Olaf Grunert

The Wound

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.

The Unheard Woman

What if nobody wants to believe you? Hanni, a farmer's wife and mother of three, is worried about her daughter Magdalena. The girl is smaller than the others, more sensitive, vomits more often and has increasingly poor eyesight. The doctors, the teacher and the family all say it must be her psyche. Glasses with normal lenses will certainly help. But as a mother, Hanni senses that a new pair of glasses won't change anything and that there is more at stake. Even plagued by an unheard-of memory from her youth, she begins to fight unwaveringly and unstoppably for her daughter's suffering, not only putting her family's happiness and her livelihood at risk, but also not shying away from the Bavarian justice system in the end.

My Skinny Sister

Just as Stella enters the exciting world of adolescence she discovers that her big sister and role model Katja is hiding an eating disorder. The disease slowly tears the family apart. A story about jealousy, love and betrayal told with warmth, depth and laughter - on and off the ice.

Romy Schneider: A Woman in Three Notes

Documentary portrait of the actress Romy Schneider, in which director Frederick Baker tries to form an overall picture from the facets of image, myth, real life and screen persona.

Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.