Hotel Astoria(2020)

Caligari: When Horror Came to Cinema(de)

On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.

Hitler's Hollywood(de)

Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)

Das Boot Revisited: An Underwater Success Story(de)

In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.

Halali und Halleluja(de)

Goering's Catalogue: A Collection of Art and Blood(fr)

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

Karajan: Portrait of a Maestro(de)

An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

Sweep it Up, Again(de)

„I began documenting their lives, if only because I hoped each film would have a happy ending.“ (Gerd Kroske)

Fotoshooting DDR - Bilder zwischen Propaganda und Alltag(de)

Life in the GDR was not only documented on behalf of the state, but also by photographic artists and journalists. The documentary goes on a journey through time with some of them and shows little-known aspects of the GDR from its foundation to the fall of the Wall. Photographers in the GDR had a surprising amount of freedom; there was no explicit censorship of images. This allowed them to make visible what the state wanted to hide. This documentary presents two photographers who observed life in the GDR and whose work has been rediscovered in recent years.

Merkel(de)

Driven by extensive archive material and interviews with those who know her, this is the astonishing story of how a triple outsider – a woman, a scientist, and an East German – became the de facto leader of the “Free World”, told for the first time for an international audience.

Die sieben Geheimnisse der NVA(de)

Der lange Abschied von der Kohle(de)

Verbotene Liebe - Queere Opfer der NS-Diktatur(de)

Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era – but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They should be excluded from the national community. More than 50,000 queer people have been proven to have been persecuted. The documentary highlights three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror.

Drei Frauen(de)

Die Dichter und die Räterepublik(de)

Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.

Pride & Attitude(de)

The viewpoints of women from a country that no longer exists preserved on low-band U-matic tape. GDR-FRG. Courageous, self-confident and emancipated: female industry workers talk about gaining autonomy.

Nazi-Karrieren in der DDR?(de)

It was a foundational myth of the GDR that it was anti-fascist and free of Nazis. But was that really the case? The film takes a critical look on the actual way the brown heritage was dealt with in the GDR.

Becoming Black(de)

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

Spielball der Weltpolitik – Als Elten niederländisch wurde(de)

It is an unknown chapter of the German post-war history: On April 23rd, 1949, the kingdom of the Netherlands occupied German soil as a pledge for demanded war reparations. Part of the annexed territories was also the small municipality of Elten. While the people of Elten were initially afraid of the occupation, the time “with Holland” actually became a miracle of prosperity and economy about which many people from Elten still rave today. The occupation period ended with the largest organized smuggling in the history of the federal republic of Germany. The Documentary shows this in never before released 8 mm footage!

Wie konnte es geschehen? - Teil 1: "Deutschland erwache..." (1914 - 1938)(de)

In 1945, 160 German cities lay in ruins and the loss of millions of lives, billions in material assets and countless cultural treasures was mourned throughout Europe... With the question “How could it happen?”, the film goes back to the year 1914, when the “primal catastrophe of the 20th century” took its course with the First World War.

Kategorie C(de)

A documentary about the hooligans and the rivalry of two football clubs in Leipzig.