Playing God

24-hour television documentary about Berlin and its inhabitants, reporting in real time on the everyday lives of more than 50 protagonists from a wide range of professions, social classes, religions and ethnicities.

What do Dietrich Oepke, former GDR model plane champion, Dave Anthony, developer of “Call of Duty” and James Gimzewski, Professor of Nanoarchitecture have in common? They are all players. Concrete or virtual, with quadcopters, futuristic weapons or experiments with an artificial brain, they play with human and technical possibilities. How real are their visions of the future? What do they have in common with developers of unmanned war machines and drone pilots? A cinematic journey.

In 1974, the woman kills herself. I meet the man again in 1997. He still lives in the apartment he moved into 41 years ago with his wife and child. The apartment is almost unchanged. The man is my father. After that and over the following two and a half years, I make recordings with a DV camera. I observe the father, even following him on a boat trip through the Caribbean. The camera allows distance, but also closeness.

The French workers who clean nuclear reactors are exposed to high levels of radiation. With impressive images the film portrays “nuclear nomads” who travel from one nuclear power plant to another in caravans, risking their health in the name of the future.

Baskaran left India for Dubai with high hopes but came back in a coffin. His widow Sundari didn't believe he committed suicide, so the relatives recruit cousin and filmmaker Jayakrisahnan Subramanian to uncover, what really happened. On his research, Jayakrishnan discovers that his cousin's fate symbolizes the exploited dreams of thousands others and the consequences they have to face when they wake up.