Beginning tomorrow.
Top Picks
The Silent Revolution (Opening Night)It’s 1956 and during a visit to West Berlin, high school students Theo and Kurt witness dramatic footage of the Budapest uprising. Back at in Stalinstadt, they spontaneously hold a two minute silence during class in solidarity with the victims of the Hungarian struggle against Soviet oppression. But the gesture causes much bigger ripples than expected. The People’s Education Minister condemns the action as a counterrevolutionary act and demands that the ringleader be named, forcing the students to choose between standing together or not.
Mademoiselle Paradis (Special Event)The film tells the true story of Maria Theresia von Paradis, a gifted piano player in Rococo Vienna, who lost her eye-sight as a child. Desperate to cure their daughter, the Paradis family entrust Maria to Dr. Mesmer, a forward-thinking-physician. Under his care, Maria slowly recovers her sight. But this miracle comes at a price as she progressively starts to lose her gift for music. Faced with a heavy dilemma, Mademoiselle Paradis will have to choose: an ordinary life in the light or an extraordinary life in darkness.
When biology student Jule finds out she is pregnant, she sets out for Portugal to find her boyfriend Alex. Traveling in a rusty Mercedes “303” campervan, she picks up hitchhiker Jan at a gas station outside Berlin. While on the road, they have impassioned and deep conversations about capitalism, human nature, love and the meaning of life. Their trip becomes an emotional roller coaster, which finds them desperately trying not to fall in love with each other.
The chance meeting of two people at the darkest moments of their lives leads to a bright new beginning in this bleakly humorous comedy. Terminally ill Arthur travels to Amsterdam seeking to end his life, though his planned last opulent trip is constantly disrupted: on the plane a child knocks over his glass of sparkling and on the eve of his scheduled death, he hears loud noises from the hotel room next door. There he finds Claire, a young Dutch woman who wants to commit suicide. He manages to stop her, and she takes him into the night life of Amsterdam, each with the intention of changing the other’s mind within the last few hours allotted to them.
After Sophie and Jessica witnessed a brutal crime when they were kids, Jessica promised her younger sister to always protect her. As they grow older, this promise becomes an obsession. Now, Jessica suffers from paranoia and sees threats to her and her sister everywhere. But Sophie just wants to live a normal life without fear, without her sister; she wants to become a pianist and to fall in love. When the perpetrators are released from prison after 20 years, Jessica is shocked and wants to confront them. But an accident changes everything. Jessica’s promise turns into a life-threatening nightmare.
When Eduard’s wife dies, his daughter wants to put him in a home. Instead, the 92-year-old former German World War II officer decides to board a train to the Ukraine, followed by his granddaughter, to find the only woman he ever loved – just as a new war breaks out in the former Soviet Union in Spring, 2014.
What was meant to be a restful vacation in the mountains becomes a struggle for survival in this white-knuckle exploration of fatherhood and family power dynamics. Eager to strengthen his bond with his girlfriend Lea’s distant eight-year-old son Tristan, Aaron invites the two on a log-cabin holiday in the Italian Dolomites. When Aaron’s efforts to get closer to Tristan appear increasingly in vain, he takes the boy on a solo hiking trip – where it all comes to a head.
Documentarian Jakob Preuss follows one migrant’s passionate and inexhaustible flight to freedom as he makes the journey from Cameroon to Berlin. Paul Nkamani is a migrant from Cameroon. He has made his way across the Sahara to the Moroccan coast where he now lives in a forest waiting for the right moment to cross the Mediterranean Sea. This is where he meets and befriends Jakob, a filmmaker from Berlin. After Paul manages to cross over to Spain on a rubber boat, he decides to continue on to Germany, forcing Jakob to decide: will he become an active part of Paul’s pursuit of a better life? A fascinating look at the relationship between filmmaker and subject set amidst the ongoing humanitarian refugee crisis.
Fack Ju Göhte (Part Of A Trilogy To Be Screened)Zeki Müller was in jail for 13 months, just long enough for Goethe High to construct a new gym on the exact spot where Zeki’s friend buried his loot from a robbery. In order to get regular access to the school’s basement, from where he hopes to drill a tunnel to his stolen money, Zeki takes on a job as a substitute teacher at the school. But will his elaborate plan work, or only lead him back behind bars?
Wings Of Desire (Closing Night)Visible only to those like them and to children, Damiel and Cassiel are two angels, who have existed since long before humankind. Along with several other angels, they wander around West Berlin, observing and preserving life, sometimes trying to provide comfort to the troubled. When Damiel falls in love with a trapeze artist called Marion he decides to become human, even though that means giving up immortality. Peter Falk, playing himself as a former angel, has already taken that fateful step and urges Damiel to leave eternity behind too.
