Peter Nestler

Farewell to the Parents

The film is based on the eponymous 1960 novel by author Peter Weiss. In this autobiographical text, the author describes the years of his childhood and youth in Germany in the 20s and 30s as well as the flight of his half-Jewish family from persecution by the Nazis. This odyssey also portrays the young first-person narrator’s struggle for his artistic existence, as he was striving to establish himself as a painter and writer. In a free, sensual essay between fiction and document, realistic description and stylised invention, the film attempts to kindle today’s flame based on the past’s, and to create a new and vibrant third work from it. (Locarno Festival)

Farewell to the Parents

The film is based on the eponymous 1960 novel by author Peter Weiss. In this autobiographical text, the author describes the years of his childhood and youth in Germany in the 20s and 30s as well as the flight of his half-Jewish family from persecution by the Nazis. This odyssey also portrays the young first-person narrator’s struggle for his artistic existence, as he was striving to establish himself as a painter and writer. In a free, sensual essay between fiction and document, realistic description and stylised invention, the film attempts to kindle today’s flame based on the past’s, and to create a new and vibrant third work from it. (Locarno Festival)

Death and the Devil

Ethnologist and adventurer, Count Eric von Rosen was a man of contradictions: interested in the natives of Africa and colonial racism. Nestler embarks on a journey in search of his grandfather.

Verteidigung der Zeit

Peter Nestler's poetic documentary Verteidigung der Zeit is not only an hommage to Jean-Marie Straub's and Danièle Huillet's film Quei loro incontri (2005), but also to their access to cinema itself. In various encounters and conversations Nestler offers an insight into their life and work, including passages from Italian poet Cesare Pavese.

Documentary filmmaking: Christoph Hübner talks with Peter Nestler

Interview with Peter Nestler about his filmmaking practice conducted and directed by Christoph Hübner

Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene

This is a small, intense film based on Schoenberg’s opus of the same name with the subtitle “danger, fear, catastrophe”. It deals with emerging fascism and the persecution of Jews, as well as with their historical continuities.

Abschied

The burial of an old woman leads to several complications among family and friends.

The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle

A strangler is loose on a British estate, and he not only strangles his victims but brands an "M" onto their foreheads before he decapitates them.

The Magic Fountain

In this tale based on a Brothers Grimm story, Prince Alfred searches for an enchanted castle that holds a magic fountain whose waters can cure his seriously ill father, the king. His two evil brothers are determined to stop him so they can have the kingdom for themselves when their father dies. A magic dwarf hears of Prince Alfred's plight and sets out to help him.

Black Gravel

Tensions rise when a U.S. military base is built in a small village in post-war Germany.

Der Schinderhannes

1802: The adventurous life story of Hans Bückler, known as “Schinderhannes”, who fights against the French occupying forces and large landowners who exploit poor farmers in the Hunsrück region during the Napoleonic Wars.