Injustice and Resistance 2022

For more than eight decades, German Sinti and Roma experienced injustice. The film tells of the family of activist Romani Rose, their resistance and insistence on justice. The painful story of a minority between trauma and self-assertion. The two-part film deals with various forms of resistance by German and Austrian Sinti and Roma over eight decades. It is about rebellion against injustice and the insistence on dignity and justice.

Farewell to the Parents 2017

The film is based on the eponymous 1960 novel by author Peter Weiss. In this autobiographical text, the author describes the years of his childhood and youth in Germany in the 20s and 30s as well as the flight of his half-Jewish family from persecution by the Nazis. This odyssey also portrays the young first-person narrator’s struggle for his artistic existence, as he was striving to establish himself as a painter and writer. In a free, sensual essay between fiction and document, realistic description and stylised invention, the film attempts to kindle today’s flame based on the past’s, and to create a new and vibrant third work from it. (Locarno Festival)

Death and the Devil 2009

Ethnologist and adventurer, Count Eric von Rosen was a man of contradictions: interested in the natives of Africa and colonial racism. Nestler embarks on a journey in search of his grandfather.

Saturday Chile 1974

A reflection on the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet captured in its economic and social causalities. Originally shot for a TV youth program but canceled before broadcast.

Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene 1973

This is a small, intense film based on Schoenberg’s opus of the same name with the subtitle “danger, fear, catastrophe”. It deals with emerging fascism and the persecution of Jews, as well as with their historical continuities.

Spain! 1973

Filmed in Spain, Finland, Sweden, and West Germany, 'Spanien!' investigates ideas of internationalism and solidarity, using personal testimonies from former members of the International Brigades who joined the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War and from members of the Workers’ Commissions ('Comisiones Obreras').

From Greece 1966

The first part of this film is devoted to the Greek resistance against fascism and the civil war for independence. While the voice-over recites facts and names, photos take us into the past and the everyday lives of the people. The second part takes us to Greece in 1965, where the masses are protesting against the removal of the liberal Georgios Papandreou. – Two years later the military junta seized power in Greece. When Filmecho/Filmwoche called the film “communist”, it was doomed. It was rarely shown and originated the stigma that ultimately made it impossible for Peter Nestler to continue to work in Germany.

Ödenwaldstetten 1964

Portrait of a small south German village and its residents in the early sixties. Rural culture is undergoing a transformation caused by the intrusion of the industrial world. Gestures at work and words of its inhabitants.

Mülheim on the Ruhr 1964

This dialogue-free short is edited to music and the rhythms of change in a small town in the Ruhr region, shot a few years after the first mining pits were closed in the area. Nestler takes his audience on a journey through mining pits, coal heaps, cold stores, and to workingmen settlements and pubs of Mülheim.

Essays 1963

A cheerful take on the lives of school children in a Swiss rural environment. Young pupils recite short essays they have written on subjects such as the long walk to school, the distribution of milk during breaks, and a brawl in the courtyard.

The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle 1963

A strangler is loose on a British estate, and he not only strangles his victims but brands an "M" onto their foreheads before he decapitates them.

By the Dike Sluice 1963

In his first film, Peter Nestler gives voice to an old floodgate. A nearby village, its inhabitants, wooden posts and twisted willow rods are presented from this unusual perspective. The floodgate ponders the fisher boats coming home from the sea along the shipping channel which is fed at low tide by a small river.

Black Gravel 1961

Tensions rise when a U.S. military base is built in a small village in post-war Germany.

Und sowas nennt sich Leben 1961

Der Schinderhannes 1958

1802: The adventurous life story of Hans Bückler, known as “Schinderhannes”, who fights against the French occupying forces and large landowners who exploit poor farmers in the Hunsrück region during the Napoleonic Wars.