Christian Beetz

A documentary about Roland Emmerich, the most commercially successful German director in Hollywood, released on the occasion of his 70th birthday. It offers rare insights into his professional career and private life, covering his rise as a blockbuster filmmaker, his personal relationships, family background, and life in the US and Europe. The film also looks back at his early work, including his 1984 directorial debut The Noah’s Ark Principle, and reflects on themes such as dreams, identity, politics, and the rules of the film industry.

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Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product.

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In 2012, a string of grisly murders sent shock waves through the Berlin party scene. The killer remained at large — until one of his targets survived.

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The Sabra and Shatila quarters are part of the Lebanese capital Beirut, which was rocked by a violent explosion in 2020, plunging Lebanon into the worst economic crisis in its history. In the poor districts, once provisionally built for Palestinian refugees, the residents live at a subsistence level without papers, without civil rights, without prospects. The documentary weaves the stories of the three families Kujeyje, Daher, Abeed and that of the young father Aboodi Ziani into a searing portrait of life in a city on the brink. The filmmakers accompanied their protagonists over a four-year period between 2018 and 2022 and show how the poorest of the poor firsthand felt the consequences of the gigantic port explosion, Lebanon's historic economic crisis, the corona pandemic and the ever-growing refugee quota. But unmistakable qualities like resilience and hope allow them to survive.

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The four-part investigative doc-series "Juan Carlos: Downfall of The King" charts the rise and fall of the former Spanish King Juan Carlos I from his enthronement to the present day, accompanied by affairs, greed for money, accusations of corruption and abuse of power on an unimaginable scale.

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The story of how Aurora Mardiganian (1901-94), a survivor of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire (1915-17), became a Hollywood silent film star.

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A great symbiosis of music and documentary film which creates a true-to-life impression of the sense of community what singing in a choir means. Their film finds humanity in art and magic in music. A moving and immersive cinematic experience of great warmth, emphasizing the unstoppable power of community in times of isolation and understanding how music brings people together.

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Following three iconic train journeys from the air and on the ground, we discover the iconic landscapes of New Zealand, a country with the geographic diversity of an entire continent. On the way we learn about the extra-ordinary construction challenges of the 4,000 kilometre network.

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In 2019, the leakage of messages exchanged by authorities in Brazil undermines the credibility of Operation Lava Jato. A group of journalists follows the unfolding of the case, in a sequence of crises that puts Brazilian democracy at risk.

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The bleakness of Antarctica is a fallacy. The ice continent is full of life and offers a biodiversity of which only about two percent are known. Much of it is under water and could determine the future of human beings. When the northern lights cover the ice landscape in summer, the animals in the Antarctic are in a paradisiacal state. Whales blow their fountains in the sky, penguins fly like small rockets into the water, seals dive for crabs under the glittering ice floes. From the bay of the Ross Sea to the ice shelf, from the huge penguin colonies to steaming volcanoes, a life in rhythm with the ice. But the consequences of climate change are slowly becoming apparent here too. While some species are dying, others are spreading. They could bring new viruses and bacteria with them, and new dangers for humans too. The structure of nature has gotten off course. How many generations will still be able to experience the magic of Antarctica?

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In April 1991, Detlev Rohwedder, the head of Treuhand, the East German Privatization and Restructuring Agency, was assassinated in Dusseldorf. This documentary details the strange evidence recovered.

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As pro-democracy activists and armed police battle in the streets of Hong Kong, ordinary citizens are choosing sides. Historically an outlier of both western and Chinese power, Hong Kong wields its own economic force, affording the city and its people a spirit of independence that has now erupted into clouds of tear gas. Filmmaker Bing Zhou uses a nimble camera to follow a group of protagonists—two opposing political candidates, a tea shop owner, a cab driver, a police officer, a paramedic—on two separate days of conflict. On September 21, 2019, protestors from three districts join forces, resulting in unprecedented violence. Just 10 days later on October 1, the National Day of the People’s Republic of China, previously undecided onlookers show their stripes. Thoughts transform into action in this demonstration of how mercurial and personal Hong Kong’s politics have become.

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In times of rampant populism and increasing distrust of the elite, the filmmaker accompanies the 81-year-old founder of the controversial World Economic Forum over the period of one year in his efforts to implement his leitmotif: to improve the state of the world. Can the WEF contribute to solving global problems? Or is it rather an integral part of the problem?

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Hours before denouncing Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of negotiating impunity of Iranians possibly involved in the AMIA bombing in 1994, prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his apartment in Buenos Aires.

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This film accompanies five children of the young ensemble of the Friedrichstadt-Palast during the creation of the new children's play from the castings to the rehearsals to the grand premiere evening in front of 2,000 spectators.

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GAZA brings us into a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict. Throughout its entire history the Gaza Strip has been witness to conflict and upheaval. From ancient times this tiny coastal territory, located at a crossroads between continents, has been a pawn whose fate rested in the hands of powerful neighbours.

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A cruise ship and 3,000 men – it is a universe without heteros and women that usually remains a mystery to the outside world. Once a year the Dream Boat sets sail for a cruise exclusively for gay men where most passengers are united by the wish to live life authentically as themselves in a protected place.

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Every year, tens of thousands of Israeli schoolchildren embark on a traditional school trip to central sites of the Holocaust. They share their impressions of concentration camps, mass graves and ghettos on YouTube. As a compilation consisting entirely of these video diaries, "#Uploading_Holocaust" shows the so-called "Journey to Poland" as an initiation rite that wants the Jewish youth to be part of an identity-forming experience of suffering.

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Mali's Music defines the country's cultural identity. Radical Islamists are threatening the musicians. Together with the stars of Malian Global Pop - Fatoumata Diawara, Bassekou Kouyaté Master Soumy and Ahmed Ag Kaedi - we embark on a musical journey to Mali's agitated heart. Can their music reconcile the country?

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A group of Kuchi children are living in a minefield around Bagram airfield, Afghanistan. They dig out anti-personal mines in order to sell the explosives to child workers mining in a Lappis Lazulli mine. The trajectory of the blue precious stones goes towards Tajikistan and China, through an area controlled by child soldiers. When they are not waging their own mini-wars in the daily madness of life in Afghanistan, the children are fleeing away in their personal fantasies and dreams, while the American soldiers are planning their retreat...

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Digital Dissidents are the warriors of the digital age: republican patriots, radical anarchists and cyber-hippies fighting side by side for transparency and privacy in a digital world which is permeating our lives more and more. For this they are imprisoned, live in exile, and have lost careers and families. Why do they do it? What motivates them? What are they warning us about?

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This documentary tells the story of great love, bitter disappointments and self-doubts - but most of all of courage. The courage to take risks, try something new and be yourself - no matter what age. The film dives deeply into the exceptional and heart-warming stories of a group of transsexuals and drag queens in their sixties and seventies, who summon up their bravery to take to the stage one last time. For two years they have been touring in five continents, basking in the success of a spectacular show called "Gardenia", directed by Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke. Now, as the show comes to a close, the glamorous aging performers must leave the limelight and go home to the quiet lives they left behind.

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In a mixture of feature film, music documentary and animated comics, historical facts are retold, analyzed and interpreted in modern settings. Ludwig van Beethoven, played by Lars Eidinger, becomes a contemporary of today's audience. Quick-tempered, irascible, curmudgeonly - that is the common image of Ludwig van Beethoven, the composer with the wild lion's mane. But there is also another Beethoven - young, seductive, spirited and, above all, combative.

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Zarah Leander was one of the greatest film stars of the Third Reich. Adored by the Nazis, she rose to become the highest-paid female film star of National Socialism. To this day, she remains inextricably linked to our collective memory, reviled as a "Nazi siren" but also loved unconditionally. At the same time, there are files in Sweden that claim she was a Russian spy. Extremely contradictory rumors that continue to shape the myth of Zarah Leander to this day. She herself described herself as completely apolitical. "The Zarah Leander File" delves into the life of the Swedish film diva and asks: Who was the woman behind the mysterious gaze, the frivolous songs, and the pompous gestures? Who was "Leander" really?

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Every year during summer one of the biggest battles of mankind takes place amidst the hillsides of middle earth. Knights, elves and magicians are fighting orcs and the dark powers. What looks like a scene from Lord of the Rings actually takes place in a field in Germany, where thousands of role players meet to plunge into a fantasy world of their own. More than 250.000 people in Germany regularly make this transition. The documentary accompanies five role players in their daily lives and their parallel ones. Where does their yearning for a shared world of fantasy come from? What does this reveal about our hectic, technological life? Sunday warriors is a film about the passion for playing and the ambition to exceed your limits.

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Kleist's death at Wannsee - a spectacular case that has disturbed and fascinated posterity to this day. The German poet is found shot - what does that mean? What exactly happened on the afternoon of November 21, 1811 at Kleiner Wannsee? What do you know about the woman who died with him?

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After 30 years of conspiracy theories and myth making, this film uncovers the story of the CIA's most extensive clandestine operation in the history of modern warfare: The Secret War in Laos, which was conducted alongside the Vietnam War from 1964 -1973. While the world's attention was caught by the conflict in Vietnam, the CIA built the busiest military airport in the world in neighboring and neutral Laos and recruited humanitarian aid personnel, Special Forces agents and civilian pilots to undertake what would become the most effective operation of counterinsurgency warfare. As the conflict in Vietnam grew, the objective in Laos changed from a cost effective low-key involvement to save the country from becoming communist into an all-out air war to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and bomb Laos back into the Stone Age that it had never really left in the first place. Conventional bombs equivalent to the destructive power of 20 Hiroshima-type weapons fell on Laos each year - 2 million tons

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This is the portrait of a young accordionist in the 21st century. It is a film about the joys of life and survival strategies on the forgotten stage of Macedonia. This is the story of a 17-year-old accordionist, who is searching for her place in the world. Corridors are her practice rooms – at home and at school. The whole year she practices diligently and passionately on her old Supita accordion. Obviously, she wasn’t given the name Emilija, meaning „the keen one“, for nothing. She wants to become a professional accordionist, but for this she needs a new accordion. Something that is unattainable for her poor family. But the family‘s poverty also releases their creativity and Imagination. Her father, an art teacher, begins to work as a bodyguard, while Emilija‘s mother illegally sells sweets in the family garden. This is a film about becoming an adult in one of Europe‘s more desolate corners.

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Along with Can and Kraftwerk Einstuerzende Neubauten are amongst the most important bands to come out of late 20th Century Germany. 'Listen With Pain' is a documentary celebration of their twentieth birthday shot by long time fans and filmmakers Christian Beetz and Birgit Herdilitchke. A candid investigation of the strange often controversial career of Einstuerzende Neubauten the band reveal much about their inspirations and interpersonal relationships creating a wholly satisfying and highly entertaining portrait of a unique and highly innovative phenomenon.

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