Documentary movies

Starting from the present and the living environment of young jazz musicians, this energetic documentary explores the question of why jazz was able to conquer the Republic so quickly, survive the times of fascism despite all reprisals and carry off its final triumph after the war.

His middle-class demeanour makes him inconspicuous and brings him close to world events. He was the first German to photograph Auschwitz. He became the chronicler of the young FRG and GDR. His iconic pictures of the ‘68 movement shape our perception to this day. He came closer to Beuys than anyone else. He continues to work on series of photographs that he began years ago: the legendary photographer Michael Ruetz.

They were as well known as the Fantastischen Vier in the 1990s and rapped against racism in Kölsch or High German: the 4 Reeves.

Dijana and Andreas find themselves alone in Sonnenhof, their idyllic estate in the Swiss countryside, since their daughter Tatjana has moved out. At the height of summer, the sudden arrival of their gardener Ana triggers a strange feeling of melancholy in Dijana, driving her to set off in search of her Serbian roots to find some degree of consolation.

A sensory film from the twilight between two worlds. In a village on Mexico’s southern coast, a small community lives in a complex, spiritual bond with nature’s animals.

While the youth of Chemnitz is seeking its way into adulthood, the former GDR industrial menopolis is struggling to guide them along the way.

It showcases stories of migrants and their descendants in Germany: a monument for a Pakistani poet, the payslips of a Turkish Gastarbeiter, three sisters turning a decolonial gaze on Bavarian history.

On July 14th, 2021, Ahrweiler experienced a natural disaster: a flood took the lives of over 130 people, hundreds were injured, and thousands lost their homes. The city of looked like a ghost town - a dystopian sight. Abdo, a resident of the city, shares the suffering of the residents over the loss and recognizes the feeling of fear and helplessness again.

This film shows how "Statusbericht" was shot. The seven days of shooting are worked through chronologically, which should give the viewer a sense of the shooting break.

The Journalist and Her Jailers explores what this local court in Germany can really accomplish. Can it actually provide some measure of justice for Luna Watfa and the tens of thousands of Syrians who have been detained, tortured and disappeared by Bashar al-Assad’s government, and thereby perhaps even provide a blueprint for future war crimes prosecutions worldwide? To engage with this question, Luna must first seek to understand what justice even means in this context, for the plaintiffs, witnesses, the defendants- and for herself.

Grandma has become a little doddery. And since the death of her husband, called E.O., ever bigger gaps have opened in her memory, and her disorientation has increased. Director Astrid Menzel makes a decision: to take a ten-day canoe trip on northern German waters with her brother and the 86-year-old lady. An adventure whose outcome is uncertain and which the three travellers have to face anew at every stage.

When Otto Dov Kulka was 11 years old and had to start the death march from Auschwitz to Groß-Rosen, he saw a prisoner lying with a broken leg on the orders of the defendant Baretzki who then probably shot him. Unlike this unknown prisoner, Kulka managed to escape death. Nineteen years later, he testified alongside 210 other Auschwitz survivors against 20 indicted former SS officials, participating in a trial that confronted the German people with their past and gave voice to silence.

The weather station on the Khodovarikha peninsula on the edge of the Russian Arctic Ocean in the Nenets Autonomous District is probably one of the loneliest workplaces in the world. Unimaginably the weather for our weather forecasts is measured there using the simplest of tools without any electronics. The residents are a professional soldier who has been retrained as a meteorologist and was traumatized in the Chechen war, his young wife, whose previous life in the world of cities and money was a brutal failure, a cancer-stricken pensioner who has returned to his birthplace, the aggressive, boozy head of the station with a dubious, possibly criminal past, and Jack, the dog. Five traumatized souls removed from society, who, in the solitude of the seemingly paradisiacal, hostile nature of the Arctic, try to deal with themselves, the absence of civilization, their human needs and shortcomings, and to master their lives.

You can't bring back a dead horse, but there are ways to step into a place that was lost. "Homesick Lungs" is an experimental farewell. The film delves into the lungs of a dying horse and the history of a sold family farm. 3D animations, screen recordings and documentary footage combine to form an essay on reconstructed memory. In the end, the wind brushes through virtual nettles.

A Swiss documentary