Michael Kotschi

In the Texan “Hands on a Hardbody” competition, contestants stand around a new pickup truck for days, touching it with one hand. Whoever holds out the longest wins the truck.

Left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht’s working day is marked by applause and admiration but also doubts and intrigues. This film follows her and her team: from the 2017 election campaign to her withdrawal from political leadership in 2019.

A family drama about a German teenager who leaves home totally unexpectedly to join the ranks of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in its armed struggle. When the boy's father and older brother set off on an adventurous journey to the Syrian border, they manage to find him and bring him back to Germany. However, back home, questions start being asked: did he return of his own free will, has he disassociated himself from the IS ideology, or is he in fact a 'sleeper' agent awaiting orders?

Seventeen-year-old Lena meets 19-year-old Farid, a young Muslim. She has a clear-cut attitude towards his culture and religion: utter rejection. Despite their differences – or perhaps because of them – they fall in love.

The adolescent Milan discovers his own suspected homosexuality at the age of 17 and the consequences for him and his family but also the liberation as he understands why he has been so down and rebellious.

The films follows a man through the post apocalyptic environment of the housing crisis in the Mojave Desert. His job is to rid the pools of foreclosed homes of unwanted pests. On the road through this isolated region, he reflects on alternative ways of living and finds himself in his own solitude. CALIFORNIA CITY is a hybrid film which fluidly crosses the borders between fiction, documentary and essay. The form reflects the narrator's state of mind through feature film elements and an impressionistic use of images, photos and narration.

Architect Alexander Beck has just won an architecture prize. He wants to modernize GDR building blocks in Thuringia. Alex travels to the heart of rural Eastern Germany where he grew up and where people remember him as Alex from the Free German Youth, a pro-GDR youth organization.

A short promotional film for the 2010 Oldenburg Film Festival consisting of various actors and film personalities telling a joke about an exceptionally talented frog.

Nina, an end-of-teenage orphan with mental problems, starts a new job as a garden cleaner when she meets Toni. They fell in love with each other, but soon Toni starts betraying Nina. In the meantime, Francoise is picked up at a psychic department of a Berlin hospital by her husband, Pierre. After seeing Nina, Francoise believes that she has found her kidnapped daughter Marie, but neither Toni nor Pierre believe her. Nina is unsure about what to think...