Benjamin Quabeck

Two half-hour animated films based on the much-loved rhymes written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Richard, a sparrow adopted by a stork family, is wintering at the Great Lake in Northern Africa. When he realises that he won’t be the one to lead his flock back North, Richard decides to travel on his own and crosses paths with Samia and her sparrow flock, who are being held captive by evil marabous under the control of greedy peacock Zamano. The only chance of freedom for the sparrows is to solve a riddle and find the Great Jewel, which will call upon teamwork, trust and most of all- spork (sparrow + stork) skills.

This teenage drama deals with the emotional chaos of a high school graduate at the beginning of a new period of his life. 19-year-old Daniel is frustrated: he wants his great love Luca to be the "first" woman in his life, but she seems to be unreachable, so he is still a virgin. During his community service as a male nurse, his boss Anna falls in love with him and they finally have sex. Suddenly Luca is interested in Daniel...

Set in a Medieval town, the film has a theatrical quality, as the behaviours and actions of the characters are exaggerated almost to the point of satire. Nevertheless, its relatively dark and heavy plot yields over-the-top expressions from the actors. There is little dialogue as the story opens: a mother is seen tending to her sick daughter, whom she is then told must be sacrificed to the forest. The viewers patiently but curiously watch the mother perform healing rituals with objects like egg shells, dried plants and twigs–also recurring in the installation–until the daughter mysteriously disappears.

An obsolete prince wants to read the newspaper. A resolute princess wants to fetch wood. And a thoughtful dragon is looking for a useful birthday present for his grandmother. In the end, everything is different than expected.

Second part of a short film project, where every single short film is only allowed to cost 99 Euros. This time there are not only German filmmakers, but directors from all over Europe involved...

The year is 1981, the German New Wave is at the peak. Harry, otherwise Sparkasse trainee, wants to make it big as a manager of the band of his friends, Apollo Schwabing. He has booked the band as the opening act for a concert where the group DAF are the headliners.

The documentary film Dragon Girls tells the story of three young Chinese girls training to become Kung Fu fighters, far away from their families, at the largest Kung Fu school in China. These girls, in a crowd of 26,000 children, are under constant pressure to conform to the norms and structures. They are turned into fighting robots and yet, if you look behind the curtain, you see children with dreams and aspirations. It show the controversial world of selection of the fittest in a totalitarian system.

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An animated short directed by Benjamin Quabeck.

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Follows experiments of fictional 19th century aristocrat Monsieur Lautréamont, a hypochondriac dandy committed to the pursuit of true aesthetic perfection which he calls “urge-ingeniousness”. The film focuses on the interplay between Lautréamont and Louise, his seductive servant, and switches back and forth between Bock as the master and his reliance on Louise who is all at once nurse, servant, inspiration and lover. The film crosses the boundaries of surreal fantasy and period drama, with Bock playing the tormented genius, an inventor attempting to achieve perfection in every creative aspect: poetry, perfume, and even nature. Filmed at Chateau du Bosc, the family home of the aristocratic dwarf Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Toulouse Lautrec is clearly the inspiration for Bock’s character

Axel lives in a poor village where people work days at the chicken farm and gamble their last pennies at night. It's made Manne, the farm and casino owner, a very powerful man. Axel's debts are so great he has to do whatever Manne says. So he works in Manne's villa but can at least see his childhood love Jenny, who is now Manne's girlfriend. Axel seeks refuge in his imagination. He has rebuilt the entire village as a model in his cottage. Here, he is king, his word is law. Here, he saves Jenny from Manne and sends him running. One day Axel finds a friend, his neighbor Heiner, a strange guy who constantly quotes Karl May and talks happily with his chicken. Only by joining forces will they bring Manne's empire crashing down.

He was arrested 23 years ago. In May 1995, Germany's most famous building tycoon and fraudster was caught by FBI and BKA investigators in Miami. Jürgen Schneider had been hiding there with his wife Claudia for over 13 months after his flight from Germany triggered the biggest real estate bankruptcy of the post-war period. He left behind debts of over 5 billion Deutschmarks to more than 50 banks. Never before had the banking industry in Germany been so ripped off. But it was not only the banks that were affected, but also many, especially East German craft firms.