Thomas Bergmann

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

Almost unnoticed, the intricately structured human brain performs at peak performance levels that only become apparent when it no longer functions. Mischka Popp and Thomas Bergman portray people whose most important organ has been irreparably damaged by illness or accident. With great empathy and without violating the dignity of their protagonists, they show the different effects of brain damage and the struggle of those affected to regain a bit of normality.

Documentary film.

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

All the way back to Liverpool - as the title suggests - is a journey. The documentary follows a group of musicians and friends as they write, rehearse and record new material to a strict three day deadline. It catches the creative process of making a record - how the initial idea for a song is developed through collaboration and improvisation - and how it changes once recording sessions start.

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

The film tells of life and survival in Europe's modern satellite towns, featuring cities that no longer exist—the meta-city of Wulfen in the Ruhr region—and those that are yet to come—the megacities south of Madrid. There is a concrete city on the outskirts of Amsterdam that has become the largest black ghetto in Europe today, and a banlieue in Paris where racism and drugs dominate life. There are houses from which life has been driven out, where people seem like foreign bodies. There is the vital struggle for survival of those who have been driven into the cities, those who have been pushed out of the cities.

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann

A young man ignorant of everything, including his own name, arrives at the Kingdom of the Holy Grail. Is he the ‘pure fool, enlightened by compassion’, who, it has been prophesied, will purify the kingdom?

A film by Mischka Popp & Thomas Bergmann