Jonatan Briel

The double suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and his companion Henriette Vogel on November 21, 1811 at the Kleiner Wannsee in Berlin is the focus of this film. Based on testimonies from the preparation days and the day of the suicide, as well as the statements of the Wannsee innkeepers taken from the police records, the suicides are reconstructed - from the planning to the execution.

Vienna, March 18, 1863: the poet Friedrich Hebbel, weakened by fever, spends his fiftieth — and final — birthday confined to bed. In feverish reverie, he recalls his life and work. The two blend with each other as well as with the present. A demanding reflection, filmed mostly in monochrome images, on this "ardent man" (a description by Eduard Mörike) and his work.

The final installment in Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy (following TICKET OF NO RETURN and FREAK ORLANDO) casts Delphine Seyrig as the nefarious Fritz Lang supervillain Dr. Mabuse, here the head of a powerful media empire that seeks to create headlines by manufacturing (and then publicly destroying) its own celebrity: the wealthy, handsome playboy Dorian Gray.

First film made in Wolfgang Staudte's seminar at the DFFB. The film reflects Briel's own experience with bureaucracy — shot at his former workplace at Fehrbelliner Platz in West Berlin. The cast consisted entirely of non-professional actors. Director of photography: Gerry Schum (DFFB student). Assistant director on all his academy films: Norbert Maas, a theater student.

A portrait of the life of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), a playwright of the Sturm und Drang period and friend of the young Goethe, with evident parallels to the life of the filmmaker himself. Lenz's progressive mental deterioration and his tragic trajectory are central to the film.

A drama about Friedrich Hölderlin, a poetic genius caught between madness and withdrawal from the world. "Scardanelli" was the pseudonym used by Hölderlin during his years of seclusion in Tübingen, where he lived from 1807 until his death in 1843.

The double suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and his companion Henriette Vogel on November 21, 1811 at the Kleiner Wannsee in Berlin is the focus of this film. Based on testimonies from the preparation days and the day of the suicide, as well as the statements of the Wannsee innkeepers taken from the police records, the suicides are reconstructed - from the planning to the execution.

The double suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and his companion Henriette Vogel on November 21, 1811 at the Kleiner Wannsee in Berlin is the focus of this film. Based on testimonies from the preparation days and the day of the suicide, as well as the statements of the Wannsee innkeepers taken from the police records, the suicides are reconstructed - from the planning to the execution.

Vienna, March 18, 1863: the poet Friedrich Hebbel, weakened by fever, spends his fiftieth — and final — birthday confined to bed. In feverish reverie, he recalls his life and work. The two blend with each other as well as with the present. A demanding reflection, filmed mostly in monochrome images, on this "ardent man" (a description by Eduard Mörike) and his work.

Vienna, March 18, 1863: the poet Friedrich Hebbel, weakened by fever, spends his fiftieth — and final — birthday confined to bed. In feverish reverie, he recalls his life and work. The two blend with each other as well as with the present. A demanding reflection, filmed mostly in monochrome images, on this "ardent man" (a description by Eduard Mörike) and his work.

First film made in Wolfgang Staudte's seminar at the DFFB. The film reflects Briel's own experience with bureaucracy — shot at his former workplace at Fehrbelliner Platz in West Berlin. The cast consisted entirely of non-professional actors. Director of photography: Gerry Schum (DFFB student). Assistant director on all his academy films: Norbert Maas, a theater student.

A portrait of the life of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), a playwright of the Sturm und Drang period and friend of the young Goethe, with evident parallels to the life of the filmmaker himself. Lenz's progressive mental deterioration and his tragic trajectory are central to the film.

A portrait of the life of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), a playwright of the Sturm und Drang period and friend of the young Goethe, with evident parallels to the life of the filmmaker himself. Lenz's progressive mental deterioration and his tragic trajectory are central to the film.

A drama about Friedrich Hölderlin, a poetic genius caught between madness and withdrawal from the world. "Scardanelli" was the pseudonym used by Hölderlin during his years of seclusion in Tübingen, where he lived from 1807 until his death in 1843.

A drama about Friedrich Hölderlin, a poetic genius caught between madness and withdrawal from the world. "Scardanelli" was the pseudonym used by Hölderlin during his years of seclusion in Tübingen, where he lived from 1807 until his death in 1843.

No synopsis found.

No synopsis found.

Briel's first independent production after leaving the DFFB, made for the Sender Freies Berlin. The title is a biblical reference (Daniel 5 — "you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting"). TV documentary

No synopsis available.

A story revolving around the assassination of socialist leader Jean Jaurès in Paris in 1914. The script was improvised, and the film was shot on location in Mainz, Reims, Paris, Ibiza, and Formentera. The title refers to an islet near Ibiza in the Balearic Islands where part of the film was shot. Not to be confused with the 1971 album of the same name by the German group Can.

No synopsis available yet.

In the early 1970s, Briel recorded conversations on tape with the opera and concert singer Adelheid Pickert, then nearly 90 years old, in a garden house in Wilmersdorf. She recalls her greatest successes between 1915 and 1930. In 1981, Briel revisits his meeting with this artist and juxtaposes the old lady's account with his own memories of her. Format: Hörspiel (radio play)

An adaptation inspired by Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. TV film.

An adaptation inspired by Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. TV film.

The film presents three faces of Berlin as a visual puzzle: the old imperial and fascist Berlin; the newly reconstructed Berlin around Breitscheidplatz; and finally, Berlin as evoked by the elderly Adelheid Pickert, an opera singer of almost 90 who was famous as a Mahler interpreter around 1910. This third Berlin is that of a future European center freed from the weight of the past. Pickert's portrait — whose statements are described as "strangely brilliant" — creates a counterpoint to the atmosphere of Berlin in the summer of 1970.

The film presents three faces of Berlin as a visual puzzle: the old imperial and fascist Berlin; the newly reconstructed Berlin around Breitscheidplatz; and finally, Berlin as evoked by the elderly Adelheid Pickert, an opera singer of almost 90 who was famous as a Mahler interpreter around 1910. This third Berlin is that of a future European center freed from the weight of the past. Pickert's portrait — whose statements are described as "strangely brilliant" — creates a counterpoint to the atmosphere of Berlin in the summer of 1970.

Based on a text by Susette Gontard — the beloved of Friedrich Hölderlin, who signed her letters under this name. This places the work in direct continuity with Briel's interest in Hölderlin.

Not documented. The title suggests a documentary or artistic project around Heinrich von Kleist in Berlin, a recurring theme throughout Briel's work.

A visit to another world: that of transvestites, leather men, costume artists, and exotic tourists from around the world — a carousel that has been sounding through the nights of the Berlin SO 36 district for nearly fifty years. Hidden behind a grey, crumbling postwar facade near the Görlitz railway station in Kreuzberg lies "Elli's Bierbar." The proprietress, known to all as "Elli," recounts the origins and development of her establishment and introduces her long-standing clientele. Format: Originaltonhörspiel (documentary radio play).