Wolfgang Widerhofer

Some things can be seen more clearly at night.. . A film poem about a continent at night, a culture on which the sun’s going down, though it’s hyper alert at the same time, an “Abendland” that, often somewhat self-obsessively, sees itself as the crown of human civilization, while its service economy is undergoing rapid growth in a thoroughly pragmatic way. Nikolaus Geyrhalter takes a look at a paradise with a quite diverse understanding of protection. Night work juxtaposed with oblivious evening digression, birth and death, questions that await answers in the semi-darkness, a Babel of languages, the routine of the daily news, and political negotiation: All this has been captured in images with a wealth of details that make us look at things in a new way. The longer you consider a word, the more distant is its return gaze: ABENDLAND.

Matthias is a master of pretense, from cultured boyfriend to perfect son or marital coach. He makes a career of being someone else. The real challenge begins when he has to be himself.

Several billion tons of earth are moved annually by humans - with shovels, excavators or dynamite. Nikolaus Geyrhalter observes people in mines, quarries, large construction sites in a constant struggle to appropriate the planet.

The penis as a source of identity and restlessness, legitimation for claims to dominance and fantasies of superiority, the object of fears of failure and loss: this small part of the body occupies a similarly highly dimensioned status in the physical and social self-image of men as does the brain. "Penissimo" traces this circumstance and its consequences for human culture with the help of six men with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds who try to investigate what role the penis plays as a key to the essence of masculinity.

A well-known nightmarish vision of the future: The Earth's population reaches seven billion. Dwindling resources, mountains of toxic waste, hunger and climate change-the results of overpopulation? Who says that the world's overpopulated? And who's one too many? After the box-office success of "Plastic Planet," in POPULATION BOOM curious documentary filmmaker Werner Boote travels the globe and examines a stubborn view of the world that has existed for decades. But he sees a completely different question: Who or what is driving this catastrophic vision?

Deep disappointment and reciprocated love often come in close succession. Mountain Meadow Movie spends a year observing the emotional highs and lows of four people who work at an agricultural workshop for the multiply handicapped.

How do people live in snowbound areas? What are the mechanisms for simply moving snow around? How have ski resorts mechanised what ought to be a natural process? A comprehensive study of global warming as it is directly experienced by arctic and alpine communities.

Franz is by far the smallest in the class, has blond ringlets and gets a high-pitched squeaky voice when he gets upset. Luckily, two best friends help: Gabi and Eberhard. When Franz discovers Hank Haberer's "10 rules for a real man" for himself one day, turbulence is inevitable and the friendship of the three gets into trouble.

An international topic documentary on feminism and gender equality. The film reflects on current debates and analyses the potential of intersectional feminism to profoundly change our future societies.

The Alps, unique and meanwhile also endangered, are stretching across eight European countries. Rural exodus on the one hand and overtourism on the other often exist close together. And above all hovers the inevitable threat of climate change.

HOMO SAPIENS is visionary documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter's exploration of the finiteness and fragility of human existence, the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we're gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities, increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature. Comprised of a succession of eerily depopulated, dystopian landscapes from across the world, HOMO SAPIENS offers an at once mesmerizing and chilling vision of what a posthuman future might look like.

Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism.

He was one of Germany's leading investment experts with an income of several million Euros per day. Now, he sits on one of the upper floors of an empty bank building in the middle of Frankfurt, overlooking a skyline of glass and steel. And talks. In an extended mix of a monologue and an in-depth interview, which is as frightening as it is fascinating, he shares his inside knowledge from a megalomaniac parallel world where illusions are the market's hardest currency. Marc Bauder's 'Master of the Universe' is based on meticulous research and provides us with geniune insight into the notoriously secretive and self-protective 'universe' of which our nameless protagonist experiences himself a master. Where other films on the financial meltdown have focused on the epic nature of larger-than-life business, Bauder probes the mentality that made it possible in the first place. A tense drama where psychology meets finance - two things that are more closely linked than you would like to believe.

After the catastrophe in 1986, a 30-km restricted zone was erected around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and 116,000 persons were evacuated from this area. Pripyat is a portrait of the people who still live and work there, and of those who have moved back. What is life like for these people, a life with the invisible and incomprehensible danger of radioactivity? How do they deal with the aftereffects of an accident which is claimed to be statistically improbable? Four protagonists tell their stories and provide a look at everyday life in “their“ zone.

In an observation over four seasons THE STANDSTILL shows Vienna and its surroundings along with encounters with people during and after the Corona crisis. The film tells of the immediate and also the long-term effects, which can only be evaluated and classified in the future.

Robolove is a documentary that explores the interaction between humans and humanoid robots. The filmmaker visits various technology research centers in Japan, Korea, China, USA and Europe as researchers share the challenges of injecting human emotions into these robots.

Twins look alike. Sometimes they even think alike. But they're two rather than one. I Am Me is in part about the fact that an individual is more than the sum of his or her characteristics. The fact that a person is neither what other people say about them nor their own description of themselves. And photographs and moving images are nothing more than representations.

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.

Mira lives for the sport of ice hockey and leads her team as captain with a strong determination. It's a challenge to reconcile this with her role in the family vineyard: with her mother and her adventurous but increasingly demented grandfather, she runs the farm - with all its responsibilities. The new player Theresa completely unsettles her with her nonchalance and openness. And when Mira's missing brother Paul also turns up and all three get lost in late-night Vienna, Mira discovers the freedom it means to break rules, to reinvent herself - and that you can only love if you let go.

Marie Theres is a perfectly assimilated German in Vienna. She is a good wife to her husband Alexander, an understanding mother to her teenage daughter and a successful and respected doctor, who cares deeply about her patients. One day her perfect life falls apart: her husband leaves, her daughter rebels, she makes mistakes at the hospital and her friends abandon her. Then she meets Fa, a self-confident Iranian woman. The two fall in love with each other and Marie Theres starts to learn to put her own needs and wants first.

Life on the Danube is essentially determined by two factors: the river itself and the often strange idiosyncrasies of the people who live along its banks. And they are multifarious: fishermen and graveyard wardens, Buddhist monks, allotment holders on Danube Island, stranded shippers, tramps and soldiers. All linked by the great current against which they swim.

A filmmaker finds 2 boxes of Super-8 films of an unknown amateur at a flea market. He goes on an investigative journey to find this person and dives into the wonderful, obsessive universe of amateur film with its own rules, competitions and the passionate love for the moving images.

A champion marathoner leads a double life as a serial bank robber, sprinting between fixes (and away from police cavalcades) as many as three times a day.

The year 2000, elsewhere. 12 months. 12 episodes. Weeks, days, single moments of different ways of life. Tradition and change. People of different cultural and geographical background. A film about their life. A journey through voices and sounds from elsewhere, with no commentary added. Landscapes, outlooks on the world, outlooks on life: Desert, snow, valley, jungle, ice, rainforest, stones, swamps, mountains, the sea, forests, a South-Sea atoll. An homage to humanity at the beginning of the 21st century.