Documentary movies

The film by the renowned filmmaking duo Anna Faroqhi and Haim Peretz was created within the framework of the German program «Film ohne Grenzen» (Film without Borders), which supports young individuals from various social backgrounds, including refugees, migrants, and teenagers from disadvantaged families. In 2022, the program's regular instructors, Faroqhi and Peretz, engaged former homeless youths in the making of a film. With the guidance of a social worker, an architect, and a historian, these young people worked on crafting a kind of memorial for the victims of a Nazi concentration camp that was once located in the area of a present-day Brandenburg village.

why am i aggressive as a mother? why am i unhappy with a man i love? why is the man unhappy too? and why does his unhappiness seem more bearable to me than mine? - helke sander, february 1968

Three young people in search of dignity, justice and recognition. They are survivors of human trafficking and want the humanity back that was robbed of them. They will tell their story, they will tell it to us. We will follow them to the beginning. To the beginning of what, first and foremost, makes all of us human.

A journey through the history of electronic music from Cologne – from the 50's until today.

Another war in the Middle East - another attack on Israel - another death of innocents. The battle for Palestine has been raging for decades, with Israel's enemies denying the country its right to exist.

In Korntal, a small town of 9,000 souls in Baden-Württemberg, hundreds of children were abused in the homes of the Evangelical Brethren since the 1950s. Forced labour, physical punishment and sexualised violence were the order of the day. To date, more than 150 former children have broken their silence, more than 80 perpetrators have been identified. Because the latter covered for each other and the neighbours looked away, the children were defenceless against the abuse for decades. When the scandal was exposed in 2013, the community and the village were hostile at first: That which must not be cannot be. It was only when the pressure from the outside grew that the community initiated a process of dealing with the scandal. But it is controversial: victims are re-traumatised, their statements doubted. To this day the children from Korntal are fighting for investigation and compensation.

Rügen is the largest island of Germany. Located off the Baltic Sea coast of Western Pomerania, two thirds of its area is protected. The green beech forests of the Jasmund National Park are considered an original virgin forest that is unique in Europe and are part of the UNESCO World Heritage. The white chalk cliffs, which can be seen from afar, are the island's distinctive symbol and were immortalized in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich more than 200 years ago. On the small island of Vilm, which belongs to Rügen, there is another core area of nature conservation with a 500-year-old, untouched beech forest. Within sight of this refuge, organic farmers are trying to bring more diversity back to the fields. Small-scale agriculture with a great diversity of species has emerged between hedges, tree islands and biotopes. The documentary shows Rügen's natural treasures and introduces different people who have found their home here and are fighting to preserve nature.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space and that humans can get their hands on, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research. Archiv der Zukunft captures the aesthetic appeal of the natural-history collection and its working process, illuminating the mammoth project of knowledge preservation and production hidden behind the building’s imperial façade.

A documentary essay balancing between irony over national stereotypes in general and a nostalgic flow of cultural associations from the director's memories: Russian nursery rhyming stories, the only Mordovian words she knows from her mother, school counting rhymes with German verbs, Tatar songs by her mother-in-law, quotes from some soviet poems, scenes from the opera "Eugene Onegin", the old anthem of Kazakhstan, which she memorizing for her district administration, and much more.

At an exhibition, graphic designer Stefanie is thrilled by the work of John Heartfield, the inventor of political photomontage 100 years ago. While trying to understand his life on the run, she suddenly finds herself in Heartfield's studio.

Marcel Goldhammer does not want to be pigeonholed – as an openly gay model, actor and former sex worker, then a journalist who converted to Judaism and did his military service in Israel. As a millennial, this is all just fodder for his social channels. Yes, even the sex with his punters. And next? Politics!

More than a quarter of Munich’s urban population is younger than 27. However, many young adults do not feel sufficiently represented in the city. Nightowls Munich focuses on the often invisible world of this generation.

Parapsychologist Dr. Walter von Lucadou has been researching supernatural phenomena for 45 years and is often the last hope for people with ghostly apparitions. In most cases, the expert can help those affected.

Rahaf, Sara, Rawa and Afraa take a road trip through Europe. What unites them is that they had to leave Syria eight years ago because of the war. This journey is a coping with memories and traumas, but is also full of happiness and positive moments.

At the beginning Michelle Bastien-Archer shows and comments on photos of her wedding. The African-American and her childhood friend Jermaine were married in the unhospitable visitors’ hall of Sing Sing in 2007. He had been sentenced to 22 years to life for voluntary manslaughter in 1998. Ever since, she has been fighting tirelessly to prove his innocence. Now new documents have turned up that reinforce doubts about the trial’s decisive witness statement. Michelle becomes more confident. She presses even more determinedly ahead with her efforts to get Jermaine released. The camera is with her as if live, for almost a decade.