Köy

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Ich will da sein - Jenny Gröllmann

At the heart of the Syrian civil war, a group of activists created an underground library in the besieged outskirts of Damascus. After years of blockade, they were forced to leave their city. But they managed to save their videos illustrating a unique experiment of cultural resistance under the bombs. This film, built between the past and the present, follows the story of three friends who met during the 2011 revolution and never gave up on their cultural resistance and peaceful struggle. Despite ceaseless bombing, they not only saved books from the rubble, but created a secret library, which quickly became a safe haven for peace, freedom and democracy: a special experience that they filmed and documented meticulously. Separated by war and exile, they are striving to reunite with each other. They reminisce on the past and tell us the extraordinary story of the library, based on dozens of hours of video archives. “A Library Under Bombs” is a story of hope and survival.

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

This Rain Will Never Stop takes the audience on a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace. The film follows 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of armed conflict. From the Syrian civil war to strife in Ukraine, Andriy’s existence is framed by the seemingly eternal flow of life and death.

The original Tresor was in many ways the quintessential Berlin club: located in an unrenovated vault beneath a bombed out department store, it opened its doors amidst the general confusion and ecstasy that swept across the city when the wall fell. Its low ceilings, industrial decor and generally unhinged atmosphere created an unprecedented platform not only for techno in Berlin, but also for the scene taking shape across the Atlantic in Detroit.

For years, together with his partners from the production company O Quadro, he has been betting on cinema as a tool to explore the typical issues of youth. In this film, Evandro Scorsin turns the cameras on himself as he deals with the dilemmas of the passing of time and the imposition of adulthood. In an exercise in autofiction where cinema and life merge, the film is also a cinematic love letter to the beloved masters (especially Nicholas Ray). Coming and going between two countries and times, it records the vertigo of displacement and the reinventions inherent to an immigrant experience.

In buildings where foreign workers lived in Germany, there were strict rules of conduct, defined by the house rules and supervised by the building superintendents. Many rights regarding the freedom of movement, communication and behavior were abused. Interviews with the tenants and with the "orderlies" which point out absurd situations and clashes caused by these restrictions.

“Binxet – Under the border” is a journey between life and death, dignity and pain, struggle and freedom. It takes place along the 911 km of the turkish-Syrian border. On the one hand the ISIS, in the other Erdogan’s Turkey. In the middle the borders and one hope. This hope is called Rojava, only one point on the chart of a troubled region, a region of resistance and an example of grassroots democracy that speaks about gender equality, self-determination of peoples and peaceful coexistence.

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

"The Last Season: Shawaks" revolves around an extended Shawak family whose life is marked by seasonal migration.

″Haymatloz″ tells the stories of five German Jewish academics who emigrated to Turkey in the 1930s, to be welcomed with open arms. After 1933 a considerable number of German intellectuals emigrated to Turkey at the invitation of Atatürk and went on to definitively shape teaching and instruction in Turkish universities. Turkish-born filmmaker Önsöz accompanies the descendants of these German exiles and sheds light on a memorable piece of history whose meaning is still felt to this day, as these renowned Germans played a substantial role in the Europeanization of Turkey.

A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Julia is a young transgender woman who left her home country of Lithuania. Now living in Germany, she walks the streets of Berlin, working as a prostitute to survive. This documentary revisits Julia over a ten-year period of her life.

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

Bosom buddies BeV StroganoV, Ovo Maltine, Ichgola Androgyn and Tima die Göttliche are four Berlin drag queens who met in the mid 1980s. These four queens became Germany’s most popular drag performers and have been busy fertilizing the German cultural scene. Besides being performers, they are also political activists – in AIDS awareness, anti-gay violence, the sex workers movement and the struggle against the extreme right and racism. The film tells their story.

Kawa Nemir is like a walking dictionary of the Kurdish language. He flees Turkey and takes refuge at Anne Frank's former house in Amsterdam. Will he be able to finish the translation of Ulysses and publish it?

Hitlers Sista Dagar

Acquired in July 1909 by art collector Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929), director general of the Prussian Art Collections and founding director of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, now the Bode-Museum, the Bust of Flora, Roman goddess of flowers, has been the subject of controversy for more than a century.

A metaphor of the Flood in our times, The Flood is the rain of violence that washes over us. Noah´s Ark is the train that runs through Mexico toward the United States and migrants are the species attempting to save their lives. For the directors, cinema moves people not just by condemnation, but by confronting and fostering emotions which lead to new, constructive ideas. This documentary became a cinematographic diary for their first viewer, their three-year-old daughter, Zafirah.