Martin Gressmann

Nicht verRecken

Around the year 2000, I was looking for a house in the countryside around Berlin. After two years, I found a former farmhouse and started renovating it. In the centers of the surrounding villages, enamel signs from socialist times were attached to walls and pedestals: “Death March April 1945” - with a red concentration camp triangle, a simple map with the route and a slightly abstract row of shaven-headed prisoners. Sometimes flowers were planted in front of them.

Avetik

A tableaux of poetry and images exploring the historical trauma, identity, and collective memory of the Armenian people centered on an Armenian filmmaker exiled in Berlin.

Wasteland

A long-term observation of the forgotten former “Gestapo grounds” in Berlin 1986-2013.

Dilan

Based on a well-known Turkish novel, Dilan narrates the story of a peasant woman who decides to avenge the murder of her lover. In a remote village in Southeastern Turkey, two men are in love with beautiful Dilan: the rich Paso and the poor but brave Mirkan. When Dilan chooses Mirkan, Paso has the youth killed by one of his men. Dilan marries Paso, but she murders him on their wedding night and runs away to the mountains. A tragic love story as well as a realistic portrait of the existence of the rural people of Anatolia, Dilan was shown at several international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

Farewell Pavel

Farewell Pavel takes place in two cities. In Rotterdam, we follow Russian reporter Alexei Petrov. He stays in a shabby hotel while investigating Russian ships that have been chained up and writes an article about trafficking in women. His contact with a Russian prostitute gets him into trouble when he tries to arrange a fake passport for her. While Alexei becomes entangled in a criminal web in the West, Alexei's 14-year-old son Pavel longs for his father in St. Petersburg and takes his first steps on the path of love. The events in both cities run almost parallel, but are told from different time perspectives. Over time, a shift occurs. For Pavel, who is on his way to adulthood, time passes more and more quickly, while for Alexei, who feels increasingly threatened, time seems to stand still.

Hanna's Sleeping Dogs

When Johanna's blind grandmother Ruth tells her the secret about their Jewish past, the “sleeping dogs” of the family history awake.

Helke Sander: Cleaning House

Filmmaker and author Helke Sander is an icon not only of the women's movement, but also of new German cinema. Historical upheavals sometimes only need a small impulse to suddenly set petrified conditions in motion. Helke Sander triggered such a landslide-like change in Germany many years ago.

Schwarzwaldliebe

Elisabeth von Holbach is what you would call a tough top lawyer who knows all the tricks of the trade. So at first it seems like child's play when she is commissioned by a financially strong client to persuade the farmer Karl Lindner to sell his farm. She uses an excuse to make the acquaintance of the headstrong Karl and does everything she can to put him under financial pressure. But then something happens that nobody expected, least of all Elisabeth herself...