrial complex in order to reassemble it in China. Despite the harsh working conditions and minuscule wages, they have not lost sight of their goal: to turn the industrial plant into gold back home.Even though the last German workers at the coking plant are supposed to help the Chinese dismantle their own workplace, the enormity of the task and their own uncertain futures have left them speechles