The best films from the
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival

Germany | 2009 | 08:57
Director: Reynold Reynolds

In 2008, the Palace of the Republic completely disappeared from the cityscape of Berlin. But can the demolition of a historical building erase cultural memory?

Poem: Letzter Tag der Republik by Gerhard Falkner

Australia | 2014 | 03:14
Director: Elena Knox

In a game reminiscent of Wheel of Fortune, a poem plays out on a letterboard. As the doll-like hostess turns over the letters, a surprising message to her audience is revealed.

Poem: High Heels by Elena Knox

Belgium | 2014 | 06:23
Directors: Paul Bogaert, Jan Peeters 

Not all participants at the Congress Centre know where to go. Meanwhile, bacteria and confusion spread in the toilets.

Poem: ONZEKERHEDEN 12 / Een twee drie emmers… by Paul Bogaert

Scotland | 2016 | 03:22
Director: Arban Severin

An animated triptych of Mark Dery’s cut-up poems 1979-’82.

Poems: SLEEP DOGS' Discontent, SMASHING ATOMS and SOFT BONE FLOWER OF X-RAY BRITTLE by Mark Dery

Bulgaria | 2015 | 04:02
Director: Asparuh Petrov

A second degree murderer that has no guilt nor qualms. 

Poem: A Petty Morning Crime by Georgi Gospodinov

Germany | 2016 | 04:30
Director: Urte Zintler

“One must be able to move but also be as still as a tree: as the trees have rooted themselves in the ground, as we stand fixed, despite the landscape pulls away." (Hilde Domin)

Poems: Noch gestern / Wie wenig nütze ich bin / Ziehende Landschaft by Hilde Domin

Italy | 2017 | 00:34
Director: Milena Tipaldo

Ode to Anxiety is an animated exorcism: a short ode is expressed to one of the greatest plagues of our society, anxiety, while she continues to dance on our stomach.

Poem: Ode to Anxiety by Milena Tipaldo

Scotland | 2020 | 02:06
Director: Steve Smart 

Whoever is having a drop too much today, will feel the overflow of rohypnol and embark on a trip within the ocean of the unconscious. In this experimental movie, images of the ocean sphere plus poetry unify in an almost classical transcendence.

Poem: TRAWL by Matthew Caley

Italy | 2019 | 09:00
Director: Eduard Escoffet, Gianluca Abbate

The voice that fills this film takes us to different spaces in Matera, from the tourist centres and city centres to the impregnable space of one’s own body: pleasure
and longing for other bodies that no one can pick up.

Poem: Cos Endins by Eduard Escoffet

USA | 2020 | 05:59
Directors: Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran

A film based on an erasure poem that works with texts from James Howard Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere. An indictment of American car culture and hostile urban environments which come into being when cities are only designed around motorway
systems. 

Poem: The Geography of Nowhere by Jack Cochran

Belgium | 2012 | 04:54
Director: Paul Bogaert

Four guards inspect an exhibition room. After the lights flicker off and on, they look younger and can’t believe what they hear.

Poem: Reconstruction by Paul Bogaert

Netherlands | 2020 | 07:10
Director: Jan Baeke, Alfred Marseille

Speeches held by heads of state encounter the guerilla tactics of poetry. Banished into the urban outdoor advertising and cut up into slogans, the sentences of the grand seducers lose their charismatic force rather quickly.

Poem: Speech by the Leader on the Occasion of the Future by Jan Baeke

On Goethe on Demand, the streaming platform of the Goethe-Institut, we present a variety of online film programs, film festivals and film series that can be streamed from home. 

Television “Made in Germany” is having a golden moment with the rise of international streaming services. German series that appeal to global audiences through smart and original writing, diverse themes, talented lineups and opulent productions have never received so much attention. 

The Berlinale's first online competition features powerful contemporary cinema, with the winning film resonating with our current state of mind.