Films by Ute Freund

Germany 2021, 90 min
by Serpil Turhan

KÖY (Turkish for village) is about the longing for home, for belonging and the freedom of the self. Three women from three generations are united by their Kurdish roots. All of them originate from villages in eastern Turkey and live in Berlin. Against the background of the political changes in Turkey, Serpil Turhan held intense discussions over a period of three years. KÖY captures each woman’s emotional world and shows fragments of the ordinary. Hêvîn, Saniye and Neno do not meet, but their stories are linked when it comes to self-determination and belonging.

Germany 2019, 84 min
by Aysun Bademsoy

The National Socialist Underground murders in the early 2000s left scars. Not only among the relatives of the victims, but also in the migrant communities and the entire German society.TRACES follows these scars and poses the question of whether such injuries can ever heal completely.“Between September 2000 and April 2007, nine immigrant businessmen and a German policewoman were murdered. (…) I read the news about the murders and thought: That could have been my father or my brother.” We’re talking about the murders of the self-proclaimed National Socialist Underground (NSU) which came to light through the main perpetrators’ suicide. After the end of the five-year NSU trial against their co-perpetrators and supporters, filmmaker Aysun Bademsoy goes in search of the traces left by this crime series: in the victims’ families and migrant communities, where the investigators had first investigated exclusively and sowed deep mistrust with speculations of drug trafficking and the Mafia, not least with assignations like “Kebap Murders”. “The NSU murdered my father. The investigators stained his honour. In doing so, they killed him a second time,” a surviving daughter says after the – to her disappointing – judgement was pronounced. Confidence in the German state was deeply shaken and the trial, a sobering experience for all families which left many things in the dark, destroyed rather than restored it. A film about surviving – despite everything.(DOK Leipzig, Frederik Lang)

Sweden, Germany, Finland 2017, 80 min
by Joakim Demmer

A documentary thriller about land-grabbing and the global rush for farmland - the new green gold!Around the globe, there is a massive commercial rush for farmland – the new green gold. One of the most profitable new spots for farming is Ethiopia. Hoping for export revenues, the Ethiopian government leases millions of hectares of allegedly unused land to foreign investors. But the dream of prosperity has a dark side - the most massive forced evictions in modern history, lost livelihoods of small farmers, harsh repression and a vicious spiral of violence. Contributing to this disaster are the EU, the World Bank and DFID, providing billions of dollars in development money. DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS investigates these foreign land investments andexposes their impact on people’s lives. In the pursuit of truth, we meet investors, development bureaucrats, persecuted journalists, struggling environmentalists and small farmers deprived of their land.

Germany 2009, 60 min
by Cynthia Beatt

In 1988 the British director Cynthia Beatt, who is based in Berlin, embarked on a journey into little-known territory. She filmed Tilda Swinton as they followed the Berlin Wall, capturing the inward-looking West Berlin and the over-the-Wall views of East Berlin.Today “Cycling the Frame“ is a rare historic document and Tilda Swinton, who was honoured with the Oscar in 2008, is one of the world’s most admired performers. In June 2009, Cynthia Beatt and Tilda Swinton re-traced the line of the Wall that once isolated Berlin from East and West Germany. “The Invisible Frame“ describes this journey, the print of a second foot, a Wall’s fall and 21 years later, through varied landscapes, this time on both sides of the former Wall. Full credits, text and picture details at [filmgalerie451.de.intern]http://www.filmgalerie451.de/en/filme/the-invisible-frame/