Sebastian Schneider

Confessions of Thomas Mann, Confidence Man

A feature film that traces the 50-year journey behind Confessions of Felix Krull, revealing the writer’s hidden struggle with his homosexuality. Though a literary superstar with a polished, upper-class façade and a married life with six children, Mann’s diaries expose an insecure man suppressing deep desires. The film follows Mann’s creative and personal exile—from Eltville to Paris and Lisbon—using archival letters and diary entries alongside dramatized scenes. It blurs the lines between Mann and his seductive alter ego Felix Krull, both masters of deception navigating identity, longing, and survival amid exile and political upheaval. This hybrid documentary unveils the fragile, often hidden man behind the myth.

Abendland

Because the German state has failed, a large number of people are living in the forest, outside of society.

Cologne P.D.

The SOKO Köln investigates the cathedral city with humor and often with hard work. Their cases take them into a variety of environments, from the Cologne clique to the terraced housing estates on the outskirts of the city.

SOKO Stuttgart

The SOKO Stuttgart team investigates analytically and with sensitivity in the likeable state capital. The exciting cases of the series lead them to bizarre crime scenes and to different milieus.

Kampf auf der Bosporus-Brücke - Die Türkei und der gescheiterte Putschversuch

The night of July 15, 2016 changed the history of Turkey. On that day there were coordinated attacks by parts of the Turkish army, among others in Istanbul. The aim of the military: a coup against the government. The decisive confrontation occurred on the Bosporus Bridge. While President Erdogan was still on vacation, live at TV he called on the people who were devoted to him to stand against the military. As an enemy for the masses, he presented his adversary Fethullah Gülen, whom he branded as the coup leader. He also urged the imams of the country's mosques to condition the population to resist. And so it happens that at night thousands of agitated people take to the streets to oppose the armed insurgents. The death toll was high. 352 people died across Turkey during the attempted coup. The consequences are even more serious: Erdogan used this gift, as he called it himself, to undermine democracy, to arrange mass arrests of dissidents and to transform Turkey into a dictatorship.

Letzte Spur Berlin

Helen Dorn

Helen Dorn is an expert Police Commissioner, who’s years of experience have given her killer instinct when it comes to crime. On the department head’s orders, Helen Dorn become involuntary partners with Detective Chief Superintendent Gregor Georgi, with Helen in the role of Georgi’s superior. After initially ruffling some feathers, as Gregor thought he was about to take over a case as head investigator and not confronted with a new superior, the two prove to be a solid pairing: Helen’s famed intuition is matched by Gregor’s rational analysis and precision. But will he be able to unearth her mysterious past?

Brüt

WaPo Berlin

Second Thoughts

When Marie’s boyfriend proposes to her in front of his entire family, she doesn't know what to say and flees to the countryside to think it over alone. But her thoughts accompany her. They sit around her in flesh and blood: Her mother pesters her with baby names, exboyfriends climb down trees and a woman in a sari narrates her life in poems. Her would-be fiancé eventually joins her, clashing his own luggage of thoughts with hers. But what if you show your thoughts to each other? How much honesty can a relationship take? In her first feature, director Zora Rux, an apprentice of Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson, tells a surrealistic story of the search for one’s true self in poetic tableaus.