He was an icon, flamboyant pianist, egomaniac, showman par excellence: Liberace – the King of Bling – enjoyed an unparalleled career. The salon pianist turned megastar lived the American dream, but it was a life of unmatched paradox and eccentricity.
What is consciousness? Is it in all living beings? Why are we predisposed for mystical experience? And what happens when we die? AWARE follows six brilliant researchers approaching the mystery from radically different perspectives, opening as a science film but emerging beyond the explicable.
Since the pro-Russian separatist uprisings began in eastern Ukraine, hundreds of women have joined the armed struggle. Only a few have made it to the front, because female soldiers are still relegated to administrative posts. Three female soldiers report on their fight against the separatists and patriarchal society.
In 2019, the renowned investigative editorial department of Süddeutsche Zeitung received a secret video, which made international headlines when it was published and plunged the Austrian government into a crisis. The film provides an intimate insight into the journalists’ highly sensitive work – from the moment they received the video to its publication.
In 2004, European citizen Khaled El Masri was illegally abducted by the CIA and taken to a secret prison near Kabul. His case brought the CIA’s worldwide so called “rendition program”, whose agents were forcibly taking suspected terrorists to secret locations and torturing them, to light. In this political thriller we tell his story for the first time.
In the 1990s, Spanish war photographer Gervasio Sánchez documented the lives of children in besieged Sarajevo. 25 years later he returns and confronts today’s adults with images from that time. What became of them? What was it like growing up after the war? An often overwhelming encounter with the past
The Finnish design company Marimekko is famous for its original prints and colours. Maija Isola was one of Marimekko’s first designers and she spent 38 years working for the company. What is the secret behind the fabric designs that conquered first Finland and then the whole world? We tell the story of this extraordinary artist.
Carlotta cannot see faces, not even her own. For her, human faces are no bastion of trust, but places of fear and confusion. Filmmaker and neuroscientist Valentin Riedl travels through Carlotta’s universe, full of anthropomorphic animals, lucid dreams and bumpy false paths. Her never-ending search for answers leads her to art—and thus an avenue to her own face and back to humanity.
This author-driven documentary starts with the personal story of Mina, the director of the film. She unveils a family secret by telling the story of her grandmother, a woman she never met who died under mysterious circumstances. Her personal story and other women who share their experiences shows how Iran’s patriarchal system instils fear in women in public spaces and in the home.
A 14-year old Moroccan girl, Fatima Osaadan, is tortured to death by the family she was working for as a housemaid. We enter the background of a cruel murder and give an insight into Moroccan society from two opposing perspectives: The archaic, penurious world from which the young servants come and the world of the urban social climbers.
We accompany one of the world’s most renowned transgender surgeons and his patients, each of them in a different stage of their gender reassignment. What makes people set off on this journey despite all the pain and unresolved questions? A film full of feeling that lets us experience the full spectrum and radicalness of this transition.
Prosperity on the one side, misery on the other: just how directly the two can be connected comes to light in Luzia Schmid’s film about the meteoric rise of her hometown of Zug upon becoming a tax haven.
