Work follows the rehearsal process for the production "Tarzan rettet Berlin" premiered at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin. 

Ute Schall’s film is a cinematic exploration of different levels during the rehearsal process – Einar Schleef’s own distinct language, Christine Groß‘ (Schleef’s longtime choir director) staging techniques and chorus orchestration work, and, on a third level, the camera follows the protagonists on stage, a choir consisting of 13 persons, who defy the binary code of traditional gender attributions. 
Personal texts by the members of the choir, texts about queerness, and dairy entries by Einar Schleef are used to lay open various thematic layers in the rehearsals and in the film: language, identity, individuality and dualism. 
Through the staccato chorous of words and movements in combination with Schleef’s idosyncratic speaking style, Christine Groß negotiates issues of gender and transgender identity during rehearsals. The individual speaks from the mouths of the multitude, construction and deconstruction result in a new multiplicity. 

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

TBC

Obsession tells the story of a writer who describes his first murder in his novel.

A man is driving on a remote road through dense forest. He seems to be looking for a specific spot. Meanwhile - at a not too-distant time in the past - an old man is sitting in an attic writing on a typewriter about his memories of a hot summer day long ago: Viktor and Marie seem newly in love. On an excursion they row with a small boat into the beautiful and untouched nature of a river and swamp landscape. While bathing, they get closer to each other, until Viktor finally leads them to a hidden clearing for a picnic. Then something unexpected happens. But the old man stops abruptly and before he can describe the further events, he leaves the attic and hurries out of the gate of an old and dilapidated villa. Meanwhile, the man in the car has reached his destination.However, as he reads from the lines of a book called "Obsession", it becomes clear that he is in that very place from the passage in the book revealing the secret is hidden behind the lines as he recounts the events at that passage where the old man left off.

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Indie Shorts Awards Cannes (Award Winner)

Best Istanbul Film Festival (Award  Winner)

Berlin Indie Film Festival (Award Winner)

Will beauty save the world? In his search for an answer to this question, actor and filmmaker Jannik Büddig goes on an art-historically journey to Spain in order to meet his great aunt - the artist Edith Schaar.

Edith Schaar, a female artist in a world dominated by men, was a relentless fighter for the appreciation of art. Her lifelong question being - will beauty save the world? In trying to find the answer, actor and filmmaker Jannik Büddig - Schaar’s grandnephew - sets out to Spain, where he follows Schaar across home and workshop, uncovering the beauty that lies in waiting around them. Through interviews and discussions, Schaar reveals her eventful life, studying under painter Willi Baumeister and her long-term friendship with Günter Grass. Over the course of the film, Jannik realises that he is not only portraying the life work of his great aunt, but also how humanity has lost its sensibility to see art or feel nature.

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Berlin Indie Filmfestival (Winner)

Prague International Film Award

Dea Open Air International Film Festival

Bellaria Film Festival

Cinema of Nations

An American poet living in Berlin hopes to win a prestigious grant while dealing with her former relationships, a rival poet, and her own penchant for stealing things.

Charlotte “Charlie” Parks (Dasha Nekrasova) is an American poet living in Berlin. She is concerned with what her fellow writers and friends think of her poems as compared to rival Sylvie’s (Nadine Dubois) output. Charlie also constantly asks her male friends and lovers if they believe she’s pretty. Being a poet doesn’t pay all that well, even with the grants. Though, Charlie finds out that she is up for a highly coveted fellowship and feels pressure to write the perfect poem.

Due to being poor and having impulse control issues, Charlie steals cloths from stores and occasionally from people. This lands her in trouble with the police once she’s caught and owes a hefty fine. Between her legal woes, mounting anxiety over the fellowship, and her relationships turning sour, Charlie is on a downward spiral. Can she get her act together and finally grow up?

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Los Angeles Film Festival 2018 (US Fiction Award)

DESCRIPTION

Nora walks out on her husband Philip and their children without a word of explanation. She is driven by an irresistible force. She wants to be free.

Nora (40) walks out on her husband and two children without a word of explanation. She is driven by an irresistible force. She wants to be free. She roams through a museum in Vienna, has sex with a young man and hitchhikes randomly on to Bratislava. She hides her identity by telling little lies. Once a woman of means leading a comfortable bourgeois life, Nora now changes her look, works as a maid and makes friends with a young Slovakian stripper, Etela, and her husband Tamás, a cook. Meanwhile in Berlin, Nora‘s husband Philip is trying to manage the family, his job as a lawyer and his affair with Monika. Against his own convictions he has to defend a racist teenager in court. The only person Philip really opens up to is the unconscious coma patient beaten up by his young client. Nora’s desire for freedom is Philip’s chain.

DETAILS

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Locarno International Film Festival

São Paulo International Film Festival

Valladolid International Film Festival

DESCRIPTION

Two young adults form a relationship that defies definition.

The film tells the story of Caio and Mari, two young adults whose relationship is beyond any definition. Over ten years, the plot transits among three striking moments in which their desires are in conflict and their relationship is put to the test. The film was developed from the short film of the same name awarded at 45th Critic's Week - Cannes Film Festival, and proposes a reflection on sexuality, labels and how time shapes and transforms encounters.

DETAILS

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Guadalajara International Film Festival

Nineteen-year-old Kirill hangs out on the rooftops of apartment blocks, where his brazen stunts have earned him the nickname "Russian Spiderman."

Nineteen-year-old Kirill is dangling by one hand from the top of a Russian skyscraper. The situation is perilous. His life is literally being suspended by four of his fingers, but the look in Kirill’s eyes is an eerie calm. He is fearless. Known as the “Russian Spiderman” for his documented high-altitude stunts, Kirill is at the fore of Moscow’s “roofing” culture. In roofing, he and his group of friends approach their city’s buildings and infrastructure like a climber sees a mountain. Instead of using a building for the architect’s intended purpose, they see challenge and potential: potential to climb high and see their city from a new vantage, and a challenge to push their personal limits of exploration.

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

IDFA Film Festival

Hot Docs International Documentary Festival

A young man is roaming through the city of Guanajuato accompanied by his friend. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Belgrade, four women weave their own threads into a story of meaningful coincidences, the passing of time and re-living memories, preparing them all together for the afterlife.

In Guanajuato, two boys – one of whom is seriously ill – wander through the kaleidoscope of their city whilst in Belgrade women of different ages come to terms with death and the colours of life: encounters and weighty yet light-hearted conversations about what makes up the existence of an individual and how moments of death can be borne in a more endurable manner.

The entire universe of LAS CUATRO ESQUINAS DEL CÍRCULO appears to be impregnated by Frida Kahlo's paintings. And as one of the Belgrade women, in the blazing radiance of a theatre spotlight, actually transforms into the image of the Mexican artist, the film bows out with a heart-breaking Yugoslav-Mexican version of ‘Paloma Negra’, that heroic-melancholic hymn to Frida Kahlo which speaks of eternal love in this fleeting world.

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Locarno Film Festival

Berlin Film Festival

Festival of Nations

Guanajuato International Film Festival

DESCRIPTION

In a world where gravity is weak and skinny people fly into the sky, Constantine has never left the apartment he shares with his father Atanas. But one day the beautiful stewardess who moves into the building will change Constantine's life forever.

In a dystopian post-communist world, Constantine and his father Atanas share a small flat in a run-down apartment block. A tragic accident has disturbed gravity on Earth beyond repair, so everyone weighing less than 120 kilos flies up into space. With only 60kg body weight, Constantine cannot go outside, nor does he want to. Stuck in the flat, at the mercy of the electrical mood swings of a household gravitational normalizer, Constantine leads an almost normal life. He is content spending the days looking at the world through his window. Until the beautifully plump stewardess moving in next door changes everything.

DETAILS

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Sofia International Film Festival

Leuven International Short Film Festival

Golden Rose

Festival of Nations

Brussels Short Film Festival

DESCRIPTION

A striking and deeply touching story about a 6­-year old girl growing up during the siege of Sarajevo, and how her day­-to-­day life changes when suddenly a chicken joins her family.

As a present for her 6th birthday, Selma gets a live chicken. When she realises the animal is going to be killed to feed the family, she decides to save it and set it free, unaware of the high stakes such action will lead to. While trying to bring back the missing chicken, Selma's mum becomes the target of a sniper shoot. It's Sarajevo, 1993.

DETAILS

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Winner European Short Fim Award 2014

Cannes Semaine de la Critique

Sarajevo Film Festival

Over 120 other film festivals