
Café Waldluft
2015 | 79 min | Documentary
After the big influx of refugees to Europe in 2015, even the most Bavarian villages the picturesque mountains had to adapt.


2015 | 79 min | Documentary
After the big influx of refugees to Europe in 2015, even the most Bavarian villages the picturesque mountains had to adapt.

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 ...

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 ...

2011 | 87 min | Documentary
Elliott and Teofilo, two released sex offenders in Miami, Florida are not allowed to leave their residence and must stay 750 yards away from schools, parks or other places where children regularly hang out. These requirements make it nearly impossible to find a job or housing. The consequences are homelessness and social isolation. "Bittner's film is worth watching for two reasons. On the one hand, he puts himself in the perspective of the "sex offenders" and thus portrays frighteningly normal ...

1987 | 45 min | Documentary
Interviews with Palestinians living in Lebanese refugee camps, some of it shot in Sabra and Shatila before the massacre. Compiled from interviews with Palestinian refugees from the camps in Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon. While at the camps, Mohamad Malas asks people about their nightly dreams, which always refer to Palestine: a woman recounts her dream of winning the war; a Feda'i resistance fighter dreams of bombings and martyrdom; an old man describes ...

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, ...

2014 | 55 min | Documentary
Memories of the war influence their everyday life. Especially the violent death of their three-year-old daughter Amal (Arabic: hope) keeps the parents stuck in the past. She died during an attack when a shell hit the family home. Their two sons were seriously injured. Ghadir and Mohamad then came to Germany to have the injured children treated here. Then they want to go back. Arriving in Germany is easier for the children than for their parents. They are slowly getting used to their new home - each ...

2018 | 86 min | Documentary
Camp Moria, Lesbos. Cynthia Choucair's documentary follows 'Clowns without Borders' to find out more about the current refugee experience and the extremely precarious situation of children in times of flight and displacement. Cynthia Choucair was herself a refugee child during the Lebanese civil war. With this experience and inspired by the current crisis, her sister decided to become a professional clown and volunteer with 'Clowns Without Borders', an NGO that works with refugee children. Choucair ...

2009 | 90 min | Documentary
Among other regulations, this law requires non-European immigrants pass a difficult language test (Zertifikat Deutsch) to get citizenship or an extension of their residency permits. Karin Jurschick's film documents one of these so-called integration courses at an adult education center in Cologne. Here language students from China, Somalia, Afghanistan, Marocco and the Dominican Republic try to learn German. (Note: the coursecertificate is now called "Zertifikat Integrationskurs" which encompasses ...

2017 | 57 min | Documentary
In autumn 2015, a long-established hotel in Halle closed its doors to guests and was converted into a refugee shelter. In this documentary, filmmaker Uwe Mann observes the last days of the hotel, the dismissal of the staff, the departure of the last hotel guests and the arrival of the new residents. For the staff, the closing came as a surprise, as it did for Uwe Mann, who had already retraced the history of the hotel in his previous film "Im Dreieck". Two weeks before the hotel was to close, the ...

2018 | 94 min | Independent
The neighbors welcome him with open arms, a lot of curiosity and a fair amount of skepticism. The phone book-thick set of rules is his smallest challenge. Especially Gregor, a neighbor with a penchant for neatly trimmed hedges and nationalist ideas, casts his eagle eye on the American. Also hiding in what was once the "most beautiful garden" in the entire colony is Adam, a refugee from Ethiopia, who faces deportation if he is discovered. The two young men become friends and make a pact not to tell ...