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7:30 PM

Haus-Kino: Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?

Film Screening|Against it! - Indignation, protest and resistance in film

Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt?, dir. Slatan Dudow | Menschenmenge in der Bahn © Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Slatan Dudow Archiv

Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt?, dir. Slatan Dudow | Sportler © Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Slatan Dudow Archiv

Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt?
Germany, 1932, 80 in. 
Director: Slatan Dudow
With: Hertha Thiele, Ernst Busch, Martha Wolter, Adolf Fischer, Lilli Schoenborn, Max Sablotzki

Based on a script by Ernst Ottwalt and Bertolt Brecht.

Boenicke and his 18-year-old son Franz have both been unemployed for a long time. The working-class family lives in Berlin and is six months behind on the rent. Since the future is uncertain, no help can be expected from social services, and the father suffers under a bourgeois moral point of view, a quarrel breaks out in the family when Franz returns home, once again unsuccessful in finding a job. When Franz is finally alone in the apartment, he commits suicide by jumping out the window, thus solving his own problem. The family′s fate is unstoppable, and they eventually even have to move out of the apartment.
Daughter Anni′s friend Fritz recommends that they move to the tent camp "Kuhle Wampe", just outside of Berlin on Lake Mueggel. Among the others there, who have also experienced a similar fate, the Boenicke′s find a new home. However other problems arise, as Anni′s relationship to Fritz is not without its consequences and Anni becomes pregnant. He wants his freedom, but nonetheless reluctantly proposes marriage to Anni. The celebrations take a negative turn and Anni leaves "Kuhle Wampe" and moves back to Berlin with a work colleague named Gerda. Shortly thereafter, Fritz loses his job as a truck driver. He cannot keep his mind off of Anni and takes off to look for her. He finds her among a group of young proletarian athletes, whose goal is to change the world to make it a better place.

Directed by Slatan Dudow in 1932 and written by Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Ottwald, Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? is one of the few proletarian feature films of the Weimar Republic. Banned upon completion, finally released with cuts, and banned again under the Nazi regime, Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? is now considered an important film document from the late Weimar Republic, which stands out from the escapist entertainment films that shaped the image of the early sound film era in Germany through its denunciation of social injustices and clear political positioning.

The film series "Against it! - Indignation, protest and resistance in film" is presented by the Goethe-Institut Montreal in collaboration with students from Collège Maisonneuve.The donations collected at these screenings will be used to fund a trip for students to Berlin as part of the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2026.