Holocaust survivors that were children at the time tell their devastating stories: One of them is Eva Szepesi, who spoke in the German Bundestag in 2024 about her childhood and her family’s suffering. Other contemporary witnesses like Alexandra Stimmer, Dora Zinger, Liesel Binzer, Aviva Goldschmidt, and Abraham Rozen survived the Nazi period with some luck, too. But how do you preserve their memories? A theatre project by Frankfurt pupils attempts exactly this: to bring something virtually unspeakable to the stage with delicacy. Important in the course of this: a gentle handling of the deeply traumatic experiences – both for the survivors and for the young actors.

Ein verbrannter Koran, ein verlorener Schlüssel, geklaute Filmrollen. Während der Dreharbeiten zu einem Film über den Brandanschlag von Solingen gerät Regieassistentin Elif (großartig gespielt von Devrim Lingnau) in einen Strudel aus Verdacht und Anschuldigungen. Zwischen politischem Zündstoff, Gesellschaftsstudie und Meta-Kommentar über die Filmbranche inszeniert Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay einen Thriller, der einen keine Sekunde loslässt. Das Ergebnis ist einer der besten deutschen Filme (mit hessischer Beteiligung) der letzten Jahre, der gleichzeitig die wichtige Frage aufwirft: Wen sehen wir eigentlich als deutsch im deutschen Film?

With: Ulrich Seidl

Host: Rüdiger Suchsland

With: Aysun Bademsoy, Gaby Babić, Cana Bilir-Meier

Host: Felix Trautmann

With: Linus de Paoli, Alfred Holighaus, Dilan Yildirim, Niklas Nissen

Hosts: Connie Walther, Fritzie Benesch

With: Otto Teischel

Host: Mariam Michael

Years ago, Arzu, Türkan, Nalan, and Nazan used to play soccer together at the Ağrı Spor club in Kreuzberg, Berlin – the first Turkish women’s soccer club in Germany. Spielerinnen portrays the women today. What happened to them since Aysun Bademsoy’s first two films about the soccer players, called Mädchen am Ball (1995) and Nach dem Spiel (1997)? How are they doing nowadays, what are they up to, what do their relationships to each other look like? Have they fulfilled their desires, what do they think about their daughters, and what do their daughters think about social media, boys, family, work, religion, and belonging?

Mit: Roger Behrens, Giordana Marsilio, Elisabeth Bronfen

Moderation: Rüdiger Suchsland

Be there when Hessian film and media professionals meet at the FILM & MEDIA MEETUP as part of the 5th “Future of German Film” congress and the 18th LICHTER FILMFESTS!

What is supposedly ugly awakens our fear – most of all, the fear to be regarded as ugly ourselves. This is a concern also haunting the 14-year-old Marija. She has been walking with a limp ever since she was a child and is marked as an outcast in her slowly decaying hometown in Lithuania. One day, she decides to try her luck at a model school where, for the first time in her life, she’s been told that she possesses some kind of beauty and (in extension) value. But the mean comments of the other girls gnaw at her. Marija gets slowly eaten up by the high expectations propagated at the institution. Together with her friend, Kristina, she gets pulled into a poisonous cycle based on beauty ideals, self-doubt and radical decisions. Sometimes, the most toxic relationship is the one we have with ourselves...

A woman on the roof, a musician in search of silence, and a city in a state of emergency. When Klara decides to give away all her possessions to move onto her rooftop, she triggers a wave of fascination and outrage. As the media and the masses gather, Jean and Helena, a young musician couple, see their chance: Klara is not asking for rent any longer. What starts out as luck quickly turns into an absurd experiment of freedom, property, and societal expectations. Anatol Schuster dramatizes a poetic, hilarious open air chamber play – shot in Darmstadt, where city and sound become the stage of an unconventional rebellion.

Genre summit with:
Chris Osteroom, Christoph Hochhäusler, Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, Linus de Paoli, Markus Keuschnigg

Host: Mariam Michael

Raising awareness for societal issues through film - that is what three activists in Brazil have made their goal. Without fear, they denounce social and political injustice. For three years the team behind this documentary film followed the activists engagement, show the conditions under which they fight and what it takes for their voices to be heard. Boalândia - the title refers to an “utopian place that can only be opened up by filmmaking.” Functioning without any distracting voice-over, the sensibly chosen pictures put the focus on the strong words of the protagonists.

What is the origin of human creativity and what conditions help us most to be creative? Getting to the bottom of these questions, Hermann Vaske sends Lilith Stangenberg and Blixa Bargeld as dark messengers of the arts to Creative Paradiso. In search of the source of creative power we meet artists from a variety of disciplines and decades and can pick up the wisdom of greats such as Wim Wenders and Marina Abramović. The result is a beautiful, kaleidoscopic collage that combines interviews, archive material, and artistically animated sequences, capturing the ultimate formula for creativity once and for all.

Red flags above the Reichstag, sprinting to the train, let’s go to provincial east Germany! There’s much less to do in the village of Bad Kleinen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but it never gets boring for leftist performance artist Tine in the midst of village Nazis and East-nostalgia fans. The surprising find of a bod body out everyone in an uproar and forces Tine and her village to face the ghosts of the past. In her feature film debut Rote Sterne überm Feld, which defies all conventions, director Laura Laabs ignites a filmic firework that comments on the medium itself and )east-)German history, present and future.

More than three years ago, Russia invaded and started a war on Ukraine. How do you live with the constant fear of attacks? Ukrainian director Kateryna Gornostai looks at one aspect of everyday life under the dictates of war: schools in areas close to the front, which try to maintain continuous service despite bombed-out buildings and constant alarms, and thus also a piece of normality. Gornostai has courageously created her film as a consistent documentary of a kind rarely seen today: The camera only observes, there are no protagonists, no interviews, no re-enacted scenes.

From the South to the big city and all the way to the north - from all of Hesse and the Rhine-Main region, filmmakers are presenting their works in the regional short film competition.

Mathilda (Barbara Sukowa) has returned to her hometown of Frankfurt, where she now serves as the EU Minister in the state government, enforcing a strict border policy. But one day, her longtime friend Richard shows up at her door with 17-year-old Malik, whom he has smuggled from Morocco to Germany—now he expects Mathilda to fast-track a visa for him. However, Malik wants to leave and soon finds himself in Frankfurt’s red-light district, where he encounters other Moroccan migrants, some of whom are involved in a bombing plot. Suddenly, he is falsely suspected of terrorism—only Mathilda’s assistant is still willing to help him. A gripping Frankfurt-set thriller that explores the clash between personal emotions and high-stakes political realities.

It's pretty monotonous work that Aurora has to do day after day at the dispatch warehouse. The working conditions are not inhumane, but they are bleak for the young woman from Portugal who works in Scotland. Her social life in an accommodation centre for migrant workers, whose rent she can barely afford due to her precarious job, is also dull. At a job interview, for which she sacrifices her few free hours, she suddenly realises how work has taken possession of her and has degraded her to a robot. On Falling is a precisely observed study of alienation and isolation that grows into kafkaesque dimensions with its subtle tones.

Ein verbrannter Koran, ein verlorener Schlüssel, geklaute Filmrollen. Während der Dreharbeiten zu einem Film über den Brandanschlag von Solingen gerät Regieassistentin Elif (großartig gespielt von Devrim Lingnau) in einen Strudel aus Verdacht und Anschuldigungen. Zwischen politischem Zündstoff, Gesellschaftsstudie und Meta-Kommentar über die Filmbranche inszeniert Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay einen Thriller, der einen keine Sekunde loslässt. Das Ergebnis ist einer der besten deutschen Filme (mit hessischer Beteiligung) der letzten Jahre, der gleichzeitig die wichtige Frage aufwirft: Wen sehen wir eigentlich als deutsch im deutschen Film?

How do you kill yourself if you want to go to heaven after death, but suicide is a mortal sin? This is a very practical challenge for unenlightened peasants in the 18th century - Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala transform it into a visually stunning hellride into the history of the feminine. Based on historical court records, Des Teufels Bad shows that religion and the human body are only legal systems of different kinds. The fear of death comes alongside the fear of God's punishment and of his worldly helpers, the masters of the Holy Inquisition.

And who is to blame for everything? Possibly the devil... Enlightened horror cinema from Austria.

Lilith Stangenberg zählt zu den außergewöhnlichsten Schauspielerinnen ihrer Generation. Ob in Wild oder Sterben – sie fasziniert mit radikaler Intensität. Doch Stangenberg ist nicht nur für extreme Rollen bekannt, sondern auch als Musikerin. Mit Brezel Göring (Stereo Total) verwandelt sie als Band Psychoanalyse die Bühne im MASSIF E in ein Wechselbad aus melancholischem Albtraum und zornigem Punk. Die Texte sind abgründig und kontrovers, ihr zerbrechlicher Gesang erinnert an Nico von The Velvet Underground.

Bei LICHTER steht Stangenberg nicht nur auf der Konzertbühne, sondern ist auch in Hermann Vaskes Creativo Paradiso und Niki Steins Dokudrama Stammheim – Zeit des Terrors zu sehen.

Dead Mail is a term that describes letters without an address or that can’t be delivered for other reasons. Such a letter finds itself on a postal worker’s desk in the Midwest of the United States - bloodstained. It contains a cry for help from a synthesizer engineer taken hostage by a psychopath who will stop at nothing…

Dead Mail is a journey to the beginnings of electronic music and a noir thriller about a strange business relationship between two outcasts that becomes increasingly violent. With its grainy and noisy images, this film feels like it was ripped from the early 1980s and sent to us.

A hot summer's day, the air is still. Simon meets a group of young people on the riverbank. They are lying in the sun, talking, smoking, letting the hours pass by. Only when Marie turns up does Simon's dull afternoon appear to take a turn for the better. The two set off together into the wild river valley and gradually find each other far away from reality. Quiet, surreal and full of unspoken words, Der Fleck is completely rooted in the moment, dispensing with a classic dramaturgy. Shot on 16mm, the camera glides through light and shadow, capturing the rustling of leaves, the hesitation of a gaze. A poetic, meditative cinema between lightness, latent unease and youthful aimlessness.

With: Jan Tussing, Niki Stein, Claudia Tronnier, Carlos Gerstenhauer, Ayşe Polat

Host: RP Kahl

With: Manuela Klauser, Oleksandra Sydorova, Nathaly Shafir, Philipp Ladage

Hosts: Boaz Lavie, Uri Aviv

With: Gert Scobel, Roger Behrens, Marcus Stiglegger

Host: RP Kahl

No amount of sympathy will ever bring their children back – the bereaved of the victims of the racist attack in Hanau know this. The families speak of their sorrow, their fury, and their impotence against a system that baulks at any responsibility and vehemently denies its complicity. For years, they had to fight for an appropriate accounting of the events. But now, following the fifth anniversary of the cruel killing spree and the return of the social acceptability of racist slogans, Marcin Wierzchowski’s impressive documentary film Das Deutsche Volk is an important monument reminding us of our duty to remember.

With: Boaz Lavie, Geraldine de Bastion, Louis Savy, Bijan Kaffenberger

Host: Uri Aviv

With: Laura Laabs, Maxi Haslberger

Host: Rüdiger Suchsland

With: Anatol Schuster, Mehmet Büyükatalay, Pia Marais, Jan Bonny, Dominik Graf (Videoinput)

Host: Ayşe Polat

With: Stefan Aust, Roger de Weck

Host: Rüdiger Suchsland

With: Uri Aviv, Louis Savy, Chris Oosterom, Markus Keuschnigg, Sara Lopo, Volker Beller

Host: Linus de Paoli

A movie about the violence of fear and the fear of violence. A helicopter flight transports you to Coppola's Vietnam, but the apocalypse takes place on the inside: Ulrike and Gudrun are in jail, later joined by Andi and Jan, making you wonder whether this is a '68ers' flat share, a cult or just isolation torture. There are absurdities and paranoia on all sides: in the bureaucratic correctness and incomprehension of the state, in the relationship terror of the inmates and the petty games that everyone plays with each other.

Niki shot the film in the original RAF cells in Stammheim and plays on media memories, clandestine romanticism and sheer voyeurism. That's what makes cinema great!

How can we prepare for death if we know it’s coming closer? How to handle the fear of the uncertain, of the void? And how to make such a solitary act a more gentle one? When Isabel is forced to reconnect with her terminally ill and estranged ex-husband, she learns to let go of the past and finds ways to tame his growing fears. As days go by and life fades, faint glimmers of light make the weight of the inevitable a bit more bearable. Glimmers shines most when it captures these fleeting, albeit significant moments. Without excessive dramatism, the film shows how simply being together is the most honest, most pure, most effective way of combating fear.

Death and goodbyes are still taboo subjects. Why do we find it so difficult to talk about them? Berlin mortician Eric Wrede and his team try to approach death with less reservations, more honesty and empathy. For them, the deceased are not just everyday business and mourners are not just customers. Wrede believes it is important to take time for the bereaved and to take their concerns seriously. He is not interested in traditional coffin sales; there is only one model at cost price. Every case is different and individual - but when a fatally ill friend asks them to accompany her, the funeral professionals reach their personal limits.

In the new LICHTER competition, international media artists compete live on the big screen. With the help of AI-based image and video generators, they create terrifying moving image sequences based on this year's festival theme. The audience experiences the creative process up close and together with a jury chooses the best sequence. AI Frankfurt Rhein-Main e.V. has offered prize money of 2,000 euros for the competition.

Games and malice are equally important in this family story: The father deals with dementia, going in ever smaller circles with his walker. His two sons leave to unlearn fear but never manage to escape the old man’s spell.

“Rimini” meets “Sparta”; a place of relaxation meets a place of discipline, two territories of happiness and states of emergency. The two films directed by Ulrich Seidl merge to create a third, unique work: This Rimini reminds as little of Ferragosto as Sparta does of the Thermopylae, yet both myths and their imagery are always present.

Sasha is situated somewhere in between: between genders, between hometowns, between identities. In the places of his past, he searches for a feeling of familiarity but only finds dust and long repressed memories. Only when his family dog Remi, formerly believed to be dead, and some old video cassettes appear, a door opens to a painful past and unexpected new connections. Batim revolves around the search for comfort and the things that makes a place a home. Told through poetic imagery, the film continuously casts a spell. The Hessian-Israeli co-production celebrated its premiere at the Berlinale.

After a plane crash deep in the Amazon jungle, little Rebecca survives miraculously. Years later, she is known as "Miss Aspirin" - a miracle healer with a divine mission, supported by her missionary father. They bring the Christian message to indigenous people. But when loggers threaten their land, a conflict breaks out that puts Rebecca's loyalty and faith to the test.

With magnificent visuals of nature images and a hypnotic atmosphere, Pia Marais made a gripping drama full of contradictions between tradition, spirituality and exploitation in Transamazonia - impressively embodied by Systemsprenger-star Helena Zengel and the indigenous Assurini tribe.

The jockey has begun to lose all his races. It’s time to kill him. Or perhaps he can have one last chance to prove his worth. After all, the goose may still lay a few more golden eggs. Set in the heightened reality of Argentinian horse racing mafia, Kill the Jockey is a flickering, shape-shifting film that moves freely from gangster movie to an exploration of gender and identity. Anchored by an unforgettable performance by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and with a soundtrack that will make you want to get up off your seats, the film ratifies Luis Ortega as one of the most interesting voices to follow in world cinema today.

A murder, a revenge mission, a web of intrigue and violence – elements used by Christoph Hochhäusler to stage an icy neo-noir thriller. At the center of Der Tod wird kommen is Tez, a contract killer with razor-sharp instincts, who is tasked with solving the murder of a courier. Her client is the terminally ill gangster boss Mahr, who is fighting against his own decline - and against rivals who have long been orchestrating their succession. Between dark alleys, empty industrial yards and cool glass facades, Hochhäusler plays a merciless game of confusion while his characters move through the Belgian capital Brussels, as figures on the chessboard of power and betrayal.

Was steckt hinter den Bildern, wie entstehen sie, was ist an ihnen echt? Das könnte als Leitfrage hinter den Filmen dieses Programms stehen. Sie gehen ihr auf verschiedenen, sehr indirekten Wegen nach, indem sie erforschen, wie Dinge produziert werden, welche Bilder wir im Traum erzeugen und welche wir in uns selbst finden.

Keynote:

Roger de Weck

With: Burhan Qurbani, Michael Chauvistré (BVR), Bill Anderson (FERA), Prof. Kurt Brazda (IMAGO), Chris Oosterom, Representatives of ACID, Dr. Christina Busch, Morgane Remter u.a.

Hosts: Uri Aviv, Geraldine de Bastion, Michael Hack, Connie Walther

With: Cornelia Grünberg, Bill Anderson, Fabio D'Orta, Mariangela Bombardieri

Host: Linus de Paoli

With: Ada Salomon, Elene Naveriani

Host: tha.

With:

Carl Hegemann
Lynn T. Musiol

With: Addie Reiss, Geraldine de Bastion, Boaz Lavie

Host: Uri Aviv

It’s not easy being nineteen. For Leonardo, it means moving from one city to another, then to another, from one university to another, then to another, wondering what the point of everything is. Caught in a seemingly eternal pursuit to escape adulthood, the young man at the center of Giovanni Tortorici’s debut feature is as shape-shifting and unpredictable as the film he is in. The director’s assured eye captures the multiple, often contradictory, states of being of Leonardo with a camera that gracefully shifts from naturalism to Nouvelle Vague-esque experimentation, crafting a wholly original coming-of-age story that defies all conventions of the genre.

Standing still and looking forward is all it requires for your portrait to be taken - but it seems to be quite a challenge for a thinker like Leibniz. In this film, Edgar Reitz carries out a thought experiment: How can a picture capture a human’s whole being? While the court painter Delalandre sticks to traditional methods, the painter Aaltje van de Meer dares to attempt combining philosophy and painting. Reitz’ chamber drama features a formal rigour that still goes hand in hand with poetical images. Leibniz is a film that visualizes the process of thinking and makes room for the question whether great fortune doesn’t lie within exactly that.

An attic as a world, a family at a standstill: Sven has lived in isolation in his parents' house for 30 years, shut off by his schizophrenia. His sister Holle, a spiritual healer, falters between closeness and distance. When their mother is hospitalized, Holle is forced to confront her brother, the past and the fragile family ties. Im Haus meiner Eltern is a cinematic meditation on responsibility, care and the limits of closeness. Its black-and-white aesthetic, abrupt cuts and occasional black screens make the film an experience that is quietly but deeply memorable.

The world is in crisis yet again. The leaders of the G-7 countries meet up in the fictitious Dankerode, somewhere in the hinterland of Saxony-Anhalt, to give a collective statement. However, this turns out to be a rather complicated matter, not only because of differing opinions, but also because the whole staff suddenly goes missing and a few bog bodies turn up next door – and zombies appear in front of the venue. This is political satire in a serious state of the world: Cate Blanchett acts as the German chancellor, Charles Dance as the chronically tired American president and Dennis Ménochet mimes the French president with morbid tendencies.

From the South to the big city and all the way to the north - from all of Hesse and the Rhine-Main region, filmmakers are presenting their works in the regional short film competition.

Red flags above the Reichstag, sprinting to the train, let’s go to provincial east Germany! There’s much less to do in the village of Bad Kleinen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but it never gets boring for leftist performance artist Tine in the midst of village Nazis and East-nostalgia fans. The surprising find of a bod body out everyone in an uproar and forces Tine and her village to face the ghosts of the past. In her feature film debut Rote Sterne überm Feld, which defies all conventions, director Laura Laabs ignites a filmic firework that comments on the medium itself and )east-)German history, present and future.

The wide, open plains of the Colombian desert fill up the screen, with a woman walking by herself, barely visible at first sight. Living a mostly isolated life, Georgina has weathered various trials and tribulations, hinted at by the many wrinkles covering her face. She has not, however, lost an ounce of her sweetness, concealed by the strength she needs to show to fight for her place in a society that has taken decades to respect her as a transgender woman, and a Kafkian bureaucracy that insists on denying her the right to self-affirmation. The story of a Wayuu woman who has lost fear for she has nothing left to lose, and is left wondering, “are there others like me?”.

Marajo, where the Amazon flows into the sea, is where thirteen-year-old Marcielle lives with her family. She goes to school, plays with her siblings, helps out her parents - and is slowly growing up. But she senses that her beloved home is increasingly turning into a prison. An invisible burden, which generations of women seem to carry, now rests on her too. Marcielle wants to leave: The boats passing by on the river promise freedom in a new world. But at what price? Ready to change her fate, she decides to fight back against the violent system that rules her family and the women in her community.

Munich, 1972: A television studio is central to the inception of real-time news coverage. While the Olympic Village is shaken up, a team of sports reporters, cramped inside the ABC studio goes live on air unprepared, under pressure, and watched by the whole world. Producer Geoff grapples with contradictory information and a moral dilemma: When does news coverage become a stage for terrorists? When is a report ready for the public?

Tim Fehlbaum's unsettling contemporary chamber play, September 5, does not only recall the terrible act of Palestinian terrorism against the Israeli competition team, it also pays homage to the craft of television.

The Canadian influencer Ziggy can hardly believe her luck: She has just signed an extremely lucrative advertising contract with the seed and fertilizer company Nature's Oath. Shortly afterwards, however, she has to return from the big city world to her old home, a Mohawk reservation. A non-relaxing holiday awaits them in her childhood home: Ziggy has no idea that an old secret is hidden there, which the very company that hired her is after.

Seeds is an exciting mixture of thriller and comedy. The film takes a dark-humoured but warmhearted look at the First Nations' struggle for autonomy in a time of hyper-individualism and unleashed mega-corporations.

A locust is a solitary insect that can easily go unnoticed, its branch-like body camouflaged by any small shrub. When under stress, though, it swiftly changes its patterns of behaviour, becoming gregarious, and turning into an aggressive plague. A fitting metaphor for Zhong-Han, an unassuming mute young guy working as a waiter by day and a gang member at night. When his two lives collide, Locust shines the most. KEFF’s directorial debut is a dark, sleek neo-noir set in the streets of Taipei, in the midst of the Hong Kong protests, with an eye on the tensions arising from a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and the tolls it takes on average working people.

In the cold steppes of Mongolia, first-time director Jiang Xiaoxuan stumbled upon the story of a man caught between his life as a herdsman in the countryside and his life as a showsman in the city, performing an idyllic and entertaining version of a herdsman to foreign audiences. For her debut film, Jiang built a fictional story based on the man’s life, and persuaded him to interpret the film version of himself, with no prior acting experience. What emerged was a modern, sensible and honest Western, a story about the fear of a man and a community losing grip on their livelihoods and trying to navigate an ever more uncertain world seeping in from the outside.

Die Veranstaltung ist ausverkauft

Santino is living the dream of many early teenagers: He is a circus boy, moving from city to city with his large family, every week. Wondering what talent he could contribute to the show, he gets told old stories by his great-grandpa Georg, alias “Opa Ehe”. They are stories of the magic of the manege, his beloved elephant August and the special sense of community within circus families, but also about social exclusion and persecution. Tenderly crafted animations and the adorable Frank family will draw you into their world in this documentary (not only) for children.

Art without limits, creativity without compromises – Zeppelin oben rechts takes us into Atelier23 of the care service centre Lebenshilfe Gießen, where seven artists with disabilities or mental illnesses reveal their particular views on the world. We closely follow over years how ideas turn into stunning works of art: from glowing portraits to detail-oriented miniatures. Director Olli Duerr omits any commentary and thus allows the art and its creators to speak for themselves – with honesty, intimacy and a lot of humour. A movie that touches, inspires and opens new perspectives for its audience.

Henriette is considered to be a “system crasher”. Multiple neurological diseases have led to long hospital stays during her childhood – in complete isolation from her family. Shaped by these experiences, she has become a needy but also aggressive person. Guido is the first person to offer her safety and to stand by Henriette even when she clashes with society over and over again. Following in the footsteps of her artistic forebears, she starts exploring her identity and dares to take the stage with the help of a dance educator – desiring acceptance, but most of all respect. An extraordinary story about inclusion, endurance, solidarity – and love.

Young Carola lives with her father Pacifico in the Atacama Desert in Chile. With a team of day laborers, they secretly dig for gold in a closed-down mine. Yet when Pacifico is badly wounded, Carola suddenly finds herself alone. In a world where the strongest prevail, she has to stand her ground against ruthless competitors and fight for her survival. Hessen goes South America: Oro Amargo was produced with the support of HessenFilm and the Hessian production company plotlessfilm. The neo-western not only captivates with its rough impressive landscape but also with the intense portrayal of the strong-willed Carola, played by Katalina Sánchez.

We hardly ever hear about the Moria refugee ramp on the Greek island Lesbos anymore. It used to be Europe’s largest refugee camp – until a fire broke out in September 2020, destroying everything. Six teenagers from Afghanistan were accused of arson and arrested, but the only witness for the case never appeared in court. Director Jennifer Mallmann tells of the many contradictions in an almost unknown judicial scandal and addresses illegal pushbacks and new maximum security camps where refugees are locked up like criminals, showing the ongoing practices of European isolation policies.

The twins Grace and Gilbert have been inseparable and quite an exceptional pair since their childhood. When both get sent to different parts of Australia after their father’s death, it heavily affects Grace. In fear of the world, she decides to withdraw, to shrink into her snail shell, where she finds herself surrounded by the small animals that ornament her modest home. But after the sudden death of her best friend, she once again finds her world turned upside down; here, a journey through her own memories begins. She follows the tragic and comic intertwinings of life, spread out like glittering slime traces from the past and leading her towards a present where a glimmer of hope awaits her.

At first glance, businesswoman Xia You seems to lead a carefree life. But her partner abuses her. While searching for concert tickets, she meets and falls in love with street vendor Xu Zitai. When she unexpectedly encounters him again in another city, she leaves her old life behind and follows the terminally ill Xu in the final months of his life, working as a noodle seller and delivery courier. Death and the fear of dying loom like a Democles sword over one of the most moving love stories in recent years. At the same time Bound in Heaven offers deep insight into contemporary China: the contrast between urban and rural life, the clash of modernity and tradition, and the often-unspoken issue of domestic violence.

From the South to the big city and all the way to the north - from all of Hesse and the Rhine-Main region, filmmakers are presenting their works in the regional short film competition.

Orsolya feels guilty. During an eviction that falls under her responsibility, an illegal house guest strangulated himself whilst she was taking a coffee break. The event hits the bailiff hard as she meant to carry out the eviction as humanely as possible. She can hardly bear the feelings of guilt. During her ordeal, she visits a colleague, her mother, her priest and a mechanical T-Rex to find reassurance, forgiveness, distraction and redemption. Radu Jude's brilliantly written screenplay opens up an uncomfortable discourse in our righteous world: Who is to blame for systematic crimes and what use is our compassion to the victims?

In his mountain village in the west of Tunisia, the 13-year-old Ashraf lives a life marked by restrictions. Because he must help his mother at home, he cannot go to school. He and the other villagers live in constant fear of governmental authority such as hostile rebel groups operating in the mountains. One day, when Ashraf and his cousin Nizar direct their herd of goats to a watering place, a group of Jihadists kills his cousin and forces Ashraf to report his cousin’s death to the villagers. The family receives no support from the local police, so they decide to head out by themselves to recover the body of the dead cousin. Based on true events.

Richard III. in underground Berlin: The bloody feud between the Arabian Clans York and Lancaster finally seems resolved. A union is supposed to seal the peace: a marriage between Ali Lancaster and Rashida York. But the youngest daughter in her clan wants to rule, not obey. Behind the treacherous calm, her scrupulous ascent begins. Deceptions, intrigues and murders plaster her way to power - until her childhood and the bombs of another war catch up to her. Burhan Qurbanis adaptation of Shakespeare is great cinema between theatre and thriller, between myth and the Mall of New York. Star actress Kenda Hmeidans moves like a feline predator through this cold, unapproachable world.

From the South to the big city and all the way to the north - from all of Hesse and the Rhine-Main region, filmmakers are presenting their works in the regional short film competition.

It’s 1978, the dictatorial regime in Chile is 5 years in and a government worker like Raúl, charged with making architectural models in a bureaucratic office, has quietly lived an apolitical life. But there is no door left untouched by an invasive dictatorship meddling in all citizens’ affairs, and Raúl will soon start listening, ever so closely, to the rumblings coming from the house next door. Starting off like a political thriller before taking a deep dive into the psychological horrors in the mind of its protagonist, A Yard of Jackals is a portrait of paranoia and vulnerability, and of the trappings of individual and collective guilt.

Everything ends and even a Bond has to retire. His name is Diman, John Diman. The elderly Secret Service agent spends his time in a luxurious beach hotel with long walks and his favourite drink. But when a mysterious woman disappears in the room next door, his instincts awaken and he sets off on one last mission. Fragments of past heroic deeds break up his perception of reality with brilliant clarity. Reflection in a Dead Diamond employs the visual ecstasy of James Bond intros and combines these with a subtle critique of the macho heroes of old.

Lesego works as a banker, at least so far: financial supervision is after her and shut down all of her accounts. She has supposedly participated in a risky investment business that cost thousands of miner widows their pension. Hence Lesego, in her mid thirties, reluctantly has to go back to living with her mother Doris in the South African small town Thorntree. Her return stirs up not only her mother’s life. Somewhere between drama and thriller, the director Karabo Lediga illustrates a generational conflict between one that grew up and lived in apartheid and the other, younger one, that was raised in a more liberal society and is drawn to the temptations of the big business.

Fear can be both a driving force and a burden. The international short film programme ANGST highlights directors and screenwriters who are fearless in the creation of their works. Some of them confront fear within themselves, in a time when fear and oppression are once again profoundly present worldwide.

Standing still and looking forward is all it requires for your portrait to be taken - but it seems to be quite a challenge for a thinker like Leibniz. In this film, Edgar Reitz carries out a thought experiment: How can a picture capture a human’s whole being? While the court painter Delalandre sticks to traditional methods, the painter Aaltje van de Meer dares to attempt combining philosophy and painting. Reitz’ chamber drama features a formal rigour that still goes hand in hand with poetical images. Leibniz is a film that visualizes the process of thinking and makes room for the question whether great fortune doesn’t lie within exactly that.

Santino is living the dream of many early teenagers: He is a circus boy, moving from city to city with his large family, every week. Wondering what talent he could contribute to the show, he gets told old stories by his great-grandpa Georg, alias “Opa Ehe”. They are stories of the magic of the manege, his beloved elephant August and the special sense of community within circus families, but also about social exclusion and persecution. Tenderly crafted animations and the adorable Frank family will draw you into their world in this documentary (not only) for children.

New Year's shows are pre-produced. So as early as December 1989, Romanian television is working on a show to thank dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu for another successful year. There's just one problem: the lead actress has defected to the West. The new directors promptly chose the actress Florina as her replacement. But with the impending uprising against the regime already brewing in the streets, Florina tries to escape the assignment by any means necessary. At the heart of this tragic comedy is the story of a show that was never broadcast. The New Year That Never Came recreates the last days of the Ceausescu dictatorship through complex interplay of multiple perspectives and characters.

No amount of sympathy will ever bring their children back – the bereaved of the victims of the racist attack in Hanau know this. The families speak of their sorrow, their fury, and their impotence against a system that baulks at any responsibility and vehemently denies its complicity. For years, they had to fight for an appropriate accounting of the events. But now, following the fifth anniversary of the cruel killing spree and the return of the social acceptability of racist slogans, Marcin Wierzchowski’s impressive documentary film Das Deutsche Volk is an important monument reminding us of our duty to remember.

Tusch, Bembel und Champagner: Das Grande Finale!

Wir laden Euch alle herzlich zur Preisverleihung am Sonntagabend ein! Zusammen feiern wir ab 19 Uhr die beeindruckensten und berührendsten Filme des Festivals!

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It is a hot summer in Corsica, and the summer breaks in France are long. To her surprise, young Lesia is brought to a house where her father is secretly residing with his followers. A situation she can hardly read: who are these men and what do they want? It is 1995, and in Corsica not only the separatists are firing bombs - in a similar fashion, the gangs of organized crime, all structured in a patriarchal manner, fight against one another. The noose around their necks tightens, as the clan around the father becomes more and more endangered. The world of male violence from the point of view of a young woman: will she follow the bloody path her father left behind?

A nearing lunar eclipse, the prophesied birth of the antichrist, and the disappearance of several girls unsettles the citizens of Bogotá in the late 90s. Thirteen-year-old Mila is caught in the midst of this renewed religious frenzy and is unnerved by her overbearing stepfather’s lingering stares. Mila starts rebelling against her mother’s overprotectiveness by escaping at night into the darkness of the Columbian forest. Director Camila Beltrán observes Mila’s fight for freedom with a lot of empathy and accompanies the teenage heroine as she discovers strange things about herself and her changing body.

For years, hundreds of letters filled with hand-drawn pictures and messages of solidarity were withheld from the families of the victims of the racist arson attack in Mölln. These comforting letters, which could have helped the families in their grief, were never delivered to them. Instead, they were sorted, archived, and ultimately forgotten. Only thirty years later do the survivors learn of the letters' existence, and Martina Priessner’s precise camera follows them on their search for the truth. Die Möllner Briefe is a poignant plea for a vibrant culture of remembrance, using visual minimalism to keep the focus on the victims and survivors.

Repetition of the winning film of the regional feature film competition

In the world of experimental and avant garde film, fear has many faces. A short film selection by DFF film theatre pursues these different facets with films from 1913 all the way to the 2000’s: Presented will be, among others, a proto-horror film by Lois Weber from the early cinema, subversive debates with visual conventions by Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet and a film by Peter Tscherkassy, that edits film material and defamiliarizes it. Afterwards, Marie Dressler and Polly moran dazzle in a crime comedy.

With works by Matthias Müller, Christoph Girardet, Lois Weber, William Watson and Peter Tscherkassky and more

The selection was compiled by Andreas Beilharz, Gunter Deller, Karola Gramann, Heide Schlüpmann and Björn Schmitt.

In Dream a little Cream, director Jochen Hasmanis tells the story of the legendary music shop “Cream-Music” in the Frankfurt Bahnhofsviertel. Not only did it accompany generations of musicians, it also attracted world stars like Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones. In 1900, instrument maker Heinrich Hummel and his wife Babette came to Frankfurt and founded the musical centre of the metropolis on Taunusstraße. Stars like Markus (“Ich will Spass”), Gerd Knebel and Henni Nachtsheim from Badesalz and guitarist Ali Neander talk about the shop’s lively history and share thrilling anecdotes in this documentary.