RBB

From the 1950s onwards, Erika and Ulrich Gregor brought countless film historical milestones to Berlin and shaped cinema discourse in post-war Germany. A look at the life and work of the couple without whom Arsenal and the Forum wouldn’t exist.

Before there were home video formats and the internet, the “Bahnhofskinos” (“Train station cinemas”) in West Germany regularly showed trash and erotica movies. Various filmmakers and especially contemporary witnesses recount in the documentary “Cinema Perverso – the wonderful and broken world of Bahnhofskino” their experiences and impressions.

In a dystopian 2054, three young rebels go on a journey to find traces of the long lost beauty of nature, hoping to discover what happened to their planet.

Nine-year-old Max moves to Geroldseck Castle, together with his mother, who takes up a position as a geriatric nurse there. Apparently a shrewd thief is up to mischief here. His mother is suspected, she is threatened with dismissal. Therefore, together with the three residents of the old people's home at table no. 7, Max does everything possible to convict the real perpetrator.

It's 1989 in East Berlin: Suzie is kicked out of school shortly before she graduates from high school and has to defend herself as a worker in the cable factory. However, a randomly taken photo leads her to the fashion world of the GDR. The editor-in-chief Elsa Wilbrodt put her on the cover of Sibylle, the fashion magazine of the GDR. In the Berlin underground scene she made the acquaintance of the gay fashion designer Rudi and the photographer Coyote. Suzie must decide if she's brave enough to leave the old strands behind forever.

Amazon has become one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and only the second company ever to be valued over US$1 trillion. This film investigates its strategies, inner workings and ideologies and asks whether the services that we have become so dependent on could eventually cost us our hard won freedoms, and how one of the world’s most trusted brands has influenced our individual behaviour, labour force and culture.

Siblings Tonja and Anton Raabe have to solve the murder of a young woman and the abduction of a small child in a wooded area in Lusatia near Senftenberg. Tonja is not only confronted with her childhood trauma, but also comes into conflict with her superiors once again due to her synaesthetic abilities and solo efforts.

After the brutal massacre by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, the worst act of bloodshed against Jews since World War II, anti-Semitism has reached a new qualitative dimension worldwide, including in Germany: arson attacks on synagogues, Star of David markings on front doors, graffiti on Holocaust memorials, well-attended demonstrations with anti-Israel slogans and shouts of "get out of here" at German universities by supposedly left-wing extremists, whose blatant threatening gestures and threats of annihilation are more reminiscent of the views of their Nazi grandfathers. Where is the state taking consistent action against such hostilities and where is the loud protest from the middle of society? Is Jewish life still safe in Germany? The documentary film has followed four German Jews in their fight against hatred over the last three months since the massacre and lets them report on their experiences.

12-year-old Ranji is new in Berlin. His big dream: Bollywood. A casting call in Mumbai is the chance. However, Ranji has to overcome a few hurdles: Finding friends, making a video, traveling to Mumbai without his parents and - last but not least - believing in himself.

Karl, a 17-year-old boy who spends most of his time collecting pictures and videos for his blog, finds a new purpose when he falls in love with his fellow student Doro.

In Portugal, during the night of April 24-25, 1974, a peaceful uprising put an end to the last government of the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime established in 1933 by dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), paving the way for full democracy: a chronicle of the Carnation Revolution.

The incredible story of Bruno Lüdke (1908-44), the alleged worst mass murderer in German criminal history; or actually, a story of forged files and fake news that takes place during the darkest years of the Third Reich, when the principles of criminal justice, subjected to the yoke of a totalitarian system that is beginning to collapse, mean absolutely nothing.

Citizens across Europe who used to belong to the lower middle class have fallen into poverty. An in-depth investigation into the precariat, a new social class of financially insecure citizens who, although they are employed, find it very difficult to make ends meet.

Full of anticipation, the young and ambitious Commissioner Carsten Lanner (Florian Lukas) is moving from Berlin Cloppenburg in Lower Saxony for a further education. However, he did not expect the outspoken chutzpah of the Berliners and, above all, the rude nature of his colleagues, who in no way received him with open arms. And so he slips more accidentally than wanted shortly after his arrival in Berlin in his first case.

Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.

It's the largest Arctic expedition of all time. In September 2019 the German icebreaker "Polarstern" is on its way to the North Pole. The best scientists of their generation are on board. Their job are to collect data about the ocean, ice, atmosphere and life. The mission is to understand climate change, because the changes in the Arctic have an impact far beyond the region. The documentary provides spectacular close-ups of the MOSAiC expedition under the direction of the Alfred Wegener Institute together with the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and shows the world of the Arctic during the polar night, from which hardly any data and images existed until now. A scientific, logistical and also human adventure of a community of researchers and crew members who let themselves be frozen with the ship for a year in the ice desert near the North Pole in order to use the natural drift of the ice, captured for the audience in impressive images.

"If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?" CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE offers six startling responses. This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, an icon of modernity; the National Library of Russia, a kingdom of thoughts; Halden Prison, the world's most humane prison; the Salk Institute, an institute for breakthrough science; the Oslo Opera House, a futuristic symbiosis of art and life; and the Centre Pompidou, a modern culture machine. CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE explores how each of these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.

In 1916, the officer of the German secret service Elsbeth Schragmüller trains the end-of-career exotic dancer Mata Hari as secret agent. Schragmüller has finally an ear directly in the influential circles of Paris, while Mata Hari can uphold her mundane life despite lack of engagements. Both have great hope for this intelligence mission.

Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the treacherous anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß - required viewing for all SS members. This documentary is an eye-opening examination of World War II film history as well as the story of a German family from the Third Reich to the present; one that is marked by reckoning, denial and liberation.