ma.ja.de. FilmProduktions

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

25 years ago, Louis Sarno, an American, heard a song on the radio and followed its melody into the Central Africa Jungle and stayed. He than recorded over 1000 hours of original BaAka music. Now he is part of the BaAka community and raises his pygmy son, Samedi. Fulfilling an old promise, Louis takes Samedi to America. On this journey Louis realizes he is not part of this globalized world anymore but globalization has also arrived in the rainforest. The BaAka depend on Louis for their survival. Father and son return to the melodies of the jungle but the question remains: How much longer will the songs of the forest be heard?

The smell of leather, whiskey and cigars: Two young girlfriends fall in love with the same man, an adventurous young businessman. Missing, forged documents wreak havoc on the lives of everyone involved.

Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.

A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.

José “Pepe” Mujica, the president of Uruguay from 2010-2015, is nothing like your regular politician. He drives a VW Beetle, lives on a farm and donates 70% of his earnings to charity. He is considered one of the most charismatic politicians in Latin America. Old and young believe in him thanks to his humble lifestyle and his unconventional manners, especially where political protocol is concerned. Now in his 80s, Mujica, a former guerrilla fighter who was imprisoned for 13 years for fighting with the Tupamaros against the dictatorial regime in Uruguay in the 1970s, believes in democracy, socialism, women’s rights and the legalization of cannabis. An inspiration to thousands of people all over the world, he grows flowers in his garden and defines life as his religion.

Making film wears down director Lars von Trier, but he is not able to live without them. In the documentary film this Danish auteur’s all-consuming love affection for film is portrayed. Now he is standing at a cross-road. While film as we know it is dying.

Between September 2000 and April 2007, eight men with Turkish roots, a man of Greek descent and a German policewoman were murdered. The investigations were initially carried out exclusively in the vicinity of the non-German victims suspected of drug trafficking and organized crime. The families of the murdered were thus victims again, this time of prejudicial stigmatization. After a failed bank robbery, the trail finally led to the right-wing extremist terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU). After the suicide of the two main perpetrators, the trial against the only survivor of the NSU trio, Beate Zschäpe, and four alleged helpers and supporters began in 2013 and ended in 2018.

A music-driven documentary about a deaf Roma girl falling in love with Bollywood.

The main character of the documentary is a 16-year-old Kurdish girl who, after the tragic death of her mother on the Polish-Belarusian border, has to become a mother to her 4 younger brothers.

Kos (13) is going through the most bizarre period in his life. His mother died a few years ago and his dad is having a heart attack. While Kos’ father is in the hospital, it looks like the hotel he is running will be a big mess. But Kos and his three sisters do not intend to let that happen. After the siblings find out that father is deep in financial problems, the hotel is threatened with closure. The children however come up with a solution: someone has to win the local beauty pageant, with a hefty cash prize attached.

Farmland - the new green gold. Hoping for export revenues, Ethiopia's government leases millions of hectares of farmland to foreign investors. But the dream of prosperity has a dark side where the World Bank plays a very questionable role... Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas investigates land grabbing and its impact on people's lives. Pursuing the truth, we meet investors, development bureaucrats, persecuted journalists, struggling environmentalists and evicted farmers deprived of their land.

Winter. A bus stop in a small village. People are waiting for a bus. They talk. Listening to their conversations, the viewer can imagine the world they live in. United by the movement of the camera, the place and the people blend together.

The “Film about the Father” is a difficult genre. Andreas Goldstein, son of the GDR cultural functionary Klaus Gysi (1912–1999) has tackled this task with a complete lack of vanity, but with insistence: measured and calm, honest and intellectual, analytical and personal. He uncovers a mosaic that renounces both the teleologies of the self-styled winners of history and the simplifications of (West) German Oscar nominees. This film is not about the lives of others, but about his own life. Not about yesterday, about today, too.

"Pictures from the late eighties in the GDR on up to the immediate present in the year 2008 in Germany. What has been left over besieges my mind. All these pictures keep reassembling themselves to make up something which they were originally not made for. They are still in motion. They are becoming history." (Thomas Heise)

The life story of three former student leaders who were still children when general Pinochet seized power in Chile on 11 September 1973.

Corvaz is a simple and instinctive 30-year-old that works hard in his father’s vineyard and loves going around with his dog Toni. The village life is all centered around the local bar and for the men, the days
go by drinking and kidding one another until one night, the statues that decorate the village square get vandalized. The blame goes on Corvaz. While the grudge from the community rises, a punishing expedition eventually forces Corvaz to face the villagers and leave. For the others, there may be no such an alternative. The code of “rispet” that has kept them all together is now broken.

The third part of Thomas Heise's time-lapse observation, in which he accompanies the people of Saxony-Anhalt. At the centre of the film is Jeanette, who grew up with four brothers and became pregnant at 15. In the meantime, however, she fulfilled her dream and became a bus driver. Her eldest son Tommy is a troubled child, while the younger Paul is doing well at school and the family has high hopes for him. Heise interacts with her family with openness and caution, without shaming anyone. What emerges is a work about the changing story of a place and the people who live there.

Looking for clues about the “Chaplin of Theresienstadt”, ghetto cabaret artist Karel Švenk, Schönemann meets his acquaintances and creates an intergenerational network of memory. Laughter was a form of defence. Resistance means commemoration.

Hannes Schönemann reconstructs the story of his love affair with the Danish communist Julia Szaba a decade after her suicide.