Festival Programme

Films by Language

German

The Blood Countess

Die Blutgrafin

Ulrike Ottinger

Part gothic fantasia, part historical reverie, The Blood Countess finds Ulrike Ottinger at her most audacious, crafting a spellbinding celebration of imagination and cinematic freedom.

Chronovisor

Kevin Walker, Jack Auen

Bridging genres as it taps a real 70s scandal about a Benedictine monk’s memory-recording machine, this unique debut was a festival hit at Rotterdam, and is the year’s buzz title in eerie and stylish academia horror-noir.

The Dreamed Adventure

Das Geträumte Abenteuer

Valeska Grisebach

A vanished man, a lawless frontier, and a woman who refuses to look away: Valeska Grisebach turns the margins of Europe into an epic of startling richness.

Everytime

Sandra Wollner

A shattering portrait of grief that refuses to play by the rules. This year’s winner of the prestigious Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, Everytime is Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner's most precise and emotionally devastating work yet.

Fatherland

Vaterland

Paweł Pawlikowski

A pristine masterpiece from Polish Academy Award winner Paweł Pawlikowski, reflecting on history and its shadows on the present, as well as on the undying bond of family ties.

Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting  

Leibniz – Chronik eines verschollenen Bildes

Edgar Reitz, Anatol Schuster

An historically meticulous period piece examining the philosophy of art and existence, from one of German film’s greatest living master craftsmen.

Prosecution

Staatsschutz

Faraz Shariat

Faraz Shariat’s sleek, suspenseful crime drama about a racially targeted prosecutor won an Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and takes the temperature of a Germany that has not shaken off its Nazi-era maladies.

Rose

Markus Schleinzer

A heartrending, austere portrait of a physically and spiritually scarred woman returning to her postwar hometown in the 1600s, posing as a male soldier.

Silent Friend

Ildiko Enyedi

The plant world lights up alongside Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Léa Seydoux in this playful, eccentric love letter to scientific experimentation and the beauty of noticing life in all things.

Strange River

Estrany Riu

Jaume Claret Muxart

In this film seeped in sunshine with rhythmic hints of fleeting childhood fantasy, Jaume Claret Muxart's debut is a sensitive, poetic and intuitive exploration of adolescent awakening.

Trial of Hein

Der Heimatlose

Kai Stänicke

Mystery swirls around Hein's return to his native island – is it really him? The villagers hold a trial, while director Kai Stänicke builds a Dogville-like set to stage a tense tale of empowerment.