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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 106 movies from IFS Internationale Filmschule Köln GmbH
This anti-coming-of-age film follows Generation Y characters as they chase the desire for radical self-realisation.
Aug 2022
Robin is eight when his mother Sabine becomes pregnant again. Because Sabine is overwhelmed with her child, new boyfriend and pregnancy, Robin has to go into care. When he returns home three months later, the situation has by no means improved. His mother's new boyfriend drinks, his little sister screams and the adults are constantly arguing. Then the woman from the youth welfare office turns up at the door, Robin is alone at home and his sister starts to cry...
Feb 2008
Three friends, a cabin in the woods and an invisible bear. Erik is suicidal out of conviction. His friends Alex and Ben take him to a cabin in the woods to get him back on his feet. When an old hunting rifle turns up, events take an unexpected turn. A movie about friendship, trust and schnitzel rolls.
Dec 2014
Thursday morning, Jerusalem. Nira goes to work. Ahmad in London does the same, Ralf in Cologne and a priest in Prague too. Matija, Croat, goes to work as well. Ok, he doesn't, but he acts as if he does. Ahmad is taking his routine red bus journey. Out-of-breath young man comes in and interrupts it. Schoolteacher Nira is also interrupted - her pupil jumps out and performs a love rap song he wrote for her. The priest in Prague doesn't feel like singing today, he is in the mood for (over)sleeping instead. Someone falls asleep, someone else - Ralf - falls in love. All five mentioned above are listening to the top-news about the disappearance of bees. And trying their best, each one of them in his or her own 'hive': Zagreb, Jerusalem, London, Cologne, Prague...
Sep 2012
High school teacher Andreas Vossen (39) is an avid soccer fan who goes to his team's games every Saturday. At least that's what everyone thinks. In reality, however, he spends his weekends enjoying fights with hooligans. His double life is jeopardized by the appearance of a new pupil. Benny (18) is a hooligan by conviction. A confrontation begins that drives the teacher more and more into a corner.
Nov 2009
True love never dies, the loving heart never stops beating ... for Kerstin’s ex Thomas, who she still hopes will come back some day. Instead of Thomas, her mother Charlotte shows up at her door, mid-50s and freshly single again, too. Charlotte moves in with Kerstin and her flatmates, one of who shows her how to use a modern dating app to meet new men. As mom starts dating again, her daughter refuses to let digital reality intrude on her romantic daydreams.
Apr 2017
Sometimes the decisions we are faced with take a completely unexpected turn. This is exactly what happens to Jürgen, a terminally ill man who is on his way to the last thrill of his life.
A nearly finished construction site. The wiring is completed, the walls are painted, the final inspections are being done. The construction manager Thomas Zetzsche is proud of his achievement. The prestigious building he created is a modern dream come true. But suddenly that dream begins to crumble as more and more defects appear. Cables run into dead ends, the fire protection malfunctions and entire rooms go missing. Desperately Thomas is trying to fix the building until he finally accepts that the opening date has to be postponed. Now he must confront his own responsibility in this faulty system and draw the necessary consequences
Jan 2022
Two women living alone are visited by a young strange man whose identity and intentions they begin to question as the evening progresses.
Oct 2022
Rebecca has recently split up with Ben. She now lives in the shared flat of her best friend sleeping on the sofa in a walk-through room. Rebecca is restless, walking through the streets of the big city, drifting. Rebecca goes to see her father in a nursing home almost every day. She meets Philipp but she does not really know herself what is going on between the two of them.
Apr 2014
While a married man waits in his lover's posh stairwell to pick her up for a date, his manifested guilty conscience, a dark shadow, plays its games with him.
May 2016
Bruno's unreasonable-symbiotic relationship with his mother Ton is put to the test when her new partner Hannah moves into their shared bungalow in Spain. Until now Bruno alone has been the centre of his mother's attention, now he has to share it with Hannah by force.
Feb 2023
Berlin, 1934. Many men are forced to live their hidden homosexuality. Erich, a photographer, has an appointment in his photo studio with Wolfgang, a Nazi soldier, with whom he shares a loving, tumultuous, and passionate relationship. For both of them, this should not be a problem, but appearances deceive.
Jan 2007
Sex is power, and Waseem, a Syrian gay-for-pay hustler seeking asylum in Cologne, wields it like a shield. Keeping his johns at an emotional arm’s length while satisfying their most carnal desires in order to eke out a living, he meets his match in Lars: a kind, affluent professional with a growing personal interest in Waseem. This gripping tale of transactional identity explores the tactical exchange of trust and intimacy in a partnership, and the divisions between immigrants and their host countries in contemporary Europe.
Jan 2019
Westfalia, 1873: Pillage and murder put the future existence of Hans' farm at stake. The farmer has to defend his remaining daughter and their goods against man and nature. A struggle of life and death begins.
Dec 2015
During her internship in a remote clinic in the Allgäu region, the young psychology student Lea immerses herself in a mysterious world of unorthodox therapy methods and demonic traditions.
May 2021
Again and again, Elisha finds himself confronted by Alex, Timo, Sascha, and Mika – all 14-year-olds living in the boys’ orphanage with him. Their worlds ought to be similar and yet they are completely different.
At a Babelsberg studio, two German actors try to outdo each other with their Hollywood experiences. At a chic Düsseldorf café, two expatriate French women envy each other’s respective life. At a construction site somewhere in North Rhine-Westphalia, a foreman informs the supervising archaeologist that he as ordered the concrete without her approval. In a trendy Café in Ehrenfeld, Cologne, a recently departed meets a friend of his ex to obtain a box with things he’d left behind. A Dutch business consultant desperately tries to sell his inflated services to a Bulgarian arms contractor at Brussels Airport. On a rooftop in the Belgian Eifel, the owner and the future heir of a family workshop quietly discuss the recent passing of the family’s grandfather.
Aug 2024
25-year-old Ida lives in a symbiotic relationship with her unemployed and depressed mother Ildikó. Every day seems to be a weekend, as her mother has not worked for a long time and the apartment seems to be a vacation spot. After she finishes her studies, however, everything changes. Ida has to decide between her sense of responsibility for Ildikó and her own happiness when she receives an offer of her dream job. For this, she would have to move from the apartment they share to Fehmarn.
Jul 2021
The night in a big city. A young woman walks alone on a bridge, her gaze unfathomable. She stops, hesitates briefly, then jumps to her death. Under mysterious circumstances, Mara survives the jump and wakes up dazed in hospital. The doctors are strangely reserved when she calls her boyfriend Janis. Mara flees home from the hospital, but finds a completely changed apartment where another woman has taken her place and throws Mara out of the apartment. It slowly becomes clear that no one recognizes Mara, she seems to have completely "fallen out of the world".
Jan 2016