
Bernadette Lafont, and God Created the Free Woman
2016 | 65 min | Biography
Bernadette Lafont embodied the unyielding desire for freedom and independence like hardly any other actress in her time.


2016 | 65 min | Biography
Bernadette Lafont embodied the unyielding desire for freedom and independence like hardly any other actress in her time.

2013 | 79 min | Biography
This is the story of a film maniac who was crushed between the opposing fronts of German cinema and his own lack of compromise. Otto Sander recalls his first screen appearance in "Ludwig." Eva Mattes reviews one of her most memorable roles and recounts the making of "Supermarkt." Hark Bohm commemorates his brother Marquard, who rose to stardom with DEADLOCK. And horror film icon David Hess, who raged alongside Hopper in "White Star," interprets Klick's drama from an American perspective: "He was ...

2013 | 82 min | Biography
"With its bitter-sweet atmosphere and stoicism in the face of heartbreaking memories, the film is reminiscent of Marjanne Satrapi’s 'Persepolis'" (themovingarts.com) In 1980, the filmmaker's birth is overshadowed by the revolution. "I was born in the middle of a dream." But another refrain runs through the film: "What am I to do with this legacy?" This family drama is a quest of identity and politics that takes us from Turkey in the 1970s to Switzerland in the 21st century, dealing with exile, prison, ...

2015 | 107 min | Biography
In 1978, the Danish Christian Baard Thomsen interviewed the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The interview, filmed in Cannes and previously unpublished, resulted in an incredibly personal film. The Danish film director and historian Christian Baard Thomsen met Fassbinder in 1969, after his first memorable appearance at the Berlinale. The two subsequently became close friends. Thomsen skillfully interweaves the conversation, which took place 10 years later, with the main motifs from Fassbinder's ...

2023 | 84 min | Biography
Maurizio Candidi is 70 years old and presents himself as the last representative of a fading lifestyle: an old-school playboy devoted to luxury, women, and the promise of eternal seduction. He claims to have slept with more than a thousand women — a figure that seems less a statistic than part of his carefully crafted self-mythology. The film follows Maurizio through his daily routines between elegant hotels, glamorous seaside resorts, and memories of past conquests. Through conversations and encounters, ...

1999 | 82 min | Biography
Rigorous and engrossing, Ruth Beckermann's documentary retraces the steps of Austria's restless "sad empress" Elizabeth during trips to Egypt in both 1885 and 1891. When the camera gazes from the deck of the ship towards the endless horizon of the Mediterranean, the image of a woman who travelled the globe without pause takes shape. Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, also gradually disappears from view, as it were: from the age of 30 she refused to be photographed.

2017 | 105 min | Drama
In this collaborative film made by students from the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, former public prosecutor and actor Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, sues a public broadcasting station. In documentary and fictional scenes, it follows his trial against a system demanding compulsory conformity and unimaginativeness. Sociopolitical, aesthetical and personal perspectives are clearly defined, developed narratively and confronted with one another. Numerous film professionals have their say. They radically oppose ...

2022 | 85 min | Biography
In an intimate exploration of memory and legacy, young filmmaker Igor Ivanko, embarks on a quest to preserve the history of his grandfather, Leonid Burlaka—a renowned Soviet cinematographer whose life's work is at risk of fading away with his declining health due to Alzheimer's. Burlaka, whose career flourished at the Odessa Film Studio during the '60s, left behind a rich archive of films, homemade videos, letters, and photographs, documenting pivotal moments in Soviet cinema against a backdrop of ...

2020 | 124 min | Biography
With his "Heimatfilmen," his performances and interventions in theater, television, opera and art, director Christoph Schlingensief has helped shape cultural and political discourse in Germany for over two decades. In her masterfully edited and immensely entertaining directorial debut, renowned film editor Bettina Böhler portrays this exceptional artist in his entire spectrum. The film focuses Schliingensief as a typical "family person", whose work is equally devoted to his interpersonal relationship ...

2017 | 84 min | Biography
In the 1960's church communities expected a pastor's daughter to be less outgoing than other girls her age, less bubbly, and less selfish. Filmmaker Angela Zumpe, Professor for Audiovisual Media at the Anhalt University in Dessau, starts with the perspective of the pubescent 16-year-old and old Super 8 films from that time. In interviews she compares her own experiences with those of other pastors' children. Some of them have brought their choice of profession back to the parsonage, others have ...

2021 | 102 min | Biography
As a pioneer of the Fluxus movement she revolutionized the concept of art and made history with contemporaries Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. Today, at the age of 85, Bauermeister is far from retiring. From early morning until late at night, this extraordinary artist works in her studio near Cologne: a magical place. As a counterpoint to elitist "museum art", Mary Bauermeister founded her own art movement in the 1960s. Artists, scientists and philosophers from all walks of life went in and ...