Karsten Krause

A person enters the frame dressed up as a bird. In a dressing room, John Malkovich sheds the costume of Casanova. A young woman's skirt is just as orange as the beak of a zebra finch singing in a cage. White lilies stand at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary, red roses in front of the window of an SM studio. There the quiet game of submission in exchange for money, in a museum an embrace, a poem whispered in the ear. Children playing in a forest in autumn. A forest in summer, framed by light. An orgasm and a dance.

In the turmoil of German reunification, Patty loses her job, loses her friend Jelena and disappears into the historic forest of the Kyffhäuser mountains. When she reappears in the nearby town thirty years later, barely aged, Jelena follows her ghostly apparition into the historical landscape of an East German present.

Martin and Constanze retreat to a secluded holiday home in northeastern Germany for his 60th birthday - he yearns for fishing and fine dining, she a lavish city party. En route they meet Gaby, the local innkeeper. Joined by Martin’s old friend and his young mistress Lene, they toast and rejoice, until a stranger knocks, pleading in an unknown language for help.

Ida lives on a sailing yacht with a crew of five men. While on shore leave in Marseilles, she becomes fascinated with the French Foreign Legion and decides to sail to Sidi Bel Abbès, the Legion's former headquarters in Algeria.

Darío Aguirre moved from Ecuador to Germany to be with Stephanie, but from the very first day there was a third party in their relationship:the government. They issued him ten visas in fifteen years. A long trail of papers, stamps, permits, and restrictions connected Darío to Germany while also keeping him at a distance. Then one fine day the mayor of Hamburg invites Darío to become a German citizen. A confession of love? Darío responds with a tender, ironic road movie that traces his intertwined journey from the country of his fathers to the country of his children.

Tells the story of mushroom pickers who, in the summer and autumn months head, to the southern Carpathians of Romania to begin their search. Far from being a leisure activity, for many of the pickers this is a main source of income which they and their families rely on to get by. In makeshift campsites, they spend months between dense coniferous forests and the Transalpina road, where they sell the gathered mushrooms to passing tourists or people on weekend breaks. The majority of their harvest is taken by intermediaries, who sell the mushrooms abroad for many times the price.

The contents of a black briefcase lead us into a superficially well-ordered life in West Germany in 1970, in a city that can be seen as representative of the entire country. In this briefcase: the meticulous documentation of an affair between the small business owner Hans and his secretary Monika.

The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.

The old paternal house of the Le family, set in a rural scenery at the fringes of the small town of Ninh Hoa, close to the southern coast of Vietnam: A household dominated by women, neither rich nor poor, with chicken behind the kitchen and rice paddies bordering the plot. Through the everyday life of the inhabitants of the house, the constellation of the extended family becomes visible. A constellation that is fundamentally marked by the course that history took in the second half of the 20th century, and that has made Germany a substantial reference point in the life of the Le family.

Simon spends a summer day by the river with Enes's clique, whom he knows from the neighborhood. Between moments of uncertainty and sluggish conversations, the hours slip by. But then Marie shows up and Simon is suddenly wide awake.

Rio, an introverted young man, tries to make a living for himself by commiting petty theft in restaurants and resorts around the Croatian coast. His life, however, drastically changes when Andrea, a young Serbian part-time worker, enters his life, with the two becoming partners in crime, planning a major heist of two wealthy women staying at the hotel Andrea works at.

1.6 million tons of unexploded military munition (UXO) were dumped into the Baltic and Northern Seas after the Second World War. A brooding and meditative cinematic journey observes the effects this has on nature and people around the Baltic.

Marion experiences a day. It could be yesterday, but not tomorrow, because at the end of the day she is dead, stumbled in a moment of routine.

The first day of the holidays at the campsite. Mimi wants to make friends with the other children, Karl wants to go swimming with the crocodile, Dad’s hungry and Mum left the sandwiches on the kitchen table. All of a sudden, the caretaker’s little rabbit Fernando goes missing. Not until the medieval tourists arrive does a sense of order return. One thing is for sure: the world is in turmoil.

In south-western Texas, elongated mountain ranges, broad valleys, prairies and deserts pass by. At the Bottom of the Sea explores this imposing landscape and its many meanings, starting with its timeless beauty that has inspired many painters. Once, this part of the earth's crust was part of the ocean floor; the compressed skeletons of billions of sea creatures are now mined as limestone.

Three Iranian women, filmmakers and childhood friends, explore through filmed correspondence the different paths their lives have taken: remaining in their native country, emigrating or living in exile. Over the course of thirteen years of life, the images examine the notion of home and the relationships that matter.

For a few days, 27-year-old Charlotte immerses herself in a foreign city to focus on completing her final thesis in physics. Amid the rigors of scientific writing, her mind begins to drift, leading her to confront profound questions about herself and her place in the world.

La empresa is a strange creature of a most ambiguous nature: a fiction film about documentary filmmaking as fiction filmmaking, and what it all does to a region’s economy as well as a collective psychology. Or is it? Isn’t it more to the point to say that... But before we get lost here, let’s state what La empresa talks about: how the caminata nocturna, the illegal crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States, was turned into a business that ranges from four-hour night-time tours for tourists out for a sick thrill to reenactments for film and television crews. The latter, of course, is at the core of André Siegers’ casually ironic look at this economy of disaster. When the Germans arrive in town, they meet a workforce already in place and willing to play to any national stereotype – as the French seem to get other kicks out of presenting the caminata nocturna than the Netflix internationals.

Gerti Gerbert was photographed by her husband Eugen over a period spanning more than forty years. Besides the obligatory family photographs, from their wedding day until his death Eugen took countless pictures of Gerti: in her underwear, in homemade summer frocks, or completely naked; on the beach, in the woods, in the car, or on the floor at home. Using the Gerberts’ picture archive, interviews with Gerti, and Eugen’s notes, the film looks at what remains of life and love at the end.