Something to Do with the Wall

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore. But in 1989, as the original film neared completion, the Wall came down, and McElwee and Levine returned to Berlin, this time to capture the radically different atmosphere of the reunified city.

Kemper on Kemper: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

Ed Kemper, also known as the Co-Ed Killer, murdered and dismembered 10 people, including his own mother. Former FBI agent John Douglas takes us through his extensive interviews with Kemper, which became the backbone of modern criminal psychology.

The Family

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

Trotz und Treue: Das Phänomen Sahra Wagenknecht

2024 is likely to be a decisive year for Sahra Wagenknecht's political future. In the arena of power, she might assume a role that she is already very familiar with. In the early years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sahra Wagenknecht became the "most famous face" of the PDS, the successor party to the SED. Yet, even as the youngest member of the party's executive board, she was considered a "disruptive factor." She is unyielding and swims against the tide. Sahra Wagenknecht does not distance herself from Stalinism, nor from the Berlin Wall, and wishes for a reformed GDR.

Karl Marx City

Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker take a powerfully personal journey through the former East Germany, as Epperlein investigates her father’s 1999 suicide and the possibility that he may have worked as a spy for the dreaded Stasi security service.

Als wir die Zukunft waren

Seven directors remember their childhood and youth; to the 50s and 60s in the GDR. They appear to be curious, vulnerable children and teenagers who also want to be cool (even though the word doesn't exist for them yet). They live in well-adjusted or resistant families. Some only in half because their father left for the West. Depending on their family background, they want or should help build the new, better Germany.

Women Behind Bars with Trevor McDonald

Trevor McDonald goes to Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana to speak with some of the women that live there.

Wasted Talent

Die Zeit meines Lebens - Dirty Dancing in Ost und West

In 1987, a small film distributor from Frankfurt/Main brings the film "Dirty Dancing" to West German cinemas against all negative odds. The film becomes the hit of the year, in complete contrast to France, where foreign films have a hard time against the local film landscape.

Fyre Fraud

A true-crime comedy exploring a failed music festival turned internet meme at the nexus of social media influence, late-stage capitalism, and morality in the post-truth era.

Lizzie Borden Had an Axe

The murder of Lizzie Borden's Mother and Father undergoes a forensic investigation - on this Discovery Channel special

Ein Traum in Erdbeerfolie

This film undertakes a journey into the amazing parallel universe of East Berlin’s fashion designers and experts in the art of survival. For, in the midst of the constraints of life in the GDR, there existed a fantasy world where it was possible to dance to another tune, be individual and even provocative. The most important characteristic of this bohemian scene was one’s per- sonal style. But this certainly wasn’t something that could be bought off the peg in the GDR. In this parallel universe it was up to you to create your own individual image – with your own hands. This film tells the story of the desires, the passion and the dreams that were tried and tested, lived and performed in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

Born in Evin

Follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world.

Moorddossier Holleeder

In the 50-minute documentary, John van den Heuvel provides insight into the six liquidations that Holleeder is suspected of. At the crime scene, he reconstructs the underworld murders on the basis of police files and his own investigation. In the interviews, April van der Bijl and Sonja Holleeder explain why they are convinced that Holleeder is responsible for the murders of Thomas van der Bijl and Cor van Hout.

Přežili jsme svoje děti

Karl Marx und seine Erben

Over the past hundred years, dramatic social upheavals have taken place in the name of Karl Marx's theories. In Western Europe, the student movement of 1968 and the Eurocommunists were inspired. And in recent times, the thinker has experienced a renaissance.

Corsica Story Une Histoire de La Violence

Tortured by Mum and Dad? - The Turpin 13

A look at the Turpin family case

Dragan Wende - West Berlin

Dragan Wende has lived in Berlin since the '70s and has seen the city change through the years. His nephew comes to live with him as Dragan remembers the better days he lived as a Yugoslavian immigrant in a divided city.

Holloway

Holloway — once the largest women's prison in Europe, now abandoned. Six ex-inmates revisit, recounting experiences, giving voice to incarcerated women. They explore vacant cells and corridors, recalling memories from their time inside.