Berlin & Beyond - FILMS - Official Selection

3 (Drei)

From the director of Run, Lola, Run and The International comes a sexy romantic drama with a nod to classic Hollywood's screwball comedies.More ...

100 Years Hollywood – The Carl Laemmle Story (100 Jahre Hollywood)

International Special Presentation
Hollywood is the ultimate American Dream – which is why nobody would expect its success story to have its origins in smalltown Germany – Laupheim – home of the Swabian immigrant Carl Laemmle.More ...

Almanya – Welcome to Germany (Almanya – Willkommen in Deutschland)

Opening Night Film / California Premiere
In Person: Nesrin Samdereli & Yasemin Samdereli
“Who or what am I really: German or Turkish?” This is what six-year-old Cenk Yilmaz asks himself when neither his Turkish nor his German schoolmates choose him for their football team.More ...

Between Heaven and Earth

Born and raised in a township, the brothers Koroballa and Tiemogo experience the beauty and brutality of African life.More ...

Bold Heroes (Stationspiraten)

Centerpiece Film / North American Premiere
In Person: Scherwin Amini and Nicolas Hugentobler
The paths of five boys cross in a Swiss children’s clinic.More ...

Face the Wall (Gesicht zur Wand)

US West Coast Premiere
In Person: Stefan Weinert
Five life stories are told by former East German citizens incarcerated for attempting to flee the Republic in the GDR.More ...

How About Love (How About Love)

Northern California Premiere
Fritz is inspired and possessed by his work as a heart surgeon. His wife Lena urges him to take a vacation. They travel to the north of Thailand, where they visit one of Fritz’s former colleagues, who administers urgently needed medical care to refugees in a remote camp near the Burmese border.More ...

If Not Us, Who (Wer wenn nicht wir )

Closing Night Film / US West Coast Premiere
In Person: Andres Veiel
In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Sensitive to the increasing restlessness of the times, the fiery couple lashes out at the conformism and denial around them.More ...

Jane’s Journey (Jane’s Journey – Die Lebensreise der Jane Goodall)

It would be hard to name anyone who has had more of an impact in the realm of animal research and wildlife conservation than Jane Goodall, whose 45 year study of wild chimpanzees in Africa is legendary.More ...

Joschka & Mr. Fischer (Joschka und Herr Fischer )

International & North American Premiere
In Person: Pepe Danquart
From revolutionary beginnings in the 1960s and 70s as an student activist, urban guerilla and sometime taxi driver in the wild days of Germany’s rising student movement to a lengthy run as the country’s most singular Foreign Minister.More ...

Klitschko

US West Coast Premiere
Klitschko tells the captivating story of the boxing world's most famous brothers: Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko. From the socialist drill of their childhood in the Ukraine, and their first successes as amateurs, to their move to Germany and subsequent rise as international stars on the verge of holding the championship titles of all five boxing federations.More ...

Laula

Laula memorializes family members who died in the Holocaust through a collection of paintings.More ...

Lights (Ampelmann)

The story of a small–town police officer who dreams of being a hero. As his peaceful village offers no opportunity for heroism, he decides to take matters in his own hands.More ...

Lila, Lila (My Words, My Lies – My Love)

US West Coast Premiere
Based on Martin Suter’s novel, which has sold over 300,000 copies to date: David Kern is a hapless waiter who falls in love with an attractive literature student named Marie. Fate intervenes when he buys a table at a flea market and discovers a manuscript for a book in its drawers.More ...

Little Alien

In Person: Nina Kusturica & Nora Friedel | Extended Q&A and forum “In Transit: A Panel on Migration & Multiculturalism” with special guests following screening.
They’re alive. Because they fled. Teenagers Juma and Hishame attempt an extremely dangerous journey to Europe, hiding in the chassis of a truck, where they will become the prey of border officers.More ...

Miramare

A look at life on the mediterranean borders of Europe, where tourists try to relax while “illegal” immigrants struggle for a chance to a better life.More ...

Mount St. Elias

A dramatic and awe-inspiring feature documentary following three of the world’s greatest ski mountaineers to the 18,000-foot Mount St. Elias in their attempt to realize the longest ski descent of the world.Set against the backdrop of Alaska’s dangerous beauty, Mount St. Elias.More ...

Raju

A German couple adopts an Indian orphan. Their child suddenly disappears.More ...

Remembrance (Die verlorene Zeit)

US North American Premiere
In Person: Alice Dwyer
Inspired by actual events, REMEMBRANCE depicts a remarkable love story that blossomed amidst the terror of a German concentration camp in 1944 in Poland.More ...

Sennentuntschi

Northern California Premiere
In Person: Michael Steiner
The Swiss Alps in 1975: in a remote mountain village, a woman of wild beauty appears as if from nowhere. The village policeman Reusch is the only one who openly approaches the mute woman in an attempt to find out who she is.More ...

Stopped on Track (Halt auf freier Strecke)

US West Coast Premiere
In Person: Milan Peschel
The doctor told the truth. The days are numbered. Why me and why now? A man leaves behind his wife, children, parents, friends, neighbours, yesterday’s lover... the people in his life.More ...

The Day I Was Not Born (Das Lied in mir)

US West Coast Premiere
During a stopover in Buenos Aires, Maria recognizes a nursery rhyme. Though she does not speak a word of Spanish, she remembers the lyrics vividly. Two days later, her father Anton shows up at her hotel, confessing that: Maria spent her first three years of life in Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship of the 70s.More ...

The Fatherless (Die Vaterlosen)

Northern California Premiere
In a large, run-down house in the idyllic Austrian countryside — which, back in the ’80s, was the site of a sexually liberated commune — Hans, the charismatic former commune leader, dies, attended by his oldest son, who never got the approval he craved.More ...

The Poll Diaries (Poll)

Northern California Premiere
On the eve of World War I, 14-year-old Oda von Siering returns to Poll, her family home on the Baltic coast, a region uneasily shared by Germans, Russians and Estonians. With her are the mortal remains of her mother, who passed away in Berlin.More ...

The Sandman (Der Sandmann )

Northern California Premiere
In Person: Peter Luisi
One morning, Benno finds sand in his bed. While he tries to ignore this, he soon realizes that he himself is the source of the sand. Day after day the sand increases, and time is running short.More ...

The Tigerduck Gang (Die Tigerentenbande)

Children’s Film Matinee
International Premiere
A feature film based on the popular animated television series by German children’s book author Janosch, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year.More ...

The Visit (Der Besuch )

A tragicomical story about an old woman, who, to the horror of her son, is cooking up a meal in the middle of the night for her long-deceased friends.More ...

Winter`s Daughter (Wintertochter)

US West Coast Premiere
Kattaka is celebrating Christmas at home in Berlin when her family receives a phone call that reveals that the man Kattaka thought was her father actually isn´t. Wanting to meet her biological father, she sets off on a journey long German country roads and the Polish coast to find him.More ...

Young Goethe in Love (Goethe!)

In 1772, under the strict direction of his father, Johann Goethe (Alexander Fehling, Germany’s Shooting Star 2011) abandons his “scribblings” as a creative writer to become a lawyer. But his romantic spirit cannot be so easily snuffed out.More ...

Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, San Francisco – Films – Goethe-Institut