Lazy Lama

A female photographer from Western Europe drives through Poland and stops in a village. By chance, her eye is caught by the arrival of a wedding party. This marks the point of departure for several stories which unfold during the course of the wedding.

German filmmaker Niko von Glasow embarks on a very personal project with this documentary that profiles thalidomiders: people born with malformed or missing limbs because their mothers took thalidomide for morning sickness during pregnancy.

The film director Niko von Glasow undertakes a journey to athletes, who compete at the Paralympic Games in London 2012. He himself is a short-armed avowed hater of sport who cannot understand how anyone could take on such an odeal voluntarily. Even more since everyday life for people with a disability is most often challenging enough. He meets U.S.archer Matt Stutzman, Norwegian table tennis player Aida Dahlen, German swimmer Christiane Reppe, Greek boccia player Greg Polychronidis and a Sitting Volleyball team. Niko neither spares the athletes nor himself asking questions about life, sport and fears. With an ever growing appreciation for sport Niko attends the Paralympic Games and travels back to the ancient city of Olympia, where everything began and where boccia playing is prohibited.

This film goes behind the scenes and under the skin of a unique live theater production. Film director Niko von Glasow brings together a company of performers to conceive and perform a new stage comedy. In the play, a group of physically and mentally disabled hopefuls show up to audition for a TV talent show. They are sent to a separate and suitable room, where they are forgotten. Believe it or not, this up-close and often upsetting documentary is full of laughter, fun and moments of genuine theatrical magic.

Cologne towards the end of the Second World War. The city is in ruins, everyone is afraid, many are dead. It is a time of great inhumanity. Cologne’s young Edelweiss Pirates refuse to submit to the pressure of the Nazi regime. They fight with the Hitler Youth and scrawl anti-war propaganda on walls. Karl is an Edelweiss Pirate; his younger brother, Peter, is in the Hitler Youth movement. The two young men have been alone ever since their mother’s death in a bombing raid; their father is serving at the front, and their older brother, Otto, has been killed in action. Otto’s financée, Cilly, is doing her best to survive the war with her children. Carl is trying to help her.

Marie is an adolescent woman who lives in Prussia in 1813 with her mother, a countess. They live in a palace watching the path of history from a far point of view.

A group of wannabe teen filmmakers team up to shoot a gritty, London-set Romeo and Juliet-style movie about their lives, to win £10,000 in a filmmaking challenge set by an award-winning director.