Peter Nestler

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.

A large German city at the beginning of the 1960s. This is where the well-to-do Berger family lives. Outwardly a bourgeois idyll, but behind the scenes the family is in turmoil. The relationship between father and son in particular is extremely tense. Martin Berger is seduced by the attractive Britta. It is the beginning of an affair that ends tragically. When the young man finds out that his father is also having sex with the young woman, Martin decides to kill her and also cleans up his friends who are not averse to the vices of life...

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

A short pamphlet based on a text by Peter Weiss and on the contrapuntal use of the relation between image and sound. The commercial activities and fantasies linked to tourism in Sweden are contradicted by the geopolitics of capitalist imperialism, in particular with the war in Vietnam.

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.

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.

A cheerful take on the lives of school children in a Swiss rural environment. Young pupils recite short essays they have written on subjects such as the long walk to school, the distribution of milk during breaks, and a brawl in the courtyard.

For more than eight decades, German Sinti and Roma experienced injustice. The film tells of the family of activist Romani Rose, their resistance and insistence on justice. The painful story of a minority between trauma and self-assertion. The two-part film deals with various forms of resistance by German and Austrian Sinti and Roma over eight decades. It is about rebellion against injustice and the insistence on dignity and justice.

A documentary of the town of Sheffield's main pub and the people who went there.

The film presents artists from the Sinti and Roma minority who shape the trauma of persecution and very personal experiences in their works.

Portrait of a small south German village and its residents in the early sixties. Rural culture is undergoing a transformation caused by the intrusion of the industrial world. Gestures at work and words of its inhabitants.

The revolt at Sobibór extermination camp in October 1943 is a central episode of resistance against national socialism. Thomas «Toivi» Blatt, son of a Jewish businessman, was 15 when he was deported to Sobibór. Blatt was among those who managed to escape during the uprising only to find his newly found freedom deceptive when old friends and neighbours refused to help. Director Peter Nestler accompanied Toivi Blatt on his trips through Poland.

Nestler highlights visits by several German entrepreneurs to oil facilities. In the 1970s, Peter and his wife, Zsóka Nestler, collaborated on a series of educational films for television that focused on craft-making. These “biographies of objects” are rigorous investigations into the history of working techniques, production processes, and materials.

Documentary that portrays Vincent van Gogh's live and work through his letters to his brother Theo.

With the help of drawings, Nestler provides a historical overview of the types of work associated with industries that are crucial to Scandinavia, particularly those related to ore mining.

This film is about the indigenous cultures of Ecuador, of what is past and what is preserved, of destruction and resistance, of persisting in new ways, of music in the villages high up in the Andes, of music in the cities and in a tropical climate among descendants of African slaves. The film is about Earth, about working with Earth, sacred to the indigenous people. An account of beauty that silences, of friendliness, also grief.

Peter and Zsóka Nestler collaborated on this film, an exploration of the working techniques involved in the process of glass-making.

“Don’t be scared,” he’d whisper, “There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s just the hollow people.” Peter Nestler has made a film based on Israeli author and scriptwriter Etgar Keret’s short story “The Hollow Men”. a man’s memories of his childhood, marked by the fear of bodiless voices and masks. A beautiful and terrible miniature at the same time.

Documentary short made for Swedish public television (SVT) about the past and current situation for Native Americans in the US. The film was produced as an introduction to the American documentary Navajo Girl (Robert Young, 1973). Något om USA:s indianer [Something about the Indians in the USA] is another example of Nestler's method of combining still photos, drawings and moving images from different sources.

Today, the Römerstrasse in Italy's Aosta valley, is a significant traffic artery in the center of modern Europe. Nestler's journey explores the moving history of the Aosta valley, which passed through many hands - from the Roman Empire to Burgundian and Frankish kingdoms - until it was acquired by Italy in the 11th century. The now busy motorway, which runs from the Po Valley to the Great and Little St. Bernhard passes, is revealed through the timeless eyes of a historian. At the same time, the documentary sheds light on cultural traditions and contemporary life in the region.

In the 1970's Peter and Zsóka Nestler made several educational documentaries on industrial production for Swedish public television. The three-part Berghantering/Järnhantering [Mining/Ironworks] (1974-1975) explores the historical roots and contemporary material conditions of mining and iron production in Sweden and elsewhere.

Roma and Sinti people talk about their experiences in the Third Reich and the Federal Republic of Germany, inspired by Otto Pankok’s paintings of Romani theme and subject in the 1930s, declared degenerate art by the Nazis. These are moving narratives of persecution, discrimination, marginalisation, of life as second-class human beings, all of which lasts, incredibly enough, right up to the allegedly democratic present day of the film, since they live in inhumane conditions in barracks at the margins of cities and society and are not officially recognised as Nazi victims. Long, nearly uncut sequences open space for the people and their stories. That’s all it takes for one of Peter and Zsóka Nestler’s most important works.

A hommage to Jean-Marie Straub's and Danièle Huillet's film Quei loro incontri (2005), and 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.

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)