Films by Tim Stanzel

2022, 120 min
by Vanessa Schlesier, Ronald Rist, Antje Boehmert

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban take power in Afghanistan, and two weeks later the last U.S. Air Force plane leaves Kabul. The military evacuation is over. But there are still tens of thousands of people in the country who need an airlift because their lives are in danger as local staff, media workers, artists or human rights activists. Many of them hope for “Kabul-Luftbruecke” – a Berlin NGO that, on its own initiative, evacuates people from Afghanistan because, as local employees, media workers or human rights activists, their lives are imperiled. Those who have an admission to Germany can turn to the initiative and wait for safe passage to leave Kabul for Pakistan in the shadow of the night. The series documents how former local staff manage to leave the country, how children who were separated from their parents during the flight hope for a reunion and how young women decide to no longer bow to the Taliban’s dictates.

Germany 2021, 89 min
by Antje Boehmert, Dominik Wessely

The vaccination campaign against Covid-19 represents a challenge of unprecedented proportions for the whole of society and, at the same time, our only way out of the pandemic. Sooner or later, the virus will reach everyone who has not been immunized by vaccination, according to the assessment of leading experts. Over a period of nine months, the documentary film Germany's Race to Vaccinate tells the story of this vaccination campaign: from the initial debate surrounding which population groups should be vaccinated first, up until the vaccination of the general population in Germany after the end of prioritization in June 2021.Beyond daily news snippets, Grimme Award winners Dominik Wessely and Antje Boehmert chronicle the vaccination campaign's central processes and settings in close and vivid everyday observations, portraying men and women who – in very different ways – drive forward the vaccination campaign every day. They are all frontline workers on our journey out of the pandemic.The filmmakers accompany, among others, the staff of the vaccination centres in Duisburg and Stendal and a family doctor in Rhineland-Palatinate. They take an exclusive look at the work of Germany's Standing Commission on Vaccination (STIKO) and consult scientists involved in the struggle to increase vaccination acceptance: Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten and Prof. Dr. Cornelia Betsch. Through the life and work of a photographer in Pforzheim, a crematorium worker in Plauen and a paramedic from the Lower Rhine, the hardships of lockdown and the ethical questions surrounding vaccination are made visible.The film offers a far-reaching look behind the scenes at those tackling the mammoth task of the nationwide vaccination campaign in Germany. In doing so, Germany's Race to Vaccinate presents a documentary panorama of our world in a state of emergency, something often articulated merely in the form of news headlines or statistics.

2020, 85 min
by Sascha Schöberl

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – who’s the fairest of them all? “ In a land of “likes” and beauty-obsessed selfie culture, a talented but troubled surgeon seizes the spotlight with live-streamed plastic surgery performances, chasing animpossible dream of perfection.What kind of man erects an eight-metre statue of himself outside his own front door?“Mirror, Mirror On The Wall” is a film about the lofty ambition and lonely inner life of a cosmetic surgeon and self-proclaimed performance artist from China, as well as the women who shape him; the mother whose approval he can never seem to win, his American PA with unhealed wounds of her own, and his remarkably grounded 17-year-old daughter. And then there are the fans. Legions of young women live-streaming every act of their surgeries. This film operates on many levels to bring the depths of selfie culture and the death of privacy into sharp focus.“Mirror, Mirror On The Wall” is an investigation into our beauty-obsessed world, putting selfie culture on the operating table and calling into question the impact it haves on us all – both as individuals and as a society.

Germany 2017, 85 min
by Stanislaw Mucha (mopsfilm GmbH)

Black comedy meets dark history along a 2,000-km Siberian road literally built on the bones of Stalin's prisoners. Survivors live alongside those who've never heard the word "Gulag" in this sweeping trip into a not-so-distant past.Black comedy meets dark history along "the Road of Bones," a 2,000-kilometre stretch of Siberian highway that's literally built on the bodies of Stalin's prisoners. Millions of political dissidents and innocent villagers were sentenced to die mining the gold of the desolate Kolyma region in Stalin's infamous prison camps. Spurred by his grandfather's stories, filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha travels the road, starting at Magadan's "gate to hell" and ending at Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world, capturing harsh landscapes through all four seasons. Literally stumbling over bones along the way, Mucha discovers a bizarre mix of eccentrics who have either never heard the word "Gulag" or have a terrifying firsthand experience of them. From a clueless hotdog vendor to an electrocution hobbyist, former guards and surviving prisoners live alongside one another on the world's longest burial ground. Irreverently comical and historically revelatory, this unique travelogue uncovers painful truths frozen in a not-so-distant past. (hotDOCS, Myrocia Watamaniuk)“Goulash?,” the young woman looking out of the hatch of a combined hot dog and pizza stand on the side of the windy Kolyma route asks again. No, Stanislaw Mucha did ask for “Gulag”. And he is astonished to find that here, where the Soviet penal and labour camp system shaped the natural and living environment for decades, the term isn’t commonly used. Actually, for all intents and purposes, the filmmaker’s journey seems to be more of a trip through wordscapes. It begins in Magadan Bay, which earned its nickname “gate to hell” as the port of entry for the forced labourers. It continues along the “longest graveyard in the world”, as the long distance road from the Sea of Okhotsk to Yakutsk is occasionally called. But it also crosses the paths of the living, those who stayed here or were born here, who more often than not have better things to do than to revolve around that genius loci. Encounters as inspiring electric discharges on the horizon of expectations – like those electric pulses an amateur physician picked up along the way wants to use to rejuvenate his old father.When the present overwrites the past, when the Putin era superimposes the Soviet era, when the eternal periphery is allowed to actively participate in the snapshots made of it, the result are bone dry punch lines: for example that slow motion pop music video Mucha treats a girls’ dancing troupe to as he drives by. (DOK Leipzig, Sylvia Görke)

Germany 2011, 92 min
by Paul Hadwiger

KÜMMEL GOES EAST - living five years for a shopping centre. Five years with its developers and local residents. Five years between Germany and Poland. Five years until the dawn of the NEW WORLD. Hermann Kümmel building a school house in Nicaragua. That was in the ‘80s. Today the born Hessian is working in Rzeszów, east Poland. He’s building the NEW WORLD shopping centre. At Kümmel’s side stands Polish manager Viola Wojnowski, who negotiates with trade partners and financiers. But she doesn’t want to continue living in Poland – she’s having her dream house built in the German capital. Investor and art collector Dr. Erich Marx works in the background. The shopping centre project is controversial amongst inhabitants of the local prefab estate where it is to be built. But contracts have been finalised and construction vehicles are rolling in.?Director Paul Hadwiger and his team followed the creation of the shopping centre over five years. He encounters developers and inhabitants, pursues their stories. Despite their differences, all concerned are united by one question - that of how one wishes to live.