Thomas Kufus

Berlin at the end of the 19th Century. Alexander Hoffmann is an ambitious PhD student of Ethnology. When a delegation of the Herero and Nama tribes travels to Berlin during a ‘Colonial Exhibition’, he takes a special interest in their young female translator Kezia Kambazembi as subject for his studies.

Together with African small farmholders Tony Rinaudo, an Australian agronomist, has been fighting against the spread of the desert for 30 years and challenges ideas of conventional reforestation with his simple yet effective method.

Berlinale 2021. Nesta versão diferente de uma história de 11 de setembro, Asli e Saeed são um jovem casal pronto para começar suas vidas juntos como imigrantes na Alemanha. O futuro deles parece brilhante, mas ele toma uma decisão que mudará o mundo para sempre. Baseado em uma história verídica.

The consequences of the climate catastrophe are dramatic in 2034. Drought and floods destroy the livelihoods of millions of people. After the third storm tide in a row, the headquarters of the International Court of Justice in The Hague was evacuated. In a provisional interim building in Berlin, the climate catastrophe becomes the subject of legal proceedings. Two lawyers represent 31 countries of the global South, which are doomed to destruction without the support of the international community.

Ulrike Ottinger weaves her personal memories of Parisian bohemianism and the serious social, political and cultural upheavals of the time into a cinematic “figure poem.”

As the Internet finally arrives in tiny Bhutan, documentarian Thomas Balmès is there to witness its transformative impact on a young Buddhist monk whose initial trepidation gives way to profound engagement with the technology.

Tucson, Arizona, September 1996. At the request of his son Martin, George Goldsmith tells him of his past in Nazi Germany as a member of a family of Jewish musicians and the strange history of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, a Jewish organization sponsored by Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels.

The story of an extraordinary woman, marathon swimmer Beth French, attempting the world’s most extreme swimming challenge. Driven to be a role model for her autistic son, and by her battle with lifelong illness (ME), Beth confronts jellyfish, sharks, wild weather and reluctant skippers. But as her journey unfolds, dangers of the sea prove easier to conquer than upheavals of the heart.

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon, in Italy, in Germany and in Switzerland.

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon, in Italy, in Germany and in Switzerland.

Stalinstadt, Alemanha Oriental, 1956. Enquanto a revolta húngara contra os soviéticos está ocorrendo, os adolescentes de uma sala de aula da escola local realizam um ato aparentemente inofensivo, mas com consequências inesperadas.

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?

Um retrato íntimo de Joseph Beuys que, como o próprio artista, abre espaço para muitas questões. Trinta anos após a sua morte, Joseph Beuys parece ser ainda um visionário que estava à frente do seu tempo, e o realizador apresenta-nos o ser humano, a sua arte e as suas ideias.

In the sixties, Peter Handke was one of the first to show how the business works: the writer as angry young man and pop star of the literary scene. As soon as he was on the bestseller lists, he turned his back on the hype. For many years, he has lived and worked in his house in a Parisian suburb, more quietly and more hospitably. Peter Handke's precise, free gaze becomes perceptible in his texts, his conversations, the cosmos of his notebooks.

12 anos após o fim da era nazista, tudo o que a maioria dos cidadãos da Alemanha deseja é deixar para trás os horrores vividos. Mas, o procurador geral Fritz Bauer se comprometeu a detectar o paradeiro do criminoso nazista Adolf Eichmann. Bauer tenta trazer o criminoso à justiça, porém é impedido várias vezes, sendo sabotado por pessoas envolvidas na política.

East Germany. Summer, late 70's. Three years after her boyfriend Wassilij's apparent death, Nelly Senff decides to escape from behind the Berlin wall with her son Alexej, leaving her traumatic memories and past behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life in the West. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij's mysterious disappearance. Is he still alive? Was he a spy? Plagued by her past and fraught with paranoia, Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.

Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. This first glimpse inside his studio in decades is exactly that: a thrilling document of the 79-year-old's creative process, juxtaposed with rare archival footage and intimate conversations with his critics and collaborators.

The flat on the third floor of a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv was where my grandparents lived since they immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Were it not for the view from the windows, one might have thought that the flat was in Berlin. When my grandmother passed away at the age of 98 we were called to the flat to clear out what was left. Objects, pictures, letters and documents awaited us, revealing traces of a troubled and unknown past. The film begins with the emptying out of a flat and develops into a riveting adventure, involving unexpected national interests, a friendship that crosses enemy lines, and deeply repressed family emotions. And even reveals some secrets that should have probably remained untold...

Lullabies are our first connection to the world – a universal experience we all share, yet it remains deeply personal. "Can you recall a song that your mother would sing for you to fall asleep?" is the question Tamara Trampe and Johann Feindt ask people they meet in the streets of Berlin.

In 1982, filmmaker Ekaterina Eremenko was among 26 students accepted into Russia’s elite natural science school. A golden future lay ahead of them, but the birth of perestroika and the collapse of the old order meant that that future was no longer certain. Eremenko sets out to discover what happened to her classmates and how the seismic political changes of the 1980s affected her generation. (Storyville)

Um pai e seu filho, Aleksei, moram juntos em um apartamento no topo de um telhado em uma cidade à beira-mar não identificada. O Pai é um veterano e Aleksei freqüenta a escola militar para estudar medicina. Eles viveram sozinhos por anos em seu próprio mundo privado. Às vezes eles parecem irmãos. Às vezes, até mesmo como amantes. Apesar de saber que todos os filhos devem viver um dia suas próprias vidas, Aleksei está em conflito. O pai sabe que ele deveria aceitar um trabalho melhor em outra cidade, talvez procure uma nova esposa.

Black Box BRD steps back into German history, showing the Federal Republic of Germany of the 70s and 80s. The country is polarized due to the power struggle of the German state and the "Red Army Faction". Society is torn, the fronts are irreconcilable. The life stories of both Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen are tragically linked to this era. Grams is the one who takes up arms for moral rigor; Herrhausen however seizes power and dies when powerful.

Klaus Kinski is one of the few German actors who has achieved international fame. He made headlines. And disappeared behind them. Kinski lived his parts 24/7. This film tells the story of a man who no longer could understand the difference or distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Um retrato do quotidiano e da vida interior de Eva Braun e Adolf Hitler.

A man goes for a walk through the countryside with his dying mother.

The retired life in Florida rescued, the Epstein brothers do again what they do best and have practiced for a lifetime music. A Tickle in the Heart captures the past, present, and future of the remarkable Epstein brothers - Max, Julie and Willie - Klezmer music legends on a joyous international comeback tour. This is a cinematic party with three of the funniest men in the show business. The Epsteins are natural performers, and their sense of life, music and family as they tour through places they love.

This small film came out of the material edited for Sokurov's five-hour documentary Spiritual Voices.

An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat.

During the Second World War, Leningrad was besieged by German troops. A merciless struggle for survival erupted. People were starving and afraid, yet they did not give up but kept on fighting, refusing to surrender.

Late in the 1980s, two documentary film makers found six German men, all in their 60s and 70s, who had been soldiers in the German invasion of the USSR in 1942. Each carried an 8mm camera into battle and they still had their film. "Mein Kreig" alternates between interviews with these older men, now apologetic, philosophical, or defiant about their participation, and the footage they shot. It's chronological: basic training, the train trip East, roof-top vistas of war-torn Warsaw, peasants in Belarus, the downing with carbine volleys of a Russian plane, winter, a holiday at the Black Sea, mud, impassable roads, death, destruction and retreat. "Home, that was the front," one says.