Antje Boehmert

Inside Zaporizhzhia - A Nuclear Power Plant in the Midst of War

A close-up of the dizzying escalation of nuclear risk since the largest power station on the European continent fell into the hands of Russia at the start of the war.

Long Distance Swimmer: Sara Mardini

The documentary begins when the fictionalized drama ends. Sara spent three years volunteering to save refugees on the same journey that made her so famous, and was suddenly arrested in Aug. 2018, accused by Greek authorities of running a criminal enterprise with charges including “international espionage and people smuggling.” If convicted, she faces up to 25 years in prison and the end of her humanitarian career. Shot over three years, the film follows Sara’s fight for justice and journey of self-discovery.

Lviv - A Hospital in Wartime

In March 2022, the war between Ukraine and Russia is raging. While Russian troops are at the gates of Kyiv, this documentary films events in a paediatric hospital in Lviv treating the victims of the conflict. A powerful portrait of a doctor’s daily life in wartime.

Verhängnisvolle Versprechen: Das nigerianische Netzwerk

Criminal networks from Nigeria make money from drug and human trafficking. In their home country, they lure young women with the prospect of a secure future in Europe - a fateful promise. Because it leads to forced prostitution. The women pay thousands of euros for the often illegal journey. Once there, the human traffickers demand the money back and force the young women into prostitution. They are put under psychological pressure by an archaic "Yuyu" ritual intended to prevent them from escaping and escaping their tormentors. "Without demand, the business would not exist," says social worker Princess Inyang Okokon. She herself had fallen into the hands of human traffickers, but managed to get out and is now helping other women to break out of forced prostitution. The documentary accompanies the committed Italian prosecutor Lina Trovato and the German investigator Colin Nierenz in their work and tells of the fate of young Nigerian women who managed to escape from forced prostitution

Loveparade: The Trial

In 2010, during the Love Parade in Duisburg, following a crowd movement, the participants found themselves stuck in a tunnel, soon trampled and suffocated. Results: 21 dead and more than 600 injured. Spotlight on the extraordinary trial which followed this tragedy.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

The life of Dr Han has become a permanent quest for perfection. From the livestreamed operating theatre to art fairs via fashion shows, the famous Chinese plastic surgeon has only one aim: beauty. Through the implacable portrait of this character, the film questions beauty as a simultaneously essential yet vain element of society in the era of selfies.

Empire of Mirrors

Bianca Charamsa made her way to Japan during this year's cherry blossom season to get to grips with the country's character through conversations with some of its artists. Although two violent atomic catastrophes - the bombing of Hiroshima and the Fukushima nuclear disaster - have shaken and shaped modern-day Japan, the artist Takahiro Iwasaki believes that memory of 6th and 9th August 1945 is slowly fading, despite all the folded cranes left by visitors to the memorial sites. Natural catastrophes like sea- and earthquakes also rock Japan time and time again; perhaps this explains why the Japanese aesthetic Wabi Sabi incorporates both beauty and decay...much like the beauty of the cherry blossom as it withers during the annual festival of Hanami

Poor Europe

Why 119 million people in Europe live under the breadline today. How could this happen? The reality of deprived children, unemployed young adults, and indigent workers spreads all around the Union. What does Europe do for them? Visiting young unemployed people in Ireland, Italy and Portugal, this film investigates beyond the social and economic aspects and outlines how this situation impacts the politics.

No Country for the Poor

What if democracy fails citizens by not serving them all equally? What if inequality becomes the norm and the most vulnerable citizens are left behind with no money, no home, no rights, and no country of their own? In Hungary, the government has slashed social benefits and criminalized homelessness, but a group of activists, homeless and middle class, is confronting authorities to defend social justice and their right to be citizens. After the tragic death of two of its founding members, the group feels that Hungary is growing more hostile and their struggle is more important than ever. Despite all odds, their own community keeps them going—a mini-society with democracy and solidarity at its heart, an island of hope, belonging and dignity in a society gradually shifting the other way.

AGFA 1939. Journey Into War

Young Polish filmmaker Michal Wnuk finds an Agfa box of 120 photographs and 2 reels of 16mm film. For the first time, he gets to see World War II through the eyes of his grandfather, who served in the Wehrmacht. Soon Michal discovers that the box didn't belong to his grandfather but to his great-uncle Elek - an anti-German fighter and a decorated war hero. Michal uncovers the intriguing story behind the Agfa box, traveling across Poland and Germany in a journey that leads him back to the last summer days of 1939.

Projections of America

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Riskin headed up a secret film unit that sought to redefine America in the eyes of the world during the darkest days of World War II. The filmmakers created powerful short documentaries that showed America's strength not through images of tanks, but in portraits of farmers, school children and window washers. The "Projections of America" films were brilliant, moving portraits of America that were unlike any films ever made before, but seventy years later they are forgotten, hidden away in government archives.

The Bloody Truth

This film tells the story of the unknown pre-history of the AIDS virus, long before people started to die in the US and Europe. Following a team of scientists we uncover a forgotten medical archive in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that tells of an epidemic a full two decades before anyone knew about the novel killer. From high-tech labs in the US to African medics who have their boots on the ground, we trace HIV back to its origin in the jungles of Cameroon. In the decades around the turn of the 20th century, colonialism fundamentally changed the lives of millions of people in central Africa; it created an environment that allowed HIV to leave its original host, the chimpanzee, and start to spread in humans.

Sepideh

Sepideh wants to become an astronaut. She spends her nights exploring the secrets of the universe, while her family will do anything to keep her on the ground. The expectations for a young Iranian woman are very different from Sepideh's ambitions, and her plans to go to university are in danger. But Sepideh holds on to her dream! She takes up the fight and teams up with the world's first female space tourist, Anousheh Ansari.