Privilege
By Ali Schmahl
2025 | 80 min | Documentary
A life between discrimination and self-empowerment: Henri Vogel's voice makes the private political – and the political tangible.
Ali Schmahl
DirectorAli Schmahl studies documentary film directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. For the film "Wenn Plastik einen Körper hat" ("If Plastic Had a Body") (2021), created together with Alexisjesko Criando and Julia Smuts, the team received the Blauer Kompass award from the German Environment Agency in 2022. Schmahl's most recent directorial work is the short documentary "TIDES" (2024), which was screened at festivals including DOK.fest München. In addition to their own filmmaking, the filmmaker was also a jury member for the ECFA Documentary Award at the doxs! festival in 2023.
Films
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37
2018 | 89 min | Drama
He would like to undo everything, but what would that mean? Who would he never have met? What conversations would he never have had? He looks back and realizes that life always means pain. But also joy... Against the dramaturgical grain, Chris Brügge tells the story of a young man and his encounters with important people in his life. Embedded in the context of climate change, 37 becomes a sensual journey from loss to love of life. "This very personal narrative form fascinates, seems perfect and ...
Der Stoff, aus dem Träume sind
2019 | 76 min | Documentary
What inspires people to take the initiative and organize communal living for themselves? What ideals drive them and how does the financing work? On the basis of six self-managed residential buildings in Austria from 40 years, this documentary sets out to find answers. The pioneers of the cooperative living project in Graz-Raaba talk about their experimental ideals of the 1960s and about growing old in community. The most recent buildings, the housing project Vienna Nordbahnhof and the project willy*fred ...
Dear Beautiful Beloved
2024 | 95 min | Documentary
DEAR BEAUTIFUL BELOVED looks at wartime Ukraine through the people left with the hardest tasks: the weak who cannot flee, the volunteers who move the dead, and the families waiting for news. Juri Rechinsky follows ordinary journeys made extraordinary by fear, distance and loss, keeping the film close to daily survival. A driver and a student carry fallen soldiers back to their families, while a young mother tries to reach Budapest with her two children and elderly women take shelter for a few days ...
Souls of a River
2022 | 83 min | Documentary
SOULS OF A RIVER follows a traveller back through the landscape of memory along the Evros River, where water, reeds and empty roads become a terrain of return. Moving as a stranger in his own country, he searches for the self that once left this border region behind. The search brings him to a forensic doctor who works in the river itself, recovering the traces of people who died while trying to cross. From a brown envelope come a cross, a ring and a wristwatch; elsewhere, unidentified bodies remain ...
After the Future
2017 | 47 min | Documentary
Gay left-wing activist and disaster relief volunteer Ortwin Passon navigates between a military-like bourgeois world and wild sex parties. For a while now, he has been writing a dissertation on barebacking (anal sex without condoms) and the political and judicial implications of unprotected intercourse among men in Germany. Passon, who is HIV-positive, wants to obtain a legal demarcation between "unreflective risk behavior without intent" (unsafe sex) and "intentional, risk-conscious, consensual, ...
Near and Elsewhere
2019 | 84 min | Documentary
In view of the current social, economic and cultural challenges, where can we look for visions of the future, hopes or even utopias? How can we redefine our future? The filmmakers dipict the future as alien territory. Six public figures from different cultural and social circles, including Nobel Prize winners, philosophers and athletes, reflect on the future in terms of time, society and space. They create provocative, critical and confident visions of the future. But will they have the courage ...
Anqa
2023 | 91 min | Documentary
Three women in Jordan live in isolation – not by choice, but out of fear of further violence. Their home is their refuge, but it is also a prison that separates them from the outside world. What does it mean to live a life in the shadows? How do you find strength in the midst of pain? Helin Çelik's documentary addresses a reality that often remains hidden. ANQA is an intimate exploration of the survival strategies of these women, whose stories are told not in words but in images. The camera focuses ...
Alarm
2025 | 90 min | Documentary
ALARM follows the members of a volunteer fire brigade who remain on call around the clock, ready to respond whenever an emergency strikes. Rather than turning rescue operations into spectacle, the film focuses on the routines, responsibilities and teamwork that make their work possible. Judith Zdesar accompanies the brigade through training exercises, youth programmes, the education of new members and everyday life at the fire station. Alongside the technical precision required for every operation, ...
Do Not Fear
2019 | 66 min | Documentary
What happens when a very popular village priest decides after 27 years of successful community work to finally face a lifelong issue and publicly announces his transgender identity? The rumors that he was wearing women's clothes forces pastor Hans-Gerd Spörkel to take a break. Shortly thereafter, his wife separates from him, and the village turns their backs on him. Half a year later, she resolutely returns as Elke Spörkel and holds her first service as a woman. After a controversial discussion, ...
Meuthen's Party
2017 | 92 min | Documentary
An ultra nationalist right-wing party is on the rise in Germany. Filmmaker Marc Eberhardt follows candidate Jörg Meuthen during the 2016 state elections in Baden-Württemberg. The polite economics professor campaigns as a candidate for the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). This film exposes the startling reach of his seemingly rational rhetoric. Meuthen talks openly with other politicians and with citizens and sympathizers on the street, which is noteworthy in view of the "media-skeptical" attitude ...