winterlieb - libawka(2020)

blaubeeren - cerne jagody(de)

Träume der Lausitz(de)

Lusatia - the former energy production center of the GDR, today a landscape depleted by lignite mining. Large lakes have been created in which you can "rust" while swimming, and landscape formations reminiscent of the Grand Canyon of the Wild West. Native wolves and many exotic species of international flora and fauna are inexorably conquering new habitats. The people who have remained persevere like settlers. They appear in the film as narrators of their sometimes bizarre stories. We see how they try with imagination and commitment to wrest a re-inhabitable piece of earth from their battered landscape. For Lusatia harbors the old dream of Prince Pückler: the dream of a landscape for people. More is happening in Lusatia than we dare to dream.

Schlesiens Wilder Westen(de)

"I can live better in a place whose history I know," says a young Pole in the prologue of this film. He lives in Kopaniec, formerly Seifershau - a village in Lower Silesia. Between the past and the present lay the expulsion of the Germans and the resettlement of the Poles, many of whom were themselves expellees from what is now Ukraine. The village is the focus of the film and the link between the former and present inhabitants. The younger Poles have grown up with the visits of the former German inhabitants. The life stories of the older Poles and Germans tell of war and expulsion, but also of the time when they lived together in the village, directly after the war. The region was called "The Wild West" in Poland at the time. "Silesia's Wild West" asks what home is: a place, a person, a feeling, a memory?

Wolves Return(de)

Wolves divide and fascinate us. 150 years after they were driven to extinction in Central Europe, they are returning slowly but inexorably. Are they dangerous to humans? Is it possible to coexist? Using Switzerland as a point of departure, where wolves have returned in the very recent past, this documentary sheds light on the wolf situation in Austria, eastern Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, and even Minnesota, where freely roaming packs of wolves are more common sight.

wuhlo – kohle(de)

Punching the World(de)

Two brothers grow up in the Saxon province (part of Germany) at the turn of the millennium, where the dream of family happiness in a new house quickly turns into a nightmare of decay, violence and xenophobia as they desperately search for stability and belonging.

Wilma will mehr(de)

Wilma has many qualifications and talents, yet suffers just as many disappointments in life. After she catches her husband cheating, she runs away to Vienna in search of a new life. There she lives with bustling bohemians, tries her luck at a variety of jobs and perhaps... at love again.

… verdammt, ich bin erwachsen(de)

15-year old Klaus Kambor, called Kurbel, is living in a village in Lusatia and already thinks of himself as an adult. He can hold a lot of rhubarb wine and has already kissed a girl. But with his new method of lawn mowing, which he thinks is brilliant, Klaus makes a big mistake: He causes a wild fire in the forest. Then he does not react adult-like at all, but shirks the responsibility, which leads to the break-up with his girlfriend Daniela. Furthermore, Klaus does not realize that several of the places he likes the most in his environment are now going to be sacrificed to mining. When Klaus becomes friends with the teacher Konzak and with the construction worker Jule, he feels understood for the first time and starts to take more responsibility.

Ithaka(en)

The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son. Arguably the world’s most famous political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a figure pretty much everybody has an opinion about; perhaps more importantly, he serves as the emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes. For his family members who face the prospect of losing him forever to the abyss of the US justice system, however, this David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with his health declining in a British maximum-security prison and American government prosecutors pulling out all the stops to extradite him, the clock is ticking.

The Beloved(en)

Commune or cult? This epic documentary illuminates the Rajneesh sannyasin movement in 1980s Fremantle, as told by those who lived through it. If you lived in the Fremantle of the early 1980s, it was not uncommon to see the so-called “Orange People”: members of the Rajneesh sannyasin commune. Surrendering themselves to the spiritual guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, adherents were promised enlightenment and revolution, but required to live by significantly modified social structures and identities. Like so many living experiments dedicated to a higher consciousness, the movement seemed to have all the trappings of a cult – and its notoriety has lingered in the city in the four decades since.

Freedom Swimmer(cn)

Olivia Martin McGuire (China Love) parallels a grandfather’s journey to safety during the Cultural Revolution with his granddaughter’s fight for freedom in Hong Kong today. Interweaving unflinching testimony of the elder’s exodus from the Chinese mainland, exquisitely animated recreations of the perilous escape to Hong Kong through land and sea, and vivid, evocative archival footage of both mid-20th-century China and the Hong Kong protests today, Freedom Swimmer emerges as a gripping and timely account of the struggle for survival across generations.

Music Under the Swastika - The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz(de)

The stories of Jewish cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz, and of star conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who worked with the Nazis, provide insight. The film centers around two people who represent musical culture during the Third Reich - albeit in very different ways. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a star conductor; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the infamous Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Both shared a love for the classical German music.

La Coupe Stanley à Montréal en 1993(fr)

MEGUMI The Campaign(ja)

Megumi Odaka (小高恵美) idol VHS tape, Megumi the Campaign - Idol Roke Zenkoku Jyuudan, 1989. She is best known for the role of Miki Saegusa in six Godzilla films from 1989 to 1995.

Diary(ja)

Idol and actress Megumi Odaka Diary, 1988 VHS.

The Mosaic Church(en)

In 2004, a routine prison renovation in Megiddo, Israel, led to an astonishing discovery—what is believed to be the oldest known Christian place of worship. At its center lies a mosaic bearing the first public inscription declaring Jesus as God. Narrated by Bear Grylls, this documentary dives into the site’s historical, theological, and political significance, featuring expert insights from historians and theologians.

Care(es)

Maia, Yenifer and Luciana begin working as caregivers for the elderly. The routine at the nursing home, very different from what they were used to, becomes challenging. But as their bond with the residents strengthens, they discover as trans women that they have much more in common with older people than they thought.

My Foreign Land(pt)

For the Suruí, an indigenous people in western Brazil, there was a lot at stake in the 2022 presidential elections. Under incumbent President Bolsonaro, logging and mining companies were given free rein in their territory. His opponent Lula, on the other hand, pledged to protect the Amazon and uphold Indigenous rights. Tribal leader Almir and his daughter, the young activist Txai Suruí, are each followed during their campaign in the final month before the elections. While Txai travels abroad to raise awareness about the destruction of the rainforest, Almir campaigns across the state of Rondônia, seeking support for his congressional bid.

People & Wolves: a story of coexistence(en)

For centuries, the Ojibwe have lived alongside their brother Ma’iingan,(wolf). In February 2021, a brutal assault, a hunt on their wolf relative, stirs emotion and grief for Ma’iingan as they know what happens to him happens to them.

Panamarenko, la magie de l'art(nl)