Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Germany: A Summer's Fairytale

A documentary of the German national soccer team’s 2006 World Cup experience that changed the face of modern Germany.

White Man with Black Bread

Christof Wackernagel, best known in Germany as an actor and former member of the Red Army Faction ("RAF") lives in Mali. In his compelling portrait, Jonas Grosch shows a man who simply cannot stand still if he senses injustice. The courage to stand up for one’s beliefs coupled with vanity? However one chooses to look at it, it is easy to imagine what made him connect with the "RAF". With his irrepressible will for freedom, Christof Wackernagel gets entangled in the horrors of day-to-day life in Africa.

Peter Eisenman: Building Germany's Holocaust Memorial

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

Meuthen's Party

MEUTHEN'S PARTY unmasks the rise of the provincial politician Dr. Jörg Meuthen who doesn't shy away from spreading racist sentiments with a smile on his face.

Wolves Return

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.

Liberators Take Liberties

Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, due largely to the shame attached to rape in German culture at that time.

Frauen bildet Banden

The film tells the story of the Rote Zora, a militant women’s group in the FRG, which in the 1970s and 1980s carried out actions against various facets of patriarchal power relations. Narrations by various contemporary witnesses, interviews with a historian and former Zoras bring the history of the Rote Zora and the women’s movement of the time back to life. The film shows that many of the Rote Zora’s themes are highly topical and offers exciting material for discussion on how to deal with this history today.

Ich. Immendorff

Documentary film about the painter and sculptor Jörg Immendorff who ranks among the most important German artists. The filmmakers accompanied Immendorff over a period of two years – until his death in May 2007. The artist had been living for nine years knowing that he was terminally ill with ALS. The film shows how Immendorff continued to work with unabated energy and how he tried not to let himself be restrained by his deteriorating health.

Black Box BRD

Black Box BRD steps back into German history, showing the Federal Republic of Germany of the 70s and 80s. The country is polarized due to the power struggle of the German state and the "Red Army Faction". Society is torn, the fronts are irreconcilable. The life stories of both Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen are tragically linked to this era. Grams is the one who takes up arms for moral rigor; Herrhausen however seizes power and dies when powerful.

Breath of Freedom

In World War II. African-American GIs liberate Germany from Nazi rule while racism prevailed in their own army and home country. Returning home they continue fighting for their own rights in the civil rights movement.

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.

AN OCEAN

The trembling starts in his neck when Markus gets closer to the images that have chased him for 49 years. Now he steers his motor home south, as far away from his past as possible.

Guten Tag, RDA !

Great Escape

The real Great Escape didn't feature Steve McQueen racing through the Third Reich on a motorcycle like in the 1963 movie, but the big breakout was still thrilling in every way. This program sheds new light on the audacious escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp during World War II.

Planet Deutschland - 300 Millionen Jahre

Documentary tells the story of Germany's origins from the Carboniferous period to the present day. It leads from the highest Alpine peaks to the rugged North Sea coasts - from the craters of the Eifel to the river labyrinth of the Spreewald. Back then - around 300 million years ago - giant dragonflies, for example, buzzed through dozens of meter-high fern forests. In the course of the Earth's history, however, we also encounter dying dinosaurs, meet rhinos and elephants on the Rhine and come across what is probably the first human in Heidelberg. Later, the Neanderthals appear and suddenly disappear again - for reasons that are still unknown. And finally, modern humans gradually spread and began to shape their environment.

100 Years of the UFA

The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.

The Voyage of the St. Louis

Documentary on the German luxury liner St. Louis that sailed from Hamburg to Cuba in 1939 carrying 937 German Jews. For 30 excruciating days the ship wandered the seas and was refused haven by every country in the Americas.

Das deutsche Woodstock - Flower-Power in der Pfalz

Martin Luther: The Idea that Changed the World

The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of one on the most important events in Western civilization: the birth of an idea that continues to shape the life of every American today. In 1517, power was in the hands of the few, thought was controlled by the chosen, and common people lived lives without hope. On October 31 of that year, a penniless monk named Martin Luther sparked the revolution that would change everything. He had no army. In fact, he preached nonviolence so powerfully that — 400 years later — Michael King would change his name to Martin Luther King to show solidarity with the original movement. This movement, the Protestant Reformation, changed Western culture at its core, sparking the drive toward individualism, freedom of religion, women's rights, separation of church and state, and even free public education. Without the Reformation, there would have been no pilgrims, no Puritans, and no America in the way we know it.