Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB)

A slingshot is loaded, the stone flies and crashes - the neighbor's window breaks. Ramona (Bella Lochmann) and Nico (Pola Geiger) are friends, lazy bums and fresh out of school. But instead of thinking about their future, they prefer to let the hot Berlin summer get the better of them. When they release a beloved neighbor's bird, they have to flee - into the politically charged world that they really don't want to be in. A road trip through Berlin begins - but on foot. On their aimless and half-hearted search for the escaped bird and their little brother, they struggle for their friendship, their belief in themselves and unexpectedly stumble upon other life stories that give hope.

In the 15th century, a young goatherd living alone in a mountain hut feels a dark presence in the woods.

Out of shame, pity and a longing for purpose, a young soldier feigns feelings for a disabled woman, even fueling her hope of walking again. But her growing distrust and his obsession with curing her create a frenetic spiral that drags everyone into misfortune.

After many years apart, Emilie meets her brother Jakob again. She not only shares her sadness about the loss of their parents with him, but also a secret...

Real estate agent Christian travels the countryside scouting for investment prospects. In a forgotten, seemingly abandoned village far off the main roads, he finds more than he is looking for. Getting entangled in an encounter with a taciturn teenage farmhand, he confronts his sexual frustrations and, in the process, gets drawn into the undergrowth of a bloodthirsty rustic community.

Elena is a student in Minsk. She is having an intense but self-destructive love affair with Viktor. When Elena's father goes to prison she has to take charge of his business dealings to help him. She drives repeatedly into the restricted zone at Chernobyl, behind the wheel of a truck, in order to smuggle contaminated steel. The conflicts with Viktor escalate, and Elena is increasingly captivated by the zone's deceptive beauty...

In the Georgian riverside town of Kutaisi, summertime romance and World Cup fever are in the air. After a pair of chance encounters, pharmacist Lisa and soccer player Giorgi find their plans for a date undone when they both awaken magically transformed with no way to recognize each other.

A girl roams through the city looking for a place to sleep. Along the way she meets young mothers who celebrate motherhood religiously, goes home with an abstinent existentialist for whom sex is “just another market”, and waits for the end of capitalism in a drag bar. Her attempt to write a book doesn’t make it beyond the first sentence of the second chapter, and she finds no space between art galleries, yoga studios and the beds of strangers. Instead of trying to fit in, she starts regarding her depression as a political issue.

The mysteriously familiar face of a deceased young woman shakes young surgeon Fabian out of his lethargy. On a whim, he leaves Berlin for Portugal, determined to win back his former girlfriend Doro, who works at an architectural company in Lisbon.

Jakob, a young policeman from a remote village, has his world unhinged when a stranger in a dress emerges from the forest and begins killing villagers with a sword.

A young photographer has fallen in love with his girlfriend's sister, throwing the trio into chaos.

Lenz is a daydreamer. Charming, visionary and – as it is good manners for a thirty-year-old in Berlin – radically incapable of decision making. After an intense party night, Lenz wakes up next to Ira, completely deranged. Lenz is in love. As well as Ira. The summer of love begins: fooling through the nights of Berlin, beers at the canal, talks about sex and childhood. Everything is beautiful. Up until the moment when Ira asks this one question that changes everything: „Do you want to have kids?“ Now is the time for Lenz to do what he knows best, when things get tricky. He runs off. Anchorless, he stumbles through the summer and has to take up with the heroes of his daydreams, who keep examining him about his feelings. Meanwhile, his friend Kenn covers Lenz with affectionate incomprehension. When autumn arrives, Ira eventually confronts Lenz and he has to face the big “whatsoever”.

Martin leaves his protective parents’ home and comes to Berlin as a law student with high hopes. He finds a tiny, run-down flat in a strange, dark apartment block, from which the previous tenant has disappeared without a trace. Having no luck with social contacts at the university, Martin quickly falls for his mysterious landlady Simone, who lives just next door behind a thin wall. Hoping to find trust and intimacy, Martin loses himself in the house’s disturbing world of sex and violence. Deep in the walls, Martin discovers the true horror of his first love.

The story of a seemingly settled bank employee who breaks the shackles of his everyday life and becomes a wanderer between worlds. Frederik is an up-and-coming young bank employee who lives an ordinary life. When a bank customer, whom Frederik has denied a loan in the face of the bank crisis, shoots himself in front of Frederik, he snaps. Together with ex-con Vince,he begins to live out a new, dark side of himself. He robs his rich bank customers' homes and gives the money to the needy. The initial rush of crossing social boundaries soon develops into an addiction to ever greater thrills.

Drug courier Sal has the war in him. When he meets the charismatic Sasha, his life goes off the rails and he botches an important coup. They flee together and Sal undergoes an astonishing metamorphosis.

Kathi is 30 years old, a single mother and a luckless actress who is regularly turned down at auditions. While Kathi doesn't know how to get her life on track, her mother Chris is a successful psychoanalyst. Chris doesn't take her daughter's career choices seriously, and constantly tries to give her good advice on everything. One day, Kathi's father suddenly appears after 15 years of absence and wants to reunite the family. Confronted with the past, Kathi gets the unexpected chance to address the ongoing conflict with her mother and to set new goals for her future.

A concise blast of feminist film making, Sander's first film is a tense yet playful four minute short that dissects a typical urban scene at a bus stop on a busy street in Berlin.

Nina, a young actor, returns to the Ruhr region for her grandmother’s funeral. Tensions surface between her and her mother. The noises of a small town fill the eloquent silences in the complex mother-daughter relationships explored in this endearing film.

The undercover investigator Robert is supposed to win the trust of a criminal through a fictitious relationship with Leni. However, the feelings are not just a game. It is the spied criminal, of all people, who makes him confront his contradictory feelings…

When Martin, a former GDR citizen, is released from jail, he lately becomes confronted with the consequences of the German re-unification.