Glimpses of Western Germany

St. Louis

October 2019 •German

Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.

Návrat k životu

January 1946 •Czech

The Endless Summer

June 1966 •English

Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.

Night and Fog

April 1959 •French

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Let All Children Smile

January 1957 •Romanian

The film's protagonists are the orphaned children taken into custody by the state and institutionalized at Children's House no. 6 from Bucharest. For Mészáros, the concern for the situation of children left orphaned during the Second World War is autobiographical: the director directly experienced the absence of parents in her own childhood.

Women of Today

January 1958 •Romanian

Made on the occasion of March 8, it presents a series of brief portraits of women, from various professional fields, of different ages and even of different ethnicities, pointing out the benefits that the communist organization had brought to their daily lives. A special emphasis is placed on their status as mothers and on the role of nurseries and socialist kindergartens not only in making their lives easier, but also in giving them the time they need to build a career. Another concern of the filmmaker, starting from the concrete case of one of the protagonists, is to highlight the differences between the happy present and the not-too-distant past in which someone with her social status should have dedicated herself exclusively to raising children, in hygienic and extremely difficult lives.

Germany: A Summer's Fairytale

October 2006 •German

A documentary of the German national soccer team’s 2006 World Cup experience that changed the face of modern Germany.

Breath of Freedom

February 2014 •English

In World War II. African-American GIs liberate Germany from Nazi rule while racism prevailed in their own army and home country. Returning home they continue fighting for their own rights in the civil rights movement.

Wir waren in der AfD - Aussteiger berichten

January 2024 •German

The AfD, founded in 2013, is a right-wing party that has become increasingly radicalized in recent years. To illustrate this, only those who enthusiastically joined the party in its early years are heard. They describe what they looked for and found in the party, but also how and why they left, disillusioned and frightened by the AfD's developments. How did they experience the party's radicalization process? How did friends and family react? When and why did they decide to turn their back on the party? How difficult was the exit process? The documentary provides an illuminating inside view of this party, which has been driving the established parties and the political establishment ahead of it for over ten years, gives viewers a unique look into the AfD's chronicle and world of thought and is at the same time a film about the mechanisms of political radicalization.

Sans Soleil

March 1983 •French

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

April 2005 •German

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Viac pre všetkých

January 1949 •Slovak

Peter Eisenman: Building Germany's Holocaust Memorial

February 2009 •English

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

Vltava po válce

January 1949 •Czech

A 4-year-old girl cries, lost in the city. A Soviet soldier on a ferry takes her in and takes her to her home village.

Vítězný lid

January 1949 •Czech

Budujeme Lidice

January 1948 •Czech

Rothenbaumchaussee

January 1991 •English

Hamburg, summer 1945: The young English control officer Captain Hannes Hacker arrives in the Hanseatic city to initiate the establishment of a new, liberal German radio station - in the Funkhaus on Rothenbaumchaussee. But Hacker also has private ties to Hamburg. He was born here and lived here until he had to leave his hometown on a Jewish Kindertransport.

What The Durrells Did Next

May 2019 •English

Hosted by Keeley Hawes, star of the popular television series The Durrells, this documentary reveals the adventures of the eccentric Durrell family once they left Corfu, Greece.

Hallo, Munich

April 1968 •

The rut of Dalmatian hinterland changes with the arrival of returning guest workers, and things they bring along: cars, radios and new way of life.

Die Dichter und die Räterepublik

January 1990 •German

Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.