Skip to main content

Sebastian Mez

Director
Sebastian Mez is a German director known for his boundary-pushing documentary films. He has received critical acclaim for his work exploring themes of migration, identity, and globalization. Some of his notable films include "Anabasis," "Kathedralen der Kultur," and "Metamorphosen." Mez has been recognized with awards at various film festivals for his innovative storytelling and unique visual style.

Films

Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses

By Sebastian Mez

2013 | 84 min | Documentary

On the river Tetscha in the southern Urals, in the middle of nowhere between Europe and Asia, is the most radioactively contaminated area in the world

Recommended for you

Janine F.

Janine F.

2004 | 80 min | Documentary

This introspective film explores the life and mysterious death of JANINE F., a 24-year-old artist who tragically fell from Berlin's Kunsthaus Tacheles in 2002. The story unfolds through the memories of her friends and fellow artists, painting a complex portrait of her as a spirited, yet troubled individual. Set in the chaotic Kunsthaus Tacheles, where she shared a studio, the film reveals Janine's intense commitment to art, blurring lines between passion and obsession, and her perilous involvement ...

The Dust of Modern Life

The Dust of Modern Life

2021 | 81 min | Documentary

Liêm is a member of the Sedang, an ethnic minority group in Vietnam. Following tradition, he and other men go into the jungle for a spiritual cleansing, subsisting only on what the forest offers them. In the past, when he made the trip with his father, they fed on wild animals, such as monkeys, wild cats, or deer. Nowadays, deforestation has driven these animals away, and so Liêm is forced to catch rats and frogs, which the group (and film crew) consume. "The Vietnamese jungle is changing, and ...

Dear Beautiful Beloved

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

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 ...

Swimmers

Swimmers

2015 | 77 min | Icons & Media Art

The controversial Soviet physicist Boris Zolotov left science to start a movement. He has gathered hundreds of disciples around him. Like many in the group, young Ekaterina was led there by many unanswered questions. Together with Boris Zolotov, she takes part in hour-long swimming rituals and night-time theater performances and discusses concepts of happiness in today´s Russia. SWIMMERS is an observation of this extraordinary attempt to achieve and maintain collective belief, on the border of ...

Winter

Winter

2014 | 29 min | Documentary

Landscapes change and people change with them. This happens over centuries and decades, but sometimes also in the fleeting moment of transition from night to day. Then everything changes and nothing remains as it was. "The snow hid everything beneath itself, until people finally forgot." Director Martin Prinoth (DIE GESCHÖPFE DES VESUV), born in Bolzano, is a graduate of the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. He is a member of the German-Italian artist collective YOVO! YOVO! and co-founder ...

Beckerbillett

Beckerbillett

1992 | 18 min | Documentary

Robert Bramkamp's unique hybrid of documentary, essay and fiction portrays the Hamburg ticket manufacturer BECKERBILLETT. The company not only manufactures tickets, it also creates a secret currency - each ticket stub promises an event and an experience. In his short film BECKERBILLETT, filmmaker Robert Bramkamp calls attention to a hidden and yet essential process in the cultural economy – how do spectators gain entrance to the places where entertainment and distraction take place? A new and ...

Points of Light

Points of Light

2024 | 27 min | Documentary

Not long ago, countless fireflies swarmed through fields and backyards on summer nights. Today in Iowa, a place known for its uniform landscape and monocultures of corn, fireflies are increasingly rare to find: points of light that blink off just as quickly as they light up in the dark. In POINTS OF LIGHT, filmmaker Annika Juliane Schilling sets out to search for these magical-seeming insects and the reasons for their disappearance. She takes a look at farm work and front lawns, as patterns of ...

Another Life

Another Life

2019 | 72 min | Documentary

Alex lives as a hermit on the imposing cliffs of Ireland's Atlantic coast and shares his home with injured animals. After he nurses them to health, he releases them into the wild. Geese, donkeys and especially wild birds find refuge with him until they are strong enough for the harsh outdoors again. But smaller creatures also receive his protection. With a diamond magnifying glass, he observes flies and spiders, and he makes sure that the law of eat or be eaten isn't applicable in his kingdom - ...

Thinking like a mountain

Thinking like a mountain

2019 | 91 min | Documentary

They draw from this unique environment a preserved and singular spirituality. For the first time a director was invited to visit the heartland of the sacred mountain. Hick tells the story of resistance which is a voyage through space and time: from the shores of the Caribbean to the stars that light up the night on the glacier and from the encounter with the first colonizing whites to the return of the warriors following FARC's laying-down of arms.