Tondowski Films

From the starting point of her admiration for the pioneering Ukrainian filmmaker Kira Muratova (1934-2018), the director poses a question: is cinema made by women really tougher, more violent? Seeking answers, she talks to great contemporary filmmakers like Catherine Breillat, Virginie Despentes, Alice Diop, Céline Sciamma, Ana Lily Amirpour, and Monika Treut, among others. It becomes obvious that the cinema screen is a space for the projection of real social problems and power relations.

Follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world.

At the death of her mother, Aga decides to leave her life in Germany with her partner Maja to look after her younger brother in Poland. To do this, she has to hide her love for another woman from the authorities. Closely following its protagonists, Silent Love delicately narrates their discreet struggle against a prying and viscerally homophobic society.

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 Journalist and Her Jailers explores what this local court in Germany can really accomplish. Can it actually provide some measure of justice for Luna Watfa and the tens of thousands of Syrians who have been detained, tortured and disappeared by Bashar al-Assad’s government, and thereby perhaps even provide a blueprint for future war crimes prosecutions worldwide? To engage with this question, Luna must first seek to understand what justice even means in this context, for the plaintiffs, witnesses, the defendants- and for herself.

Director, Joonas Berghäll, suffers from chronic Lyme disease. He looks for a cure to his illness and by doing so finds himself thrown into the midst of a worldwide lobby-driven and political medical debate about Lyme disease and the threat of it becoming the next wide scale epidemic.

A year-long profile of the Artemis String Quartet. Just before celebrating its 30-year anniversary, the Berlin based Artemis Quartet goes through one of its most turbulent years to date. When the last founding member, cellist Eckart Runge, decides to leave the quartet in 2018, with second violinist Anthea Kreston following his departure, the quartet is shaken to its core. They agree to stay together until the end of the season, giving the remaining members the chance to reconstruct the quartet once more. Will the shared love for music be strong enough for the Artemis Quartet to persevere? Filmmaker Hester Overmars portrays the quartet, its former and new members, throughout this extraordinary year, having full access to their rehearsals, life behind the scenes and international performances. From up close, the film observes how the quartet lives through their reconstruction.

After years of radio silence, Sharon Ryba-Kahn re-established contact with her father. She talks to him about his absence and his family. From the perspective of someone who belongs to the third generation after the Shoah, the director examines herself and her German surroundings.

In the small Lithuanian town, a prison transforms into a migration center amidst a significant crisis. Housing men from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, it becomes a modern-day Tower of Babel. Residents find solace in communal activities like cooking and praying, connecting to their roots. It's only in sleep that they break free from the migration center, dreaming of their homelands - the plains of Africa, bustling streets of India, and war-torn cities of the Middle East. Over time, as walls are repainted and relationships form between migrants and staff, the center changes. A year later, it empties suddenly, leaving behind a silence and a reminder of the impermanence of life.

After World War II, countless children throughout Germany were sent to health resorts in order to recover; instead they endured systemic abuse. Through survivors’ voices and her own family history, filmmaker Katrin Sikora uncovers this long silenced chapter and its echoes across generations.

Rahaf, Sara, Rawa and Afraa take a road trip through Europe. What unites them is that they had to leave Syria eight years ago because of the war. This journey is a coping with memories and traumas, but is also full of happiness and positive moments.