Films by Thomas Kufus

2023, 118 min
by Regina Schilling

At 34, Igor Levit is an exceptional artist in the world of classical music. A young rebel, who - at the piano - transforms into a mature musician. At age nine he arrived in Germany, a Jewish immigrant of Russian descent. Having an opinion and publicly expressing it, is not a choice, it is a survival strategy. The film follows the artist over two years as Levit explores his “life after Beethoven“, as he searches for his next challenge, his identity as an artist. We observe him recording new piece

2023, 86 min
by Britt Beyer

Coal mining has shaped Lusatia for generations. In the GDR it was still an important industrial location but, after the fall of communism, companies shut down and livelihoods were destroyed. With the planned phase out of coal, the region is facing another upheaval. Britt Beyer takes a sensitive look at the people who must deal once again with the collapse of existing structures and points of reference. [38 DOK.fest München, Ina Borrmann]

2023, 180 min
by Volker Heise

In early 1933, Berlin is one of the most modern cities in the world, full of contrasts and life. Twelve months later: the city is in the thrall of one party and one Führer.BERLIN 1933 – DIARY OF A METROPOLIS tells the story of how Berlin, the vibrant hub of modernity, became Germany’s staunch capital city in step with the Third Reich. Contemporary journals, letters and documents, photographs and film material, form a dense collage of the dynamics of this collectively organised disaster. We obser

Germany 2022, 87 min
by Volker Schlöndorff

THE FOREST MAKER is the portrait of a remarkable man whose life's work was honored with the so- called alternative Nobel, the Right Livelihood Award in 2018. Tony Rinaudo has found a way to grow trees in the most barren areas by activating the tree stumps and roots still alive as an “underground forest” for decades and thereby secures the livelihood of thousands of farmers in Africa. His method “Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration” (FMNR) restores not only soil but dignity and hope. The Chief of

Germany 2021, 96 min
by Corinna Belz, Enrique Sánchez Lansch

Hidden doors open in this film about the iconic Uffizi Gallery, home to the world's most prominent collection of Renaissance art. Guided by passion, German Director Eike Schmidt and his Italian team master the sensitive balancing act between conservation and renewal. We dive into famous masterpieces that captivate visitors of all ages and nationalities.

France, Germany 2020, 129 min
by Ulrike Ottinger

In the tradition of the flanérie she seeks places that were significant for her personally as well as for the 1960s. In Fritz Picard's Librairie Calligrammes, she meets German and French avant-gardists from literature and art. The Cinémathèque Française becomes a special attraction for her. Here she saw films by the Nouvelle Vague, Independents from the USA, from Asian countries, the Soviet republics, from Africa and the Magreb and also film history. The love for cinema had flared up.Paris was n

Germany 2020, 180 min
by Volker Heise

Berlin 1945 time-travels in cinematic style into the city’s most fateful year through the eyes of those, who experienced it: the German population and Allied soldiers.Berlin 1945 tells the story of liberation, defeat, and reconstruction in a city transformed from a theatre of war into a field of ruins. Through the eyes of the victors and the vanquished, Berlin 1945 reveals a multi-layered transformation of a city and its inhabitants. With surprising, never before seen archival footage, we recons

Denmark, Germany 2019, 88 min
by Anders Østergaard

The Winter Journey is based on American radio host Martin Goldsmith’s book about his Jewish parents, who fled Nazi Germany. Both were talented musicians, but after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted in 1935 they were only able to perform as members of the Jewish Cultural Federation, a bizarre propaganda organization fully controlled by the Reich Chamber of Culture.This film brings to life the reality of their beautiful and painful love story, using remarkable and ingenuously edited archive material

Switzerland, Germany 2018, 92 min
by Markus Imhoof

“In the end, all that we’re left with, are the memories we built on love.” One of those memories has haunted award winning director Markus Imhoof for most of his life: it is winter in Switzerland, neutral island in war torn Europe. At the fright depot, Markus’ mother picks up an Italian child refugee, to take her in. Giovanna, the girl is called, and growing up with her changes young Markus’ view of the world. 70 years later, again foreigners arrive in Europe. Markus Imhoof has never forgotten G

Germany 2018, 92 min
by Regina Schilling

Just as the Federal Republic of Germany went uphill, German entertainment television developed so splendidly. And the showmasters took part in forgetting the war and its traumatic events: Kulenkampff, Hans Rosenthal and Peter Alexander. All three fell into the turmoil during the war, Kulenkampff and Alexander as soldiers, Rosenthal as a Jew, who, with unbelievably luck, narrowly escaped deportation several times. Like my father, they belonged to a very special generation: First abused by Nationa

Germany 2017, 107 min
by Andres Veiel

Joseph Beuys, the man with the hat, the felt and the ‘fat corner’. Thirty years after his death he feels like a visionary who was, and still is, ahead of his time. He was the first German artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York whilst at home in Germany his work was often still derided as the ‘most expensive trash of all time’. Once asked if he was indifferent to such comments he retorted: ‘Yes. I want to expand people’s perceptions.’Andres Veiel lets the artist

2016, 89 min
by Corinna Belz

A film about words and about a luminary of modern literature: about Peter Handke, with Peter HandkeIn her new documentary, filmmaker Corinna Belz explores the enigma that is Peter Handke. His book titles read like the tunes on a jukebox, like the watchwords of several successive generations of readers: ‘Offending the Audience’, ‘The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty’, ‘A Sorrow Beyond Dreams’, ‘Short Letter, Long Farewell’, and ‘The Weight of the World’. In the ‘60s, Peter Handke showed how to wa

Germany 2012, 92 min
by Stefan Schwietert

The film tells a great love story - the story of Marcel and Catherine Cellier and their lifelong dedication to the music of Eastern Europe. Amidst the cold war the couple transcends all borders to collect and document sounds and harmonies never been heard before in the West. In numerous radio programmes and through selling millions of records Marcel Cellier spreads the music among an international audience, who falls in love with it immediately. He paves the way to fame for musicians like the Ru

Germany 2012, 90 min
by div

GOLDRUSH tells the story of the Treuhandanstalt - the most expensive experiment and the greatest white-collar-crime since Worldwar II. It’s a film about greed as the driving force of economic development. The trust agency 'Treuhand' was established to privatise the state owned enterprises of the GDR. Never before had there been an enterprise like the Treuhand that temporarily ran and speedily privatised 8,500 companies. With four million jobs at stake in East Germany, this was a novel and unique

Germany, Israel 2011, 97 min
by Arnon Goldfinger

Grandmother Gerda died at age 98. The family gathers in her flat in Tel Aviv where she has lived with grandfather Kurt for the last 70 years. Among countless letters, photographs and documents director Arnon Goldfinger uncovers traces of an unspoken past: the Jewish grandparents were close friends with SS-officer Leopold von Mildenstein and his wife.The film develops into a story that holds unexpected internationalinterests, calls up restrained family emotions and discloses secrets. Together wit

Germany 2008, 1440 min
by Volker Heise

Berlin has an unstable history, was the Reich’s capital, became a landscape of rubble, a border town, a divided and finally a reunited city. Today, Berlin is still a city of contradictions, always in search of its identity.“24h Berlin” portrays a day in the life of one of the most loved European metropolises, 20 years after the Wall came down. One whole day in the life of a city and its inhabitants experienced and shot, by professionals and amateurs, planned and spontaneous. One year later broad

Germany 2008, 90 min
by Ekaterina Eremenko

My Class - is a film about the brain drain, about tradition and globalisation, about materialism andidealism and not least about national identity.In 1982, 26 young specially gifted pupils are accepted at the school for Natural Sciences in the SovietUnion. Graduating from this school guarantees a most promising future. But then Perestroika happens,the old order collapses. Today, those pupils are spread all over the world and hardly any of them are still employed within scientific research.With

Germany 2001, 107 min
by Andres Veiel

BLACK BOX GERMANY steps back into German history, it shows the Federal Republic of Germany of the 70s and 80s. The country is polarized due to the power struggle of the German state and the “Red Army Fraction”, and thus on a constant brink of civil war. Society is torn, the fronts are irreconcilable. The life stories of both Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen are tragically linked to this era. Grams is the one who takes up arms for moral rigor; Herrhausen, however, seizes power and dies when p

1990, 90 min
by Harriet Eder, Thomas Kufus

Unique film material, never previously screened, shot by six German soldiers as they invaded the Soviet Union in WW II. The specific angle - that of amateur film-makers - and the use of 16mm colour film, means the film provides a completely different picture of the Eastern Front.The men who took the pictures have been traced and interviewed. Their enthusiasm about the technical quality of the pictures gives the film a cruel insight into the perfection of the Nazi machine. [IFFR 1994]