Bernd Meiners

In the summer of 1959, as a correspondent for “Successo” magazine, Pasolini traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963, he documented Italian sex behavior, explained in “Love Meetings,” a 1964 film. In the winter of 1970-71, he witnessed the plight of the most impoverished Italian population and the innocents who suffered the boot of state power. After these three journeys, he concluded that Italian society had changed dramatically for the worse throughout all those years.

New forms of manipulation and the inundation of stimuli from new media pose a great risk to children’s mental health. Finally, society has started to respond. A secular culture of consciousness is arising: meditation and new forms of resilience and mindfulness training have formed part of the curriculum in many of Europe’s schools. Can systematic inner development genuinely enable young people to take responsibility – for their own lives, for society and for the world? Can openness, compassion and an ethical attitude in children be increased by mental training?

In conversations with his friends and colleagues, among them Bernd Upnmoor, Helmut Herbst, Alexander Kluge, Klaus Wyborny, Daniel Kothenschulte and Helge Schneider, Ulrike Pfeiffer takes us on a journey into the broad expanse of Nekes' cabinet of wonder and his cinematic works. At the same time, this documentary provides an insight into the history of experimental film in Germany.

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

A man wanders around outside, through deserted spaces. Two women have found temporary shelter somewhere inside. Their deserted environment poses a subtle threat. Plateau is a story of an alienation that has spread from within the protagonists into the outer world. The dystopian outdoor shots were filmed in so-called shrinking cities, in town districts in the Ruhr area and in Bremerhaven, both struggling with massive numbers of unoccupied buildings.

15 years after our award-winning documentary WARRIOR OF LIGHT, the portrait of internationally acclaimed human rights activist Yvonne Bezerra de Mello and her work with street kids in Rio, ZONA NORTE is investigating the development and sustainability of the project. Over the years Yvonne has developed a new pedagogy that helps children who are traumatized by violence to overcome their experiences and the resulting learning problems. The children we portrayed 15 years ago are now young adults. They report from their lives in the most dangerous favela in the north of the city. They are the living proof that an alternative pedagogy is capable to break the vicious circle of poverty and violence.

It's 1997 and Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban. Seventeen-year-old Jalil Nazari finds refuge in Iran, where he ekes out an existence doing odd jobs. One day luck comes his way and he lands the starring role in an Iranian feature film.

Yekaterinburg, Russia, July 17th, 1917. Czar Nicholas II Romanov and his entire family are brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks. This tragic event puts an end to the long dynasty that had ruled the country with an iron hand since the coronation of Michael I Romanov in 1613.

Α Bengalese architect builds library boats that can bring books to people even during the monsoon season. Α Mongolian author packs two boxes full of books each summer to provide reading material to children in remote areas. Α Kenyan librarian leads caravans of camels loaded with boxes of books to the nomadic tribes bordering Somalia. Despite the heat, wind, rain or snow, they still manage their long journeys. This film about the fascinating world of mobile libraries tells of unusual means of transportation and adventurous travel, of different cultures and lifestyles, of the worries, aspirations and dreams of people in these areas – of books that change lives – and of book lovers, who take on unbelievable challenges in order to provide people in the remotest areas of the world with reading material. A film about the love of literature and the respect for knowledge that accepts no boundaries.

On June 29, 1992, a farmer in East Germany found two dead bodies in a cornfield. They were Romanian citizens shot by hunters while trying to cross the external EU border. Were they really mistaken for wild boars? The trial began four years later and the accused were acquitted – but the relatives of the dead knew nothing. REVISION is the filmic reworking of a case that appeared to be long closed. The film not only attempts to document what really happened, it also poses the questions: why did two men die on a sunny day in the middle of a field? Who were they? What led them here? The search for answers drove the two filmmakers to sift through investigative files. This led them to new witnesses and to uncovering problems with European asylum policy. Above all, however, it led them to the relatives and their memories of the two dead men.

A biographical study of legendary actress Charlotte Rampling, told through her own conversations with artist friends and collaborators, including Peter Lindbergh, Paul Auster, and Juergen Teller. Intercut with footage from some of Rampling's most famous films, this "self-portrait through others" is a revealing look at one of our most iconic screen stars.

Two newspaper reports from the same day mark the beginning of the story: a sparrow is shot dead in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, while a German soldier is killed in an attack in Afghanistan. Scheffner sets out on a journey into a deceptive peace.

100 Porsches and Me is the search for a grass-green Porsche from the 1970s that i dreamt about for years.

Angelina Maccarone's intense drama deals with the obsessive relationship between a confused teenager and an elder woman. Elsa Seifert successfully works as probation officer, but the relationship to her longtime companion is in trouble since their common daughter moved out. Then she gets to know Jan, a 16-years-old offender, who frankly offers to submit himself sexually to her. Although being shocked in the beginning, Elsa gets more and more attracted by the young man...

The collar of his coat turned up in New York: Images which have collaborated on building a myth – the image of eternal and misunderstood youth. Unlike Marlon Brando, the proletarian rebel with identifiable goals, James Dean was the timeless and androgynous youthful rebel. His death on the Interstate 46 leads us back to 1950s America, a time when youth was re-interpreted all anew.

A documentary exploring a crime that shocked Germany in the summer of 1999.

Georg Stefan Troller, born in Vienna in 1921, crossed half of Europe as a refugee only to return with the US army in 1945 . As a filmmaker he became a chronicler of his time and with this film he engages in some bold and self-ironic navel gazing.

During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.

Various Hollywood people talk about love.

The filmmaker goes on an expedition using a book by Gerhard Roth as travel guide: it is a voyage through the texts. He tells of an inner and exterior voyage, an essayistic trip along the itineraries laid out by Roth. The eight stories told by Gerhard Roth are stories about Austria, encounters with people living on the border, about outsiders and outcasts.

After their mother’s death, three siblings meet up in her apartment – and revert to their childhood family dynamics. They play concentration and enjoy eggnog with their chocolate pudding, making the regression a not entirely unpleasant one … As a blithe "preview" of her debut feature The Terrible Threesome, this short narrative by Hermine Huntgeburth, who grew up with nine brothers and sisters, is a droll portrait of family ties that is as cosy as it is eerie.