Status and Terrain

Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.

From the inner workings of the RAF. Former RAF-member Peter-Jürgen Boock reveal the many secrets and myths about the Baader-Meinhof gang a.k.a. RAF - Rote Armee Fraktion.

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

This chilling, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The film contains unedited, previously unavailable film footage of Auschwitz shot by the Soviet military forces between January 27 and February 28, 1945 and includes an interview with Alexander Voronsov, the cameraman who shot the footage. The horrifying images include: survivors; camp visit by Soviet investigation commission; criminal experiments; forced laborers; evacuation of ill and weak prisoners with the aid of Russian and Polish volunteers; aerial photos of the IG Farben Works in Monowitz; and pictures of local people cleaning up the camp under Soviet supervision. - Written by National Center for Jewish Film

In August 1936, the Olympic Games, orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda, took place in Berlin. This was a vast charm offensive designed to present Germany as a nation that respected the Olympic principles of equality and fraternity. This documentary reveals the political strategies of the Third Reich, which benefited from the complicity of the International Olympic Committee in thwarting calls for a boycott by several countries. Once the games were over, Nazi policy intensified. How could the civilized world turn a blind eye to this "great illusion"? Gretel Bergmann, the German Jewish athlete at the center of a bargaining chip between the German authorities and the US government, and Noël Vandernotte, who won a bronze medal in rowing, share their stories.

George Stevens's remarkable film is acclaimed by historians as the most important colour footage taken during the war. Milestones covered include the liberation of Paris, the link-up between the Russian and American armies on the River Elbe and the Allied capture of the Dachau concentration camp.

Caroline Sturdy Colls, a world leader in the forensic investigation of Nazi crime scenes, is chasing clues to an unsolved case: a concentration camp that existed on the British island of Alderney. Witnesses and survivors claimed that thousands died there, but only 389 bodies have ever been found. Under heavy restrictions imposed by the local government, which may not want its buried secrets revealed, Colls must uncover the truth using revolutionary techniques and technologies.

An unusual friendship in an agitated political context.

This visually stunning nature documentary explores a mystical European forest to meet animals like Badger, Red Deer, Wild Boar, and especially the Reptiles & Amphibians. Bryan Maltais journeys for 90 consecutive days into this forest from winter to summer to chronicle nature's most secretive events.

On June 1st, 2019, around 11:30pm, the shoot which represents a turning point in the federal republic falls. In the hessian small town Wolfhagen-Istha, the district president of Kassel, Walter Lübcke, is murdered during this night, while, just a few meters away, the annual carnival is putting the locals into a festive mood. It is DNA-evidence on the clothes of Walter Lübcke which leads the investigators on June 15th, 2019, to his presumptive murderer: Stephan Ernst. The previously convicted right-wing extremist Ernst gets arrested by a SEK unit in Kassel. A first background check reveals: Stephan Ernst was known to the security authorities, but they did not have him on their radar for six years. Now he is back. And a person is dead. The docu-drama “Schuss in der Nacht” („Shoot in the dark“) tells emotionally, and simultaneously factually, how the deadly attack on Lübcke came to be. It tells about the first far-right motivated murder of a politician since the era of national socialism.

Christof Wackernagel, best known in Germany as an actor and former member of the Red Army Faction ("RAF") lives in Mali. In his compelling portrait, Jonas Grosch shows a man who simply cannot stand still if he senses injustice. The courage to stand up for one’s beliefs coupled with vanity? However one chooses to look at it, it is easy to imagine what made him connect with the "RAF". With his irrepressible will for freedom, Christof Wackernagel gets entangled in the horrors of day-to-day life in Africa.

A documentary of the German national soccer team’s 2006 World Cup experience that changed the face of modern Germany.

For the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer looks back through the eyes of those who were imprisoned there.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team – which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock – to complete the film from hours of shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).