Heino Deckert

Johannes, a doctor of physics, travels with his doctoral supervisor to a scientific congress in the Alps. A series of mysterious incidents occur on site. He meets Karin, a mysterious jazz pianist who seems to know more about him than she can know. Suddenly, mysterious deaths begin to pile up and Johannes tries to uncover the secret under the mountain.

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

From massive waves to melting ice, filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky travels around the world to capture stunning images of the beauty and raw power of water.

Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.

The main character of the documentary is a 16-year-old Kurdish girl who, after the tragic death of her mother on the Polish-Belarusian border, has to become a mother to her 4 younger brothers.

In the historic Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, despite the cruel war that has been raging since 2014 between the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Ukrainian government, people try to survive in the rotten heart of chaos, where violence disguises itself as peace, propaganda becomes univocal truth and hatred reigns in the name of love.

Johannes, a doctor of physics, travels with his doctoral supervisor to a scientific congress in the Alps. A series of mysterious incidents occur on site. He meets Karin, a mysterious jazz pianist who seems to know more about him than she can know. Suddenly, mysterious deaths begin to pile up and Johannes tries to uncover the secret under the mountain.

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

From massive waves to melting ice, filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky travels around the world to capture stunning images of the beauty and raw power of water.

Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.

The main character of the documentary is a 16-year-old Kurdish girl who, after the tragic death of her mother on the Polish-Belarusian border, has to become a mother to her 4 younger brothers.

In the historic Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, despite the cruel war that has been raging since 2014 between the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Ukrainian government, people try to survive in the rotten heart of chaos, where violence disguises itself as peace, propaganda becomes univocal truth and hatred reigns in the name of love.

In Echigo, Japan, the snow often lies several feet deep well into May, covering landscapes and villages. Over the centuries, the inhabitants have organised their lives accordingly. In order to record their very distinctive forms of everyday life, their festivals, and religious rituals, Ulrike Ottinger journeyed to the mythical snow country – accompanied by two Kabuki performers. Taking the parts of the students Takeo and Mako, they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who in the mid-19th century wrote his remarkable book “Snow Country Tales”.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war, the greatest displacement since World War II. Filmmaker Ai Weiwei examines the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Over the course of one year in 23 countries, Weiwei follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretch across the globe, including Afghanistan, France, Greece, Germany and Iraq.

Between September 2000 and April 2007, eight men with Turkish roots, a man of Greek descent and a German policewoman were murdered. The investigations were initially carried out exclusively in the vicinity of the non-German victims suspected of drug trafficking and organized crime. The families of the murdered were thus victims again, this time of prejudicial stigmatization. After a failed bank robbery, the trail finally led to the right-wing extremist terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU). After the suicide of the two main perpetrators, the trial against the only survivor of the NSU trio, Beate Zschäpe, and four alleged helpers and supporters began in 2013 and ended in 2018.

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

Winter. A bus stop in a small village. People are waiting for a bus. They talk. Listening to their conversations, the viewer can imagine the world they live in. United by the movement of the camera, the place and the people blend together.

Georgy is driving a load of freight into Russia when, after an unpleasant encounter with the police at a border crossing, he finds himself giving a lift to a strange old man with disturbing stories about his younger days in the Army. After next picking up a young woman who works as a prostitute and is wary of the territory, Georgy finds himself lost, and despite asking some homeless men for help, he’s less sure than he was before of how to make his way back where he belongs. As brutal images of violence and alienation cross the screen, Georgy’s odyssey becomes darker and more desperate until it reaches an unexpected conclusion.

The films in the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a « road movie » from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive.

In Saxon-Anhalt, near the town of Zerbst, set away from busy roads, next to a deserted military landing strip, is the village of Straguth. An unimportant place. Lost in time. Or ahead of time. The film describes the people of this quiet place, in the past, the present and the future. A film like the digging of a hole. If one could dig in spiral form. And dig a black hole. An archaeological journey to landscape, people and things, traces of changing times and transition. Wide open landscapes and detailed drawings of people within. And on entering Otto Nathos’ modest bar, there is always talk of the war. The era of youth.

What would be the shortest route between Entre Rios in Argentina and the Chinese metropolis Shanghai? Simply a straight line through the center of the earth, since the two places are antipodes: they are located diametrically opposite to each other on the earth's surface. During his visits to four such antipodal pairs, the award-winning documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captured images that turn our view of the world upside down.

The third part of Thomas Heise's time-lapse observation, in which he accompanies the people of Saxony-Anhalt. At the centre of the film is Jeanette, who grew up with four brothers and became pregnant at 15. In the meantime, however, she fulfilled her dream and became a bus driver. Her eldest son Tommy is a troubled child, while the younger Paul is doing well at school and the family has high hopes for him. Heise interacts with her family with openness and caution, without shaming anyone. What emerges is a work about the changing story of a place and the people who live there.

Wilma has many qualifications and talents, yet suffers just as many disappointments in life. After she catches her husband cheating, she runs away to Vienna in search of a new life. There she lives with bustling bohemians, tries her luck at a variety of jobs and perhaps... at love again.

Refugees from the Caucasian republics, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Russians, meet on the shore of the Black Sea: they work as shop keepers, life guards, karaoke singers, or just enjoy their holidays. It all happens at a place called Broadway, which is no-where to be found on a map, not even the most detailed ones. The temporary inhabitants of Broadway construct a whole world en miniature, consisting of small carts, tents or booths parked in close, haphazard rows. The scenery, which is put up for a few weeks during the summer, bubbles with life – and in no way corresponds with ordinary daily life in Russia.

Two men, a Finn and a Belarusian live alone, on a lake's island.

Summer 1989, East Germany. Adam works as a tailor, Evelyn as a waitress. They are planning a vacation together when Evelyn finds out that Adam is cheating on her and decides to leave for the holiday on her own.

The life story of three former student leaders who were still children when general Pinochet seized power in Chile on 11 September 1973.

It is a story about the Soviet worker Pyotr and the German engineer Hans, who came to the USSR before the war on a business trip. At a Soviet plant the German team works in cooperation with Russian specialists. Once Hans makes a mistake which causes the explosion of the furnace and human losses. Hans finds himself at the mercy of Pyotr, the only witness to his actions near the furnace. Pyotr also depends on Hans, because Pyotr’s very presence near the furnace entails accusation of subversive actions and a death sentence. Mutual suspicion gives way to silent sympathy and later friendship. They even look like each other, both have small children. Pyotr secretly leaves the town with his family but Hans feels loss rather that relief at the disappearance of the embarrassing witness.

A prismatic meditation on pollution in the capital of the World’s biggest free-market democracy and the most polluted and populated city, Delhi – a film about the pollution inside of the human mind.

Altmark is located in the northern part of the German region of Saxony-Anhalt. This area of the country is sparsely populated and rural, and is mostly defined by agriculture and a rather frugal architecture reminiscent of that of the Hanseatic cities. It's here that an extensive military site was built in the 1930s. It is used as a training area for the German army and also includes a garrison town, in which parts of the military corps reside. The site covers a surface area of 323 square kilometres. It is the third-biggest military area in Germany and the most modern in Europe.

Renowned documentarian Thomas Heise begins a film on Berlin's Schönhauser Allee, the road he lived on for decades. A few months later, Heise dies unexpectedly.

Vika, who is 84, is one of the eldest DJs in the world. Because of her attitude, she is far from any stereotypes about senior citizens. Bittersweet documentary musical about consistence in following your own path and fighting for your dreams.

Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, a young nomad is confronted with his destiny after animals fall victim to a plague which threatens to eradicate nomadism.

A Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China finds herself drawn to a mysterious loner who works the night shift at a morgue. Their encounter unsettles her sense of body, beauty, and mortality. The fragile love story of two outsiders who turn each other’s worlds upside down and discover that they are not alone.

This German documentary looks inside a nearly idle restaurant in a dowdy building in the country of Georgia, its listless workers waiting for business to pick up. The mournful atmosphere serves as a metaphor for the uncertain future of Georgia.

A family film which tells the unlikely and timeless story of almost ten year old Tony, whose father rises from being a crane driver to Secretary of State. As a result his parents get divorced and Tony does everything he can to bring them back together. He even calls in the help of the queen.

In the Andes, a Belgian doctor and his photojournalist wife become ensnared in a native tribe's struggle with a mining company.

Over seven years, director Thomas Heise revisits five young actors from his 2007 Berlin staging of Heiner Müller’s “Anatomy Titus.” At irregular intervals, he asks them to film their everyday lives and articulate their hopes. The footage is deliberately fragmentary and non-linear: there is no smooth narrative or causal thread. Among them, 22-year-old Sven, whose apprenticeship, naval stint, dishonorable discharge, and failed relationships leave him convinced “nothing comes next”, becomes the focal point of this long-term observation. Invoking Müller’s own outsider declaration - “I am a Negro” - the film offers a stark, uncompromising portrait of aimless youth while Heise probes his role as documentarian.

Short comedy from Berlin.