Since the COVID pandemic, the immune system has become a focal point of medical research. What is the immune system? How can we boost it? Under what circumstances does it fail? How can it help cure diseases like cancer? This scientific film features fascinating examples, interviews with international experts and graphic explanations.
A highly developed civilisation is said to have existed in eastern Honduras. But shortly after the arrival Christopher Columbus’ ships, it vanished. An international team of archaeologists sets off for the Caribbean to retell a long-forgotten story with the help of local people. Some spectacular discoveries are made.
Europe has an ambivalent relationship with the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – officially a banned terrorist organisation, unofficially an ally in the fight against ISIS. Opponents are wary of legitimising the organisation, echoing the concerns of European security agencies which also classify it as an extremist group. Supporters, however, advocate the abolition of the party ban. What is behind these different perspectives?
This journey takes us from South Tyrol via Piedmont, Tuscany, Sicily and Campania, to the southernmost tip of mainland Italy, to Apulia. Far from bustling tourist hotspots, we look at the soul of Italy: each episode is a culinary voyage of discovery that takes us to our protagonists’ most sacred place: their kitchens.
The film portrays four remarkable European female artists from the Renaissance to Classicism, who carved unusual careers in very different social settings: star of the Renaissance, Sofonisba Anguissola, self-made Baroque artist, Judith Leyster, Angelica Kauffmann, a trailblazer at the time of Goethe, and Marie-Guillemine Benoist, a portraitist during the French Revolution.
Heatwaves are increasing in frequency, duration and intensity. How can we protect ourselves against extreme heat in the future? What management strategies are there? Cities, in particular, face enormous challenges. This film examines scientific answers and visits “hotspots” in Europe.
What was motherhood like in prehistoric times? Recent archaeological findings prove that the cooperative support of mothers within a community became a successful reproductive strategy. This scientific film also offers insights into evolutionary biology by examining the communal way young white-tufted marmosets are reared.
Mass graves in Mariupol, child abductions to Russia, brutal mercenary troops – journalists from the Ukrainian investigative news project “Schemes” run by Radio Free Europe have spent two years reporting on the war in their country and experiencing it firsthand every day. This series demonstrates the critical role played by their work.
On the vast plains of Kyrgyzstan, men have been practising the team sport of buzkashi, for centuries. The aim of the game is to steal the trophy of a dead goat from the rival team of riders while staying on horseback. Into this tough masculine world enters Atirkül, a woman with an enterprising spirit. Her ambition is to find local men to form her own team.
Civil society and the law system in Russia are under severe pressure from the state. Human rights lawyers have become the last frontier between state violence and society. Mikhail Benyash and a network of like-minded lawyers defend those who dare to speak up. They fight for justice in an increasingly suffocating dictatorship.
Immanuel Kant was already an important philosopher during his lifetime. Three hundred years after his birth, the film shows for the first time Kant’s close connection to his native Königs-berg, a place he never left. Everything he knew came from books or everyday observations. Using sophisticated animation techniques, the film takes us back to 18th-century Königsberg between Europe and the Russian Empire.
Chea Samy, a celebrated dancer at the Cambodian Royal Palace, raises a boy as her own at her home on the palace grounds. Years later, as a forced labourer under the Khmer Rouge, she realises her foster son is Pol Pot. The film tells the almost unknown story of the history and reign of Pol Pot and its connection to classical Cambodian dance.
