Asta Nielsen: pioneer of cinema and first European film star, tragedienne and comedienne, writer and artist. As a working-class child and single parent, she works her way up from the bottom - and consciously stages herself as the first role model for independent women and queers. We retell the story of this singular phenomenon with her own words and film clips.
The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is not only waged with bombs, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, but also in the media. It is a "propaganda battle" internally and externally. Russia spreads targeted disinformation in order to systematically devalue news. At the same time, their own population should be convinced that they want to liberate Ukraine from Nazis. Ukraine's narrative wants to emotionally mobilize its own population and strengthen resistance to the aggressor. Spindoctors are of particular importance in the propaganda battle over Ukraine. On the Ukrainian side, it's often influencers like Oleksiy Arestovych. On the Russian side, Vladimir Solovyov, Putin's snout, is supposed to sell the war to his own people with his daily TV talks. The documentary shows the new front lines of virtual warfare and provides insights into the populists' bag of tricks on social networks.
In 1979, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, revolution broke out in Iran and overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This event marks the end of a two and a half thousand year old monarchy. This documentary retraces the lives of these two enemies who clashed for more than thirty years, from the Shah's rise to power in the 1940s until his fall.
Since time immemorial, we have used images to form a picture of the world. But never before has there been as much filming and photography as there is currently. But how do people deal with it when the world and its image merge? The filmmakers Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer show how quickly and profoundly the way we deal with images is changing. Will we eventually move into a world in which reality and image can no longer be distinguished from each other?
October 2018 was the four-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. The documentary traces the story of how it was finally brought to an end with the peace of Munster and Osnabruck – the first peace in European history to be concluded at the negotiating table and not fought on the battlefield.
Berlin’s Museum Island, the cultural center of the German capital on the Spree river, houses a large number of art pieces from all over the globe, from the Stone Age to the present day. A walk through their great institutions to marvel at their masterpieces.
Seven directors remember their childhood and youth; to the 50s and 60s in the GDR. They appear to be curious, vulnerable children and teenagers who also want to be cool (even though the word doesn't exist for them yet). They live in well-adjusted or resistant families. Some only in half because their father left for the West. Depending on their family background, they want or should help build the new, better Germany.
When the Congo became independent in 1960, clashes between rival groups ensued. White mercenaries with war experience are also involved in the conflicts. They include Germans who, under the leadership of the former Wehrmacht officer Siegfried Müller, brutally attack the black population. After the "Stern" reporter Gerd Heidemann had uncovered the machinations, the GDR filmmaker Walter Heynowski made a politically motivated documentary about Siegfried "Kongo Müller". Now Siegfried Ressel has reconstructed the story of the German mercenaries and the propaganda argument about their use.
On the way to summer camp, eleven-year-old Lena develops a crush on Wolfgang, but Antonia is interested in him too. Although Lena and Wolfgang grow closer to each other, camp director Eichler disapproves of their relationship and tries to split them up by assigning them to different groups. The conflicts escalate until one night, during a disco event, Lena suddenly runs away.