Hambach Forest in Germany was supposed to be cleared to expand an open-cast lignite mine. In 2018, during a large-scale police operation to evict activists occupying the forest, film student Steffen Meyn was killed in a tragic accident. Based on his film footage, we chronicle Steffen’s journey and follow him into the activists’ world.
Algorithms decide whether we are creditworthy, entitled to social welfare and which partner is the right one for us. But what happens if algorithms make mistakes? We tell the stories of people whose lives have been turned upside down after algorithms misjudged their situations. Who is responsible if AI turns out to be a curse rather than a blessing?
His mother blames communism, his uncle an inheritance dispute, the others remain silent. Film director Dieu Hao Do examines his fragmented family, which has scattered across three continents since the Vietnam War. Is communism to blame for their estrangement?
A story about a man who dedicated his life to preserving the Church but instead led it into its greatest crisis: Pope Benedict XVI. After the worldwide sexual abuse scandal became public, Benedict resigned in 2013. An analysis of the failings of an institution that believes in absolute truth as it struggles to come to terms with modern democratic society.
This is the birth of Hof Butenland – a cowshed. On Butenland many former “farm animals” live at eye level with the people – without having to fulfill any benefits.
Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if we stopped eating animals? The End of Meat is a groundbreaking documentary film envisioning a future where meat consumption belongs to the past.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, driven to new extremes by the COVID crisis. This film documents the visual roots of this new anti-Semitism, taking a historical look at the visual propaganda of the Nazis.
Our oceans are drowning in plastic. Much of this waste ends up in the sea via rivers, including European rivers. This is the sad conclusion film-maker Steffen Krones comes to when he discovers waste from Germany on Norway’s Lofoten Islands. To find out more, Steffen and a friend build a GPS buoy to follow the waste’s journey all the way to the Arctic.
New York saw more cases of Covid-19 than any other city. The virus brought fundamental and drastic changes. In unique images, this film looks back at the first year of the pandemic in New York, exposing the soul of this mythical, complex and beautiful city in one of its most challenging periods.
Since the pandemic brought international tourism to a standstill, one thing is for sure: too much travel is bad for the environment. Our desire to travel remains unbroken. But do travellers have to decide between the extremes: the appeal of the exotic and holidays at home? How do tourism-plagued cities envisage their future? And what are the alternatives – will we only be able to travel virtually?
In 2021, the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia celebrates its 20th anniversary. We take a look at the structure of this virtual giant. Who are its creators, who are the authors who write up to 12,000 articles every day? Are they representative of the knowledge of this world and will they soon be superseded by artificial intelligence?
Detroit in the US Rust Belt and Bochum in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region – as different as these two cities may be, both have been significantly shaped by the automotive industry. Following the end of the industrial age, these regions are undergoing fundamental changes and the people on both sides of the Atlantic are in search of a new identity.
