Exceptionally talented actor and bridge-builder between black and white, a political icon and artist at the same time: that was Sidney Poitier. He made Hollywood history in 1964 when he became the first black man to win an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role − and thus became the first international black superstar.

He grew up in poor circumstances in the Bahamas − with only a few years of schooling. Despite this humble start, Sidney Poitier became a film legend committed artistically and politically against all odds. What compromises did he have to make? What shaped him? This documentary gives an intimate insight into the eventful life of the actor and director, who died in January 2022 at the age of 94.

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Film classics like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago” made Omar Sharif a world star. He was an actor, bridge player, nomad, womanizer and loved life. This portrait shows a man full of contradictions, who loved playing bridge more than the film business and who lived half of his life in hotels.

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Rain or shine, storm or chill; all year long the world is queuing up to see the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Who are all these visitors? Where are they from? And why are they here? This film watches the queue through the course of the four seasons, in search of stories from all over the globe.

Interviews with people from the line – both before and after their visit to the Secret Annex show how repression, discrimination, and dehumanization transcend the boundaries of time. We also learn that everyone in his own way feels connected to this extraordinary place. Personal stories are interspersed with passages from Anne Frank’s diary, read in many different languages by girls about the same age as Anne at the time.

Meanwhile we get an impression of everyday life as it unfolds around those waiting in line the canal boats, the street musicians, the ticket seller, the homeless man – For all its poignancy ”In Line for Anne Frank” is a document that also inspires hope.

Nominee Rockie Awards (History & Biography)

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A recently discovered archive reveals the story of the extraordinary life of the model agent Emmeline Snively, who ran the Blue Book Model Agency in Hollywood in post-war America. Many famous models, including Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield, started out at this modeling agency. Emmeline Snively was a Mother of Beauty for hundreds of models. She taught them how to walk and talk and even sent them out to get platinum blond hair or plastic surgery. The need to be pretty in post-war Hollywood was a phenomenon, and Emmeline Snively understood that.

This documentary reconstructs the way Emmeline created beauty and shows what’s left of it after all these years. The theme throughout the entire film is the meaning of beauty. Memories of youth, experience, aging and mortality create a history of time and place filled with humor, sadness and everything in-between, as these men and women navigated Hollywood and all its promises. A film about dignity, beauty and getting old.

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Ida Haendel is considered a legend among professional musicians and listeners of classical music alike. This documentary utilizes footage that was shot between 2009 and 2017, showing the life and work of British-Polish violinist Ida Haendel.

After having given her final performance, her everyday life oscillates between nostalgia and joy of living, between loneliness and hopefulness. Ida Haendel is a person of wisdom and humor, whole-heartedly accepting the challenge of spending her remaining years in a self-determined way. Though at some point she has to accept she can’t play the violin anymore, she refuses to stop singing.

“The Haendel Variations” is not an ordinary music documentary, it is not just another portrait of a world-renowned classical musician. Its rather restrained, more intimate approach focuses on the inner life of an extraordinary woman and on the two things that still give her life meaning: her love for music and for her fellow human beings.

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In the 1920s, Jewish businessman Max Emden made a fortune with department stores such as KaDeWe or Oberpollinger and was one of Hamburg’s most important patrons. On Lake Maggiore he led a glamorous life with speedy boats and beautiful women, but the long arm of the Nazis reached him there too – Emden lost everything. To this day, his heirs are fighting in vain for adequate compensation.

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He was one of Hollywood’s greatest writers and directors. Original footage of Wilder, conversations with his colleagues, archive and new film material document an eventful century in history and present a portrait of a man who was anything but boring.

Born Samuel Wilder in Galicia, Billy Wilder fled from Berlin as a young reporter via Paris and New York when the Nazis rose to power. He lived in many places; but it is in Hollywood that he ultimately settled. “NEVER BE BORING: BILLY WILDER” offers the viewer an intimate portrait of the star director and invites to take a glimpse at the machinery of the dream factory and Billy Wilder’s films, at their inner workings and mechanisms.

The Film offers insight into the life and mindset of a cinematic genius. Billy Wilder speaks for himself in countless original recordings and in exclusive newly filmed interviews his companions and contemporaries such as director Volker Schlöndorff, actor Mario Adorf, Swiss actress Marthe Keller and Paul Diamond, himself a script writer, son of Wilder’s most important writing partner, I.A.L. Diamond, reminisce about Wilder.

Via trailers and film extracts from his masterpieces the film documents and analyses Wilder’s cinematographic works; his tremendous standing in the industry is attested by conversations with his companions. His quotes, sometimes full of sarcasm, sometimes full of endearing humour, reveal much about the life of the famous writer and director. NEVER BE BORING: BILLY WILDER The film takes us to the places where these memories were formed.

 

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The life story of Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer, who passed away in 2014, as told by the director himself. The documentary was made at the time when Sluizer was finally finishing his film Dark Blood. While the director is struggling with his health and his movie, he looks back on his life and talks about his love of cinema, his sources of inspiration and his at times bizarre experiences with people like Klaus Kinski, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Werner Herzog, Michelangelo Antonioni and John F. Kennedy.  With a great mix of interviews and footage of his films.

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The last offspring of a powerful German family: Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach – the last Krupp.

Unwilling to fulfill the expectations of both his family and their company, this homosexual industrialist’s son waived his inheritance of around 3,5 billion D-Mark. With an annual settlement of two million D-Mark Arndt withdrew into another world. He remained a lonely man his whole life. His lifestyle became legendary in the 1960s and 70s, degenerated into a ridiculed outsider. Neither a documentary nor a feature film and set in the late 70s.

Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2016 Sydney Film Festival

2016 Nomination for the European Film Academy Docunentary Competition

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According to Protocol shows the responsible but also emotional work of the dispatchers of the emergency services 112. They are expected to adjust their way of assistance to the new protocol that took effect recently. For the optimization of health care the dispatchers have to follow a tight schedule of questionnaires. The one dispatcher is coping better to this commercial change in work than the other.

Director Anne-Marieke Graafmans shows us the dilemma employees in the care increasingly have to face: realize the best possible care for the clients versus the commercialization in health care.

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