Archive

Der Ost-Komplex

Even now, twenty-five years after German reunification, historians are still debating whether the GDR was an illegitimate state. In his current work, Jochen Hick, several of whose films have screened in the Panorama, tells the story of ex-GDR citizen Mario Röllig. Hick accompanies him as he visits his parents and his former colleagues but also the sites of his attempted flight from the GDR and his incarceration. Röllig started a relationship with...

Der Samurai

People in the Brandenburg countryside are scared of wolves. Their howling frightens the populace and silences the lambs. But once this night is over people will wish it had just been a wolf that had come to haunt them. Instead, a nightmare in the shape of a nameless stranger with a samurai sword appears at the edge of the forest and leaves a trail of destruction in the village. For young local police officer Jakob in particular the encounter with...

Derek

“Letter to an Angel” was written by Tilda Swinton to Derek Jarman on 17 August, 2002 – eight years after his death. In it, she describes her delight at the publication of the DVD version of Jarman’s 1977 work, JUBILEE, as well as her memories of the director whose films marked the beginning of her own career: “You were indeed the great Thatcherite film-maker – for every £200,000 film you made, real profits were seen (by someone or other) within at ...

Des Teufels Bad

Upper Austria, 1750. Agnes, a young married woman, feels like a stranger in her husband’s world. A shocking act seems to be her only way out. A profound and disturbing psychological portrait of a woman, based on historical court records.

Deshora

Heavy clouds hang over the tobacco fields in the mountainous jungle of north western Argentina. Here, far from the big city, live Ernesto and Helena. They long to have children, but their passion is spent. One day, Helena’s cousin Joaquin arrives. He has just gone through detox and his mother has banished him to this remote place for rehabilitation. Although they all keep to themselves, the young man’s presence bringslife to their marriage. An at...

Desperté con un sueño

“We’ll grow up, we’ll make mistakes, and learn from them, we’ll suffer, we’ll laugh out loud, we’ll age, we’ll get sick, we’ll die. In the meantime, dear Felipe Zavala, we must live.”

Felipe has a dream – he is on stage and passionately performing while his mother, grandmother and his deceased father are part of the audience and watch him enthusiastically. After waking up, reality catches up with him again. He’s part of a theatre group with his f...

Detlef

There was a time in which the rainbow flag meant more than just the promise of a certain lifestyle. DETLEF takes us back into the turbulent days of the gay rights movement and illuminates an all but forgotten chapter in West-German history, a time of socio-political change during which the battle for fundamental rights for gays and lesbians was fought and won. Sixty-year-old Detlef Stoffel lives with his ninety-one-year-old mother, who is in need ...

detours while speaking of monsters

Here, where even monsters are political, the topography has its own memory. It has the mythological blues. Meanwhile, old gods are upset with us, and I am upset with my father.

Die 727 Tage ohne Karamo

An Austrian woman has been forced to live alone with her children ever since her husband Karamo was deported to Africa. A man tries to instil hope in his Chinese wife that she will soon be allowed to return to Vienna. Others talk of the long wait forresidence permits, of struggles with forms and offices, of German courses, income statements and domestic spot checks by the police which infer that their marriage is asham. The complicated, state reg...

Die Betörung der Blauen Matrosen

Ulrike Ottinger won the Special Teddy Award in 2014 for her incomparable lifetime achievement, of which this enchanting queer film is an early example even before her groundbreaking films Madame X and Bildnis einer Trinkerin (Ticket of No Return).
In collage sequences, the surrogate of synthetic sensuality takes form and seduces the sailors in the guise of a Hawaiian girl. In ritual punctuation, she distributes deaths which seemingly only the hard...

Die Ehe der Maria Braun

Maria and Hermann Braun get married during the Second World War. After half a day and just one night together, Hermann has to return to the front. After the war, he is reported missing. Maria alone believes that he's still alive.
In a bar reserved exclusively for American servicemen, Maria gets a job as a bar girl. She meets Bill, a black G.I., and gets pregnant. One evening, when she and Bill are in bed together, Hermann suddenly appears. In...

Die Grube

In Roman times, thermal baths were vibrant places of public life. These bathing establishments, which were accessible free of charge, were a pivotal point of social interaction. At Bulgaria’s Golden Beach resort, this tradition has survived to the present day in a spa called ‘the pit’. Even in wintry temperatures of five degrees above zero, the water is steaming and people sit together in the hot pool, relaxing in the here and now before a backd...

Die Jungfrauenmaschine

Young Hamburg journalist Dorothee Müller is fed up with her persistent lover, Heinz. A complete ingénue, she innocently embarks upon an exploration of romantic love – is it merely a ‘woman’s malady’? The places where she undertakes this research include a pleasure-addicted hormone researcher’s practice and the monkey house at the zoo. Unable to find any satisfactory answers, Dorothee decides to leave Europe and head for California where she cont...

Die Jungs vom Bahnhof Zoo

The documentary RENT BOYS (DIE JUNGS VOM BAHNHOF ZOO) is a compelling weave of authentic stories about rent boys that manages to illuminate the phenomenon of male prostitution whilst carefully avoiding the clichés that surround the milieu. The film focuses on the biographies of five rent boys, three of whom are Roma. We follow Ionel back to his village in Rumania and learn of the impoverished lives that lads like him have left behind. Nazif is a ...

Die Letzte Stadt

An archaeologist and a weapons designer, who knew each other in a previous life as a filmmaker and a psychoanalyst, meet at an excavation site in the Negev desert and begin a conversation about love and war, which they continue in the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva. A series of encounters with alternating actors in different roles ensues, which leads the viewer through the cities of Athens, Berlin, Hong Kong and São Paulo. Among those appearing are...

Die Stille nach dem Schuss

Germany in the 1970’s, Rita Vogt lives with an unshakeable belief in a better world. She wants to change something, so she and her friend Andi get involved with a terrorist. When people get killed, Rita goes into hiding in East Germany. The State Security Officer Hull aids her to disappear into a new identity there: a new name, a new job and new friends. When Rita falls in love with her colleague Tatjana, she believes she’s shaken off her past … ...

Die Wiese der Sachen

Every decade hasits own gateway to heaven. Clonetown 1974 to 1979: a terrorist defector named Charon sits on the edge of oblivion and commentates on the imminent putrification of an abducted car dealer

Dina and Noel

An old man is dying. His carer Noel sits quietly by his side. Dina, the man’s granddaughter, appears in an animal costume. She raids the fridge and then goes off to have fun with her friends. When she returns late at night, her grandfather is dead. Dina and Noel lovingly stroke the man’s hands, comb his hair, smoke a cigarette, share a laugh and then go out into the night time city. Loud electronic music awaits them in a club. As the sun rises they leap into the sea’s clear, cleansing waters. Their night of farewell is also a new beginning. Dina and Noel unconventional cinematic means to portray the attitude to life among young Israelis.

Discreet

Bacon sizzling in fat, a young woman thanking the subscribers of her YouTube channel, a corpse neatly wrapped up in black garbage bags and floating down a river – as clear as the first few images of Travis Mathews’ mystery thriller may be, the connections only become clearer gradually, as if they were emerging from the subconscious. This elliptically edited story, which revolves around a man who can no longer be described as young, is accompanie...

Dish

DISH observes the conversations of two adolescent Emos, Israel and Louie, in Los Angeles. The main issue is sex with other guys. Louie knows about it from personal experience, but Israel still needs to try. They are constantly exchanging text messages about the subject. While walking around their East Los Angeles neighborhood dishing about their high school classmates they talk about dicks, fucking, the use of condoms and the old cliché of top an...