
On the margins
2015 | 82 min | Documentary
We accompany a Roma family in Macedonia in their laborious everyday life, marked by deprivation, humiliation and racism.


2015 | 82 min | Documentary
We accompany a Roma family in Macedonia in their laborious everyday life, marked by deprivation, humiliation and racism.

2019 | 20 min | Drama
Romanian truck driver Stancu has given his nephew Dragan a second driving permit for their truck - a common practice in their company to extend legal driving times. But when Dragan is almost killed by microsleep at the wheel, Stancu suddenly realizes he has to take over. Torn between the pressure to deliver and his concern for Dragan, he becomes entangled in a web of white lies. "The director's clever and accomplished staging creates an almost documentary-like tone that suits the film exceedingly ...

2024 | 23 min | Documentary
A young woman commutes between two worlds: while serving in the German Armed Forces, she is preparing for a six-month deployment to Mali – with machine gun training, marching orders, and military drill. At the same time, she lives a different life: in an aesthetic clinic, she treats the faces of a modern affluent society with Botox. A fascinating contrast emerges between the barracks and the beauty salon – between preparations for war and beauty routines, obedience and self-realization, harshness ...

2024 | 75 min | Documentary
Torn between two worlds: Maria regularly leaves her home in Romania to work as a 24-hour caregiver in Austria. Her sons grow up in Ibănești while she cares for a woman in need of nursing care in Vienna. Every goodbye is difficult, every return is marked by joy, but also by the certainty that she will soon have to leave again. MÂINE MĂ DUC – TOMORROW I LEAVE by Lukas Schöffel and Maria Lisa Pichler is an intimate documentary about the reality of life for many Eastern European caregivers who balance ...

2024 | 74 min | Documentary
FIGHT follows 16-year-old Karine in rural Armenia, where she cares for her father’s dogs who were injured in brutal dogfights. Her dream is to become a veterinarian. This dream clashes with her family’s traditional expectations. Her father expects a different, more “feminine” future for his daughter, yet he was the one who introduced her to this trade, and is glad that she oversees the care and medical treatment of the animals; this creates a quiet but palpable tension. The film juxtaposes everyday ...

2018 | 94 min | Documentary
Director Bettina Henkel's family originates in Latvia. Together with her father, a psychoanalyst, she embarks on a journey to her roots, which brings to light traumatic experiences of displacement and loss, but also unpleasant truths about her own family. Touching on the subject of trans-generational trauma, the film traces the history of a this little-known part of Europe through dialogue between father and daughter. "An emotional road movie about deep-seated wounds caused by the historical upheavals ...

1987 | 92 min | Documentary
"A touching film full of melancholic tension." (John Bunzl, Wien Tagebuch) "I don't know exactly why I traveled east this winter," filmmaker Ruth Beckermann says of her journey through Eastern Europe. "I think I was just curious to know whether there was still any resemblance to the stories I grew up with." Beckermann's parents met in Vienna after the Holocaust; her father was a war refugee from Romania and her mother was a native of Vienna who settled in Palestine in 1938. Tracing the migratory ...

2022 | 89 min | Documentary
EUROPA PASSAGE is a profound documentary film by Andrei Schwartz that follows the lives of a group of Romanian Roma over five years. These families commute between their home village of Namaiesti in Romania and Hamburg to earn a living by begging, as there are no job opportunities available to them at home. The film shows the constant challenges and difficulties they face, from discrimination and exclusion from urban emergency programs to the simple living conditions in their village. The story ...

2024 | 97 min | Documentary
MY PARTNERS is an intimate documentary portrait of people searching for ways to live and love beyond conventional monogamy. Observing several polyamorous relationships, the film explores desire, tenderness and the ongoing challenge of making space for more than two people within a partnership. Kay and Beate have been married for more than 30 years, yet their summer in the Baltic countryside is shaped by a new openness. That openness includes Marianne, who lives in Tallinn with her two children and ...

2014 | 97 min | Drama
Gentle vignettes from a remote northern Russian village on the shores of Lake Kenozero tell the story of its postman, who is the village's only lifeline to the outside world. In the shadow of the nearby spaceport, the villagers live off their pensions and become addicted to vodka under the yoke of the mayoress. When the postman Aleksey's outboard motor is stolen, the village is cut off from the outside world. Director Andrei Konchalovsky, with a cast of mostly amateur actors, illustrates the divide ...

2013 | 62 min | Documentary
Tracing changes in the social system from socialist Yugoslavia to Serbia, the film looks at how ideology performed itself in public space through mass performances. For this research-based essay film Popivoda collected and analyzed film and video footage from the period of Yugoslavia (1945 – 2000), focusing state performances such as youth work actions, May Day parades, celebrations of the Youth Day, as well as counter-demonstrations, in particular the 1968 student demonstrations, the civic demonstrations ...