Archive

Jug-yeo-ju-neun Yeo-ja

Youn So-young has contracted gonorrhoea. ‘Make me well again quickly’ she tells her gynaecologist, because she wants to get back to work. In a park in Seoul, this senior citizen manages to scrape together just enough money as a ‘Bacchus lady’ to avoid begging. ‘Bacchus ladies’ are elderly women who sell a popular soft drink containing taurine known as ‘Bacchus’ and offer sexual services on the side. Korea’s rapidly ageing society barely has any m...

Juste une femme

Teheran in October 2000. A year ago, Moravid (which, translated, means “pearl”), was a man. Since her sex change she has lived in complete isolation in her tiny apartment. Now, for the first time, she dons the chador in order to leave her apartment – as a woman. What made Moravid decide to continue living as a woman in Iran? Her response challenges the clichés which are so prevalent in the West. This film provides a portrait of a country full of ...

Kater

Andreas and Stefan live a blissful existence together with their tomcat, Moses. They inhabit a beautiful old house in the vineyards near Vienna and work in the same orchestra as manager and musician. Their passion for music, their large circle of friends and colleagues and their furry companion define the daily lives of the two men. But one morning an unexpected outburst of violence from Stefan shakes their harmonious relationship to its core. F...

Katzenball

Stories of women who love women: their relationships and international networks, their search for identity and their – often secret – meeting places. Five women in Switzerland from different generations look back on their lives. A collage of personal memoirs and historical events, anecdotes and documentary material that wryly illuminates the particular atmosphere of each period and provides a subtly differentiated picture of ‘otherness’. Cosmopol...

Keep The Lights On

Manhattan in 1998. A semi-clad man lies on a bed dialling different phone numbers until he finds a suitable date for sex. When Erik first meets his date Paul the encounter unleashes a passion that at first appears to have no future. Nonetheless, two years later, the two men are sharing an apartment and their lives. Erik is a documentary filmmaker and Paul is an attorney who works regular hours. But the closeted, emotionally unstable Paul is prone...

Kelti

Belgrade in 1993. Serbia is at war, people are suffering on account of sanctions and inflation, but everyone is doing what they can. Mother Marijana is holding the family together. Her husband only raises his gaze from the floor when loving moments with his young daughter Minja brighten an endless string of daily chores. It is Minja’s eighth birthday. Instead of a cocker spaniel of her own, there’s the neighbour’s three-legged dog to play with, ...

Kiki

Twenty-five years after Paris is Burning, the 1991 Teddy Award-winning film that brought Berlinale audiences closer to New York’s ballroom scene, Kiki provides an insight into the world of today’s young black LGBT community, by taking a look at the balls where participants of voguing competitions compete for trophies, and by listening to proponents talking about their dreams and their lives. In contrast to the time when Paris is Burning was made...

Kill Boksoon

Gil Boksoon leads a double life. She is both the mother of a teenage daughter, whom she is raising on her own, and a legendary professional killer at top-tier killing agency MK Ent. One could even say that she is better at killing people than raising them. But one day, either out of motherly instinct or simply because there are limits to what even the ruthless Boksoon is willing to do, she refuses to complete an assignment. In doing so, she herse...

Kinsey

On January 5, 1948, American culture changed profoundly. On this day, Alfred Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” was published by W.B. Sanders, a company specializing in medicine. In a way, this also marked the day on which America began to talk about sex. At the time, Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) was dubbed the “American Freud” and compared to the philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Galileo and Darwin. Kinsey was a controversial figu...

Kirschblüten - Hanami

A story of selfless love that is also a poetic journey into the meaning of life itself. Trudi is the only one who knows that her husband is terminally ill with cancer. When his doctor suggests that the couple undertake one last trip together, Trudi persuades her husband to accompany her to visit her children and grandchildren in Berlin. However, the members of their family are far too wrapped up in their own lives to be able to take care of the c...

Kislota

Stark naked, Vanya jumps to his death off a balcony. ‘If you want to jump, jump,’ Pete had told him. Before: a flooded apartment, a toilet in the middle of the room, paranoia. Moby’s ‘Why does my heart feel so bad?’ on in the background. Kislota (Acid), the stylish directorial debut of 26-year-old Russian actor Alexander Gorchilin, begins like a trip and breathlessly continues: Vanya’s funeral is followed by clubbing, drugs and the artist Vasili...

Knives and Skin

‘What is your problem?’ – ‘I don't like it when you do that.’ – ‘Do what?’ – ‘Touch me.’

A small town somewhere in the Midwestern US. For the local teens, high school life would not be complete without football team, marching band, cheerleaders and mascot. The adults are preoccupied with desire, midlife crises and marital problems. The disappearance of the schoolgirl Carolyn Harper rends the facade of normality for the townsfolk. Fear and los...

Knochen und Namen

“Don’t ask me how I feel about something if you don’t want to hear it!” “I do want to hear it, but sometimes it’s just not true.” Actor Boris and writer Jonathan are a couple. But their relationship has reached a point where they might as well spend their evenings together separately: one lies in bed reading scripts, while the other works at a desk in the next room. Immersing himself deeper and deeper into rehearsals for a new film with an ambiti...

Koi ni itaru yamai

Schoolgirl Tsubara is oddly obsessed with her biology teacher Madoka. While the rest of the class responds to their instructor’s lack of authority with clamour and inattention, she hangs on his every word, filling her notebook with sketches and observations to record his quirks and peculiarities. One day, she finally takes the plunge and pounces on Madoka in his office, which results in the two of them inexplicably exchanging their sexual organs....

Kokomo City

Morning routines and conversations in bed, gossip and real talk. In encounters and interviews, D. Smith portrays four Black trans sex workers in New York and Georgia. The protagonists discuss their lives with relish but without any sugar-coating. The conversations that emerge are deep and passionate reflections on socio-political and social realities as well as perceptive analyses of belonging and identity within the Black community and beyond. D...

Kokon

“We're like fish in a fish tank. We keep swimming round in circles, from one end of Kotti to the other and back again, until we eventually manage to jump out of the tank.”
Berlin-Kreuzberg is Nora’s microcosm. Nora, the silent observer, is always tagging along: At parties, at school, at the pool, on rooftops and in apartments. Nora drifts around the monotonous housing blocks with her big sister and her friends, witnessing events that seem to...

Kometen

 
The sea. High waves. Dark water. A border fence, two men in hiding. Their flight begins. Only one of them will reach Sweden. 
One of the men is played by Abdi Aziis, who himself has fled from Somalia to Sweden in order to escape the oppression and persecution of gay men. “He is our comet” explains director Victor Lindgren, who, in merely a few selected situations, manages to convey the exertions, the deep abyss, the arrival and the loneliness o...

Kompisar

Two friends, Björn and Hampus, decide to move in together. If one ignores the fact that the two men are completely different, theirs is a close relationship. Being in love with your best friend and, in spite of this, or because of it, arguing to the point where it becomes unbearable – is the subject of this film.
>>> watch film on vimeo.com

König des Comics

Humour, irony and razor sharp observation are his liberating weapons against bigoted prejudice, and gay life, gay clichés, male sensibilities, desires and frustrations, urban neuroses, forays into antiquity and the influence of religion on society are the topics that Ralf König, Gemany’s best-known comic illustrator alongside Moers and Brösel, has called his own. The documentary KING OF COMICS pays tribute to an artist at the height of his creativi...

Kronjuvelerna

Fragancia has apparently shot and killed Richard, an industrialist’s son. But what really happened? Ever since they were born on the same day in a small Swedish town, their lives have been inexorably entwined. As a child, Richard is at the mercy of his powerful, tyrannical father, who is determined that his son become a top ice hockey player. Fragancia comes from a poor background. She takes care of her disabled brother and worries about her fath...