Lichtblick Film

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.

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.

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...

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?

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 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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

In 1993, Sam Fuller takes Jim Jarmusch on a trip into Brazil's Mato Grosso, up the River Araguaia to the village of Santa Isabel Do Morro, where 40 years before, Zanuck had sent Fuller to scout a location and write a script for a movie based on a tigrero, a jaguar hunter. Sam hopes to find people who remember him, and he takes film he shot in 1954. He's Rip Van Winkle, and, indeed, a great deal changed in the village. There are televisions, watches, and brick houses. But, the same Karajá culture awaits as well. He gathers the villagers to show his old film footage, and people recognize friends and relatives, thanking Fuller for momentarily bringing them back to life.

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.

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.

Two strangers have a strong impact on a young man who's spending some time with his family in this drama from Germany. Seventeen-year-old Anton has been struggling to make sense of his life since his father committed suicide when Anton was attending boarding school. Anton's mother, Luiza, wants to mend her strained relationship with her son and introduce him to her boyfriend, Paul, so she arranges for them to take a vacation together.

Three young men, all of them outsiders, become friends: Richy (16), who is teased at school, Tim (16), who has moved from the west with his parents and has difficulties getting used to his new life, and Marco (18), who has problems coping with his parents' separation and the rejection he experiences from his father. Richy admires the strong and uncommunicative Marco.

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.

After three unsuccessful attempts at the Olympics, the 30-year-old Aljona Savchenko finally wants to win a gold medal with a new partner in four years. A rather bold plan, especially since the young Frenchman Bruno Massot, chosen by the German-Ukrainian ice princess, has no international successes in pairs figure skating. He moves to Germany and has no idea of the manic perfectionist he's getting involved with. Aljona's training is tough. Constant disputes about the right course threaten to bring the project to failure. Two completely different characters collide. However, the team of trainers manages to calm things down. February 2018: The competition at the Winter Olympics in South Korea begins with the short program. Inexplicably, Bruno blunders and the pair sit fourth by a wide gap. Gold is hardly possible anymore. It only remains for them to show the world their unique free skating. Their intoxicating, perfect run will go down in history. It will be the free skating of their life!