Widerstand und Verfolgung in Köln 1933-1945

Der dritte Bruder

May 2025 •German

While searching for her grandmother, the director comes across the story of three brothers who are torn between the fronts of political ideologies in the Third Reich and divided Germany: "the third brother" is the filmmaker's grandfather, who, in confronting her father, tries to overcome decades of speechlessness and, in the process, to understand where in the past her father's sense of family fell by the wayside.

Erna, Helmut and the Nazis

April 2021 •German

Germany, 1929. Helmut Machemer and Erna Schwalbe fall madly in love and marry in 1932. Everything indicates that a bright future awaits them; but then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power and their lives are suddenly put in danger because of Erna's Jewish ancestry.

Was lebst Du?

November 2004 •German

I followed the everyday lives of Ali, Kais, Ertan and Alban with my camera for over two years. The time was characterized by disappointments, conflicts and also great successes. It all began with a visit to the "Klingelpütz" youth center in the middle of Cologne. Young migrants have been meeting here for many years.

Urlaub im Dritten Reich - Kraft durch Freude

June 2001 •German

The National Socialist community "Kraft durch Freude" was a political organization with the task of organizing, monitoring and standardizing the leisure time of the German population. It is known today mainly as a vacation organization that practically brought mass tourism to Germany for the first time. The documentary shows private footage of travelers, film sequences from the Ministry of Propaganda as well as material from Eva Braun's film archive and thus provides a comprehensive insight into how vacations were organized in the Third Reich.

Liberators Take Liberties

February 1992 •German

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.

Here and Elsewhere

September 1976 •French

Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the contrasting footage it shows of the fedayeen and of a French family watching television at home. Originally shot by the Dziga Vertov Group as a film on Palestinian freedom fighters, Godard later reworked the material alongside Anne-Marie Miéville.

Mama General

January 1997 •German

A film about poverty in a rich country: father, mother, seven children have made it out of the homeless asylum. The author met the Cologne family B. for the first time in 1976. Living with debts, installments, reminders, living with the certainty that the children will not fare any differently. For more than twenty years, between dreams and fears, the camera recorded two generations' fear of failure and hunger for middle class. A unique film chronicle from the "latest economic miracle" - between 1976 and 1997.

Verbotene Liebe - Queere Opfer der NS-Diktatur

January 2024 •German

Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era – but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They should be excluded from the national community. More than 50,000 queer people have been proven to have been persecuted. The documentary highlights three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror.

Innenansichten - Deutschland 1937

August 2012 •German

Twee zussen in verzet

May 2016 •Dutch

Old resistance fighters Truus and Freddie look back on their life during wartime.

Wie konnte es geschehen? - Teil 1: "Deutschland erwache..." (1914 - 1938)

January 2006 •German

In 1945, 160 German cities lay in ruins and the loss of millions of lives, billions in material assets and countless cultural treasures was mourned throughout Europe... With the question “How could it happen?”, the film goes back to the year 1914, when the “primal catastrophe of the 20th century” took its course with the First World War.

Hitlers Traum von Micky Maus - Zeichentrick unterm Hakenkreuz

January 1999 •German

The order comes in the summer of 1941 from propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels himself: The best animators are summoned to Berlin. Their task: Producing feature-length cartoons in ‘Disney-Quality’ with the newly founded ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH’. To get trained, the Disney movie “Snow White” is re-traced frame by frame. After the final victory, one new feature-length production of quality shall be released every year from 1947 onwards. – that is the plan. Only in 1943, the first production is completed: “Armer Hansi” a 17-minute-long colour movie, realized with the effortful Multiplane-technology. The second film by the ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm’ is only completed in 1946 – by DEFA. In the territories occupied by Germany, cartoons are produced as well, sometimes harmless ones, sometimes propagandistic ones. With excerpts from animated movies, life-action film documents, and witness reports by contemporaries, this documentary draws a picture of the cartoon production in the third Reich.

The Memphis Belle

April 1944 •English

This WW2 documentary centers on the crew of the American B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle as it prepares to execute a strategic bombing raid on Nazi submarine pens in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

The Eternal Jew

November 1940 •German

A Nazi propaganda film made to promote anti-Semitism among the German people. Newly-shot footage of Jewish neighborhoods in recently-conquered Poland is combined with preexisting film clips and stills to defame the religion and advance Hitler's slurs that its adherents were plotting to undermine European civilization.

Swastika

January 1974 •English

Comprised of video shot during the Nazi regime, including propaganda, newsreels, broadcasts and even some of Eva Braun's colorized personal home movies, we explore the way in which the Third Reich infiltrated the lives of the German population, from 1933 to 1945.

La justice sous l'Occupation

November 2024 •French

Outside

February 2018 •German

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.

Hitlers Menschenhändler: Juden als Austauschware

September 2011 •German

The SS chief Heinrich Himmler wanted to exchange Jews against so-called German Reich abroad, against arms sales or for cash - with the express approval of Hitler.

Paragraph 175

January 2000 •German

During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.

The Architecture of Doom

October 1989 •Swedish

Featuring never-before-seen film footage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, The Architecture of Doom captures the inner workings of the Third Reich and illuminates the Nazi aesthetic in art, architecture and popular culture. From Nazi party rallies to the final days inside Hitler's bunker, this sensational film shows how Adolf Hitler rose from being a failed artist to creating a world of ponderous kitsch and horrifying terror. Hitler worshipped ancient Rome and Greece, and dreamed of a new Golden Age of classical art and monumental architecture, populated by beautiful, patriotic Aryans. Degenerated artists and inferior races had no place in his lurid fantasy. As this riveting film shows, the Nazis went from banning the art of modernists like Picasso to forced euthanasia of the retarded and sick, and finally to the persecution of homosexuals and the extermination of the Jews.