Lichtblick Film

Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in the hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a communist family discovers a bunker full of money soon to be worthless. With the help of their neighbors, they embark on a race against time to enter the capitalist world in style.

There may be a 50-year age difference between Samid and Ayaz, but they share a passion for film. Both are brimming with ideas to revive the cinema in their village in the hills of Azerbaijan. Once the long-awaited Holy Grail – a projector bulb – arrives after many months, the cinema is packed out with locals... But will the magic work?

With the German Occupation in Greece (1941-1944) as a background, this film tells the love story between my father, an assistant professor at the mysterious German Scientific Institute of Athens - financed by the occupying power, Germany, but in reality a refuge for resistant students - and Nelly, a young student in Fine Arts. The film also traces the portrait of their friend Rudolf Fahrner, founder of the Institute, comrade of the Stauffenberg Brothers and one of the few conspirators of the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, on 20 July 1944, that survived the repression that followed.

easy love is the experimental fiction debut of Tamer Jandali. His way of working shifted between documentary and fiction when he followed seven men and women from Cologne on their search for a balance between emotional security and sensual fulfillment. In four months of shooting those protagonists acted as braver versions of themselves. The camera opened the possibility to pursue their unlived dreams, fears and fantasies and ultimately experiencing them in reality. By shooting in a small team, always on the edge between documentary and fiction, Tamer Jandali created space for intimacy and a new form of cinematic authenticity.

In September 1948, 83 German children arrive in Cape Town. Orphaned by war and handpicked to strengthen the Afrikaner bloodline with "Aryan blood", they are forced to start a new life in the early days of Apartheid. This film follows two of those orphans, Werner and Peter, as they attempt to reconcile past and present in post-Apartheid South Africa.

This nature documentary takes a mesmerizing journey into the incredibly diverse marine life supported by coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific.

The simple staple bread has become a branded product with an increasing number of varieties and providers. The film provides authentic impressions in today’s world of bread. We encounter small craft bakers as well as corporate CEOs whose professional work is our daily bread and ask the question: how do you see the future of our bread? And: what are we actually eating?

The story of the life, loves and work of US writer Patricia Highsmith (1921-95), told through her unpublished diaries, her own voice and that of those who knew her, both family and close friends.

The film tells the story of the friendship between Johann and Ludwig as they strive for the ultimate “buddy” relationship. Going beyond, well beyond, what would be considered good and healthy, the pair attempt to become the ideal twins, driving their relationship based on their partnership in competitive rowing (coxless pairs) to the ultimate, to perfect harmony in mind, word, thought and deed. But their symbiotic relationship is thrown out of balance: Ludwig strives to tighten the bonds ever closer, but Johann discovers happiness in the form of love for Ludwig’s sister, Vera. But because Ludwig hates her, the couple keep their relationship secret. But secrets have a way of coming out and Ludwig is wounded to the core. As the finals of the rowing competition draw closer, Ludwig has already set his sights on a greater goal: to preserve their friendship forever, no longer in life but in death.

Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen's plans to create an epic work depicting his homeland's tumultuous recent history.

On the outskirts of a city, two brothers live in a run-down apartment. When the older one hits a run of bad luck, he gets himself a gun and barricades the apartment, ready to take on the rest of the world.

A documentary. David Sieveking takes the advice of his idol, David Lynch and tries out Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation technique.

Three elderly ladies, Carla, Lilli and Meta, who, after their hard earned holiday money is stolen by bank robbers, decide to steal from their local bank. Along the way their are romances, arguments and a few other unexpected surprises.

Stefan, a gay bartender in a trendy club, doesn't care a lot about his professional and personal future. One night, the mysterious Martin stares at him, so he thinks that his guest searches a quick love affair. Stefan invites him to his apartment, where Martin is rather surprised at his intentions and explains that he doesn't want sex, but his attention for their common past. Martin searches his father, a foreign worker from Italy, who is also Stefan's originator, which he didn't know. Their mother kept Martin, while Stefan was adopted. After the first shock, Stefan decides to join his "new brother" on his trip to Italy. They only have some photos and letters of a holiday trip to Cattolica and their father's name: Giuseppe Iacoviello. This is the beginning of an odyssey across Italy and their way to themselves...

The story of a great friendship between Bruno Balz and Michael Jary. The most successful duo in schlager and film music has shaped German-language popular culture for five decades. The wild twenties, then cinema glamour and Gestapo imprisonment, new beginnings, and swinging sixties - their songs are still alive today.

In 1939, after barely escaping the Nazis, a Gypsy family returns to Switzerland only to be torn apart by racial persecution in the benign guise of children's welfare. This fictionalized story of Jana, an eight-year-old Gypsy girl snatched from her parents and consigned to a life of orphanages and bleak foster homes, is based on a little-known chapter of Swiss history: From 1926 to 1972, the state-supported Pro Juventute, a children's aid foundation, forcibly removed some 700 Gypsy children from their families, in order to sever the ties with their culture and assimilate them to a "better way of life." The underlying aim was to preempt a new generation's caravans from following their nomadic traditions along Switzerland's country lanes.

What could be better than knowing your future? And what could be worse? A love-filled childhood abruptly ends when catastrophe descends. A catastrophe that the child had foreseen yet failed to act upon.

The contrasts between Marlen (Corinna Harfouch) and Fynn (newcomer Daniel Sträßer) couldn't be any more extreme if they tried: Marlen's apartment is packed to the rafters with objects too valuable or important to throw away, while Fynn plans to go through life with only 100 things in his possession. The fact that they can't keep their hands off each other and end up falling in love holds true to the old adage that opposites really do attract...

A coming-of-age tale with a difference about the grumpy doctor Annebarbel Buschhaus donning her ice skates again at the age of 58 after an absence of 40 years. Back on the ice, she tries to revive long suppressed childhood dreams – and makes a new friend, Jolina Kuhn, Berlin’s youth figure skating champion. Through her new friend, Annebarbel begins to open up and break away from her dominant mother.