One of Singapore’s longest-running foreign film festivals returns this year with a compelling selection that celebrates the diversity and dynamism of contemporary German cinema. The 28th edition of the German Film Festival invites you on a cinematic journey that explores the complexities of identity, memory, and transformation. Our carefully curated programme offers films that grapple with tensions between past and present—like Two to One, where a communist neighbourhood on the brink of capitalism hatches a brilliant money-making scheme. Or Perla, a film about a dissident artist living in 1980s Vienna who returns to communist Czechoslovakia, reopening the wounds and loves of a difficult past.
In Riefenstahl, director Andres Veiel and producer Sandra Maischberger turn their lens on one of cinema’s most controversial figures. This powerful documentary confronts the legacy of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, raising urgent questions about art, propaganda, and complicity.
We also present films that navigate perception and prejudice—occasionally making light of them, and in other cases, descending into madness—like in Old White Man and Hysteria. And finally, we present films that plumb the depths of human adversity, to reveal an underbelly that is sometimes triumphant and sometimes less so, like with Köln 75, From Hilde, with Love, How to be Normal and The Oddness of the Other World, and Late Shift.
All manner of cinema speaks of encounter, transporting us preciously—and sometimes precariously, through the loves, worlds, and eyes of others. We invite you to have an encounter with us.
