2021
Gulf German Film Festival

With “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” Lotte Reiniger created the first full-length feature animated film in the history of cinema. The technical and aesthetic aspects of this film genre had already been developed to cinematic perfection in the 20s. Her style continued the tradition of shadow plays performed in China, which she expanded through the technical possibilities offered by the cinema. 

A comic-tragic tale about a scientist participating in a trial with a humanoid robot programmed to make her happy. A film about the questions of love, longing and what makes a human being human. Directed by Emmy Award winner Maria Schrader (UNORTHODOX), starring Dan Stevens (DOWNTOWN ABBEY), Maren Eggert (I WAS AT HOME, BUT) and Sandra Hüller (TONI ERDMANN).

A mysterious home invasion triggers off a shake in the core of a cosmopolitan middle-class family and unveils the fragility of truth and the power of individual perspective.
 

Maryam is sentenced to death, accused of murdering her husband. During a popular live television show, she is given the opportunity to face the victim's only daughter and asking her for forgiveness. The deeply rooted patriarchal structures of Iranian society are frighteningly reflected in the individual fate of the young woman.

Nikos lives in the attic of the family’s tailor shop. When the bank threatens to repossess the shop and his father falls ill, Nikos takes action: with a wondrously strange tailor shop on wheels, he reinvents himself while bringing style and confidence to the women of Athens.

Amina, a practicing Muslim, lives with her daughter, 15-year-old Maria. When Amina learns Maria is pregnant, they face an impossible situation in a country where abortion is legally and morally condemned.

The film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Stefan Zweig tells the story of a man who survived imprisonment and mental torture with the help of a chess book.

LUCHADORAS portrays the courageous female wrestlers of Ciudad Juárez, a city known for its high murder rate against women - who in the ring and in their daily lives fight to redefine the image of what it means to be a woman in Mexico.

A man and a woman are about to leave a restaurant situated in the heart of the Lebanese mountains. They are surprised by fighter planes screaming past at low altitude. In the distance, war seems to be breaking out once more. Losing sight of the woman, the man starts looking for her.

A bitterly evil satire that breathtakingly illuminates little-known backgrounds of the Iraq war and is based on a true story.

MR BACHMANN AND HIS CLASS is an intimate documentary portraying the bond between an elementary school teacher and his students. His unconventional methods clash with the complex social and cultural realities of the provincial German industrial town they live in.