The opening film is simultaneously a link to the summer cinema film series about Maria Schrader as it is her newest film I'm your man, starring Maren Eggert, who won the Silver Bear for her performance. The film is about the tragicomic and futuristic relationship between a woman and a humanoid robot.
Two documentary films deal with the future of our planet. Who we were, inspired by Willemsen's essay by the same name, is a reflection on the current situation of our world. Six prominent thinkers and philosophers reflect on our times and offer inspiring outlooks for the future. The Dutch-German film Silence of the Tides is a cinematic portrait of Wadden Sea, showing the fragile relationship between human and nature, captured in magnificent images and incredible sound.
Three films are about children and young people. The awarded and highly acclaimed documentary Mr Bachmann and his class shows that school can be more than a place of knowledge transfer. In Wet Dog we experience the meaning that belonging to a group has for young people. 16 year-old Iranian Soheil hides that he is Jewish in order to become a member of a Muslim gang in Berlin. What are young people prepared to do for the acceptance of their peers? Set against the historical backdrop of the Second World War, Dear Mr Führer is about betrayal and father-son relationships.
Famous actor Lars Eidinger plays the lead role in The last execution, a thriller based on the life of Dr Werner Teske, who was the last person to be sentenced to death and executed in the GDR in 1981. The last execution tells the unsettling story of a man who gets caught up in the mills of a system of injustice and breaks as a result.
The film series concludes with Fabian going to the dogs by Dominik Graf starring Tom Schilling. This film shows the crazy life in Berlin after the world economic crisis. It is based on the novel Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten by Erich Kästner from 1931, which was labelled as "degenerate" by the national socialists and was among the victims of the book burnings.
