
19 Jul 2015

Schwarz, Rot, Gold und Fußballfieber
Documentary about the German football team at the 1990's World Cup in Italy.
Otto von Bismarck

Lothar Bucher

Theodor Wangemann

19 Jul 2015

Documentary about the German football team at the 1990's World Cup in Italy.
25 May 1995
Documentary on the German luxury liner St. Louis that sailed from Hamburg to Cuba in 1939 carrying 937 German Jews. For 30 excruciating days the ship wandered the seas and was refused haven by every country in the Americas.

21 Dec 2008

Blixa Bargeld (born Christian Emmerich) is a German-born musician active in a number of artistic fields. He is best known for his studio work and live performances with the groups Einstürzende Neubauten and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. In the center the front singer of this busting sound event – one of the most dazzling personalities in the history of German music: Blixa Bargeld. Nobody else embodied the 1980ies West Berlin punk attitude more than him. Nobody was so over the edge, so demonic and at the same time so inventive. Blixa Bargeld is mainly known for being the mind and front singer of Einstürzende Neubauten, although he is a multi-talent and has never restricted himself to being only musician. Portrait for ZDF/arte series "Mein Leben"

18 Feb 2018

The film explores the turbulent lives of homeless persons in Cologne, Germany. Through their personal belongings the homeless share with the viewer their memories and emotions, and provide insight into the secrets of survival on the street.

09 Aug 1985

A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century, and texts by Celedonio Flores and Enrique Santos Discépolo.

26 Apr 2018

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon, in Italy, in Germany and in Switzerland.

05 Jun 2025

China is pushing hard into German and European markets. Furthermore, Beijing is developing into an increasingly powerful military power. An investigative reporter team from BR, rbb, and SWR is investigating the impact this has on Germany's internal and external security.

31 May 2007

Documentary film about the painter and sculptor Jörg Immendorff who ranks among the most important German artists. The filmmakers accompanied Immendorff over a period of two years – until his death in May 2007. The artist had been living for nine years knowing that he was terminally ill with ALS. The film shows how Immendorff continued to work with unabated energy and how he tried not to let himself be restrained by his deteriorating health.

24 May 2001

Black Box BRD steps back into German history, showing the Federal Republic of Germany of the 70s and 80s. The country is polarized due to the power struggle of the German state and the "Red Army Faction". Society is torn, the fronts are irreconcilable. The life stories of both Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen are tragically linked to this era. Grams is the one who takes up arms for moral rigor; Herrhausen however seizes power and dies when powerful.

30 Aug 2021

The film shines a light onto federal chancellor Angela Merkel and her now ending 16-year-long tenure. An era, not an episode. And a vagarious relationship history between the chancellor and the Germans. Who has changed whom here?

27 Dec 2022

In southern Germany, winter can still be admired in all its glory every year. With its white coat of snow and icicles and myriads of small crystals that look like geometric works of art. In the valleys and on the slopes the snow is still so thick every year that the alpine huts are snowed in up to the windows. Cows and dairymen are safe in their farms at lower altitudes. But not the wild creatures of the mountains! They need strategies to survive the cold season and to defy snow masses, cold and ice. And some seem to do it so easily that they even raise their young in the middle of winter. But how do animals, plants and fungi cope with the annually recurring ice age, which from our perspective is a time of need? The many adaptations in nature prove that winter is an integral part of the natural cycle of the year and the living environment of species. They are adapted to cold and frost. That is why the animals and plants at the edge of the Alps suffer particularly from climate change!

25 Sep 2017

A portrait of the inventor of the letterpress, who was a key figure in the history of mankind, but also an enthusiastic inventor, a daring businessman, a tenacious troublemaker: the life of Johannes Gutenberg (circa 1400-68).

14 Feb 2008

Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.

15 Feb 2017

The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of one on the most important events in Western civilization: the birth of an idea that continues to shape the life of every American today. In 1517, power was in the hands of the few, thought was controlled by the chosen, and common people lived lives without hope. On October 31 of that year, a penniless monk named Martin Luther sparked the revolution that would change everything. He had no army. In fact, he preached nonviolence so powerfully that — 400 years later — Michael King would change his name to Martin Luther King to show solidarity with the original movement. This movement, the Protestant Reformation, changed Western culture at its core, sparking the drive toward individualism, freedom of religion, women's rights, separation of church and state, and even free public education. Without the Reformation, there would have been no pilgrims, no Puritans, and no America in the way we know it.

22 Feb 1992

Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, due largely to the shame attached to rape in German culture at that time.

28 Aug 2017

The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.

18 Feb 2020

The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, was only one of many unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin's ruthless executioners over three decades. The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers was part of a relentless purge, the secrets and details of which have only recently been partially revealed.

07 Feb 2023

The war in the Ukraine has changed the way many European countries view Russian politics. Suddenly it became clear how dependent countries had become on Russian gas imports for decades and what Vladimir Putin was up to. However, no country needs more gas than Germany. It was only after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine that the German government realized that Russia had long used gas as a weapon to impose its will on states. The instrument created for this purpose is the natural gas production company GAZPROM. So how did Germany become so dependent on Russian gas? The documentary shows how, over several decades and several changes of government, a broad alliance of politicians and business representatives did everything possible to secure Germany's energy supply with cheap Russian gas, while the Kremlin's foreign policy became increasingly aggressive and the warnings of experts went unheeded.

03 Mar 1978

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

16 May 2013

Is the solution to Switzerland's future to integrate Germany into the confederation? After all, like Michael Ringier, CEO of the Ringier media group, says, blithely ignoring all minorities, we're very close in culture and language. Oskar Freysinger takes out his guitar and sings his answer. Politicians from French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino think expanding will help the country survive. The former German foreign minister thinks the two countries' traditions are too different. The banker Oswald Grübel is worried about Germany's debts, although he'd be prepared to take over its assets. With serious interviews interspersed with gags (boat people on Lake Constance, the last Habsburger as a peasant), Giaccobbo gathers off-the-cuff reactions which reveal a lot about the different mentalities. The movie laughs at preconceived notions, redefines neutrality and reflects on what designates a nation. Switzerland, which loves to teach the world a lesson, will soon helvetize the planet, oder?