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Julia Ostertag

Director
Julia Ostertag stands for independent auteur cinema that combines documentary sharpness with subcultural visual aesthetics. Her works revolve around music, identity, and self-empowerment, combining a DIY attitude with a precise formal style. NOISE AND RESISTANCE (2011, directed by Julia Ostertag and Francesca Araiza Andrade) condenses portraits of the European punk and DIY scene into a political document of its time; the film focuses on immediate proximity, concert energy, and conversations with activists, marking Ostertag's international attention in the field of documentary film. AND YOU BELONG - SCREAM CLUB! (2013, directed by Julia Ostertag) focuses on the electro-hip-hop duo Scream Club and their network between Berlin and the US. Using archive material, tour recordings, and intimate conversations, the music documentary paints an empathetic picture of queer creative culture and continues Ostertag's long-standing interest in gender, scene, and community issues. SAILA - PUNK DYSTOPIA FROM BERLIN (2008, director: Julia Ostertag) is her feature-length debut: a raw, parallel-world drama shot in Berlin's off-space venues, which uses low-budget aesthetics, 16-mm visuals, and physical performances to create a dystopian urban landscape. Together, these three works paint a consistent picture: artistic independence, strong visual dramaturgy, and a documentary-sensitive gaze that doesn't just observe music and subcultures, but works with them.

Films

And You Belong

And You Belong

By Julia Ostertag

2013 | 86 min | Queer

AND YOU BELONG turns queer Berlin performance into a music documentary about identity, belonging, and the refusal of easy categories and norms.

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Working On It

Working On It

2008 | 50 min | Music, Dance, Theater

WORKING ON IT: directors Karin Michalski and Sabian Baumann explore the contemporary queer arts scene in Berlin and how perceptions of femininity and masculinity are constructed. The film asks “What happens when you don’t fit firmly into one box or the other?” - Soundtrack featuring Riot Girrrl bands: Lesbians on Ecstasy, Scream Club, Heidi Mortenson and Rhythm King and her friends.

Last Exit Gran Canaria

Last Exit Gran Canaria

2025 | 82 min | Queer

In this daring autofictional documentary, filmmaker Tim Lienhard, raised in a Catholic family in southern Germany, traces his late-in-life transformation into a provocatively performative drag persona. Now 64, he reflects on identity, sexuality, aging, and self-esteem with shameless openness and humor. His journey takes him from Berlin to the Torremolinos Porn Festival and Pride Week in Gran Canaria, where he meets OnlyFans creators, partygoers, and peers who share their stories of desire and liberation. What ...

Unmensch

Unmensch

2016 | 26 min | Drama

In Jasmin Baumgartner's short film, three young actors take part in an experimental play called 'Youth Sucks' at the Vienna Theater. The situation quickly becomes explosive. The main actor is supposed to improvise a monologue that comes across as left-liberal self-abuse of a politically impotent young generation pretending to care about the world. While the ensemble members Dany (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) and Patrick (Dominik Brauweiler) perform appropriately with emotion and expression, Jasper (Daniel ...

Echoes of Home

Echoes of Home

2007 | 81 min | Independent

What does a baby's cry have in common with the echo of a mountain yodeler? What connects the head tone of a Tuvan nomad with the stage show of a vocal artist? The answer is: The Voice. Against a backdrop of powerful alpine vistas and modern city landscapes, "Echoes of Home" enters the wondrous sonic world of three exceptional Swiss vocal artists. Their universe of sound extends far beyond what we would describe as singing. As they explore local and foreign traditions, the powerful mountain landscape ...

Lifetimeshort

Lifetimeshort

2009 | 87 min | Comedy

Theater director Gesine Danckwart's feature debut LIFETIMESHORT is an ironic comedy about Berlin big city girls and how they cope with life and love in a late capitalist urban setting. ACHTUNG BERLIN 2009 Danckwart contrasts the women's tumultuous lives against a backdrop of cool, almost clinical-looking Berlin architecture. The city becomes another character in the story. Danckwart collaborated with her six actresses over the course of a year to develop the film's situations and dialogue. The result ...

A Girl Named Yssabeau

A Girl Named Yssabeau

2011 | 18 min | Shorts

The film is based on a by ballad of François Villon and inspired the Deer Dance of the Yaqui and Mayo native Mexican people. A distant, unknown land. A young deer-woman, Yssabeau goes deeper and deeper into the mysterious land, where different rules and customs apply. What are these beings that Yssabeau encounters? Famous places of Hamburg, like the “Oberhafenkantine” and “Prinzenbar” are seen in a new light, transporting the audience to a surreal place. The exquisite images are influenced by Rococo ...

Foreigners Out! Schlingensief's Container

Foreigners Out! Schlingensief's Container

2002 | 90 min | Documentary

A deportation container for asylum seekers, interactively influenced by the audience, racist speeches by the former FPÖ success figure Jörg Haider blasting out of speakers. What sounds like a mixture of the realty TV show "Big Brother" and a dark vision of fear was an art project by Christoph Schlingensief, which took place in the middle of Vienna in the early 2000s. On "www.auslaenderraus.at" the audience could decide daily which inhabitant was deported. Thousands of passers-by got angry on site ...

Backstage Vienna State Opera

Backstage Vienna State Opera

2019 | 96 min | Documentary

The film focuses on the employees behind, next to and underneath the stage who keep the huge, complex operation going. And there’s a considerable number of them. This in-depth survey of their work gives viewers an idea of everything that’s necessary for productions to be successful and to run smoothly. The opera house enjoys an excellent reputation -performances take place every day of the year except at Christmas and on Good Friday, and an impressive 99% of its seats are sold.

Unplugged Leben: Guaia Guaia

Unplugged Leben: Guaia Guaia

2013 | 92 min | Documentary

Elias Gottstein and Carl Luis Zielke have no permanent residence, no formal training, no bank account, no personal savings. Instead, they live their dream of freedom: radical, anarchic, unplugged! They are young, intelligent, and hungry: for life, for music, for a future far from the average imagination. It is the portrait of two young men who do not want to accept the label male, unemployed, East German. Instead they go their own way.

Peropero: Breakdown in Tokyo

Peropero: Breakdown in Tokyo

2017 | 85 min | Drama

Lászlo and his partner Emma have been together for ten years. She also assists him as producer of the tour documentary. The young Japanese woman Nahoko steps in at short notice as tour manager. In the clubs between Osaka and Tokyo, Lászlo tries to catch up on his childhood dream: a wild musician's life that his own son, of all people, has been living for years. But when Lászlo and the young tour manager Nahoko unexpectedly fall madly in love with each other, not only the filming but also Lászlo's ...