Topic

Berlin

Twice destroyed, twice divided, permanently unfinished.

6: in film
13:00: average
78 min: in total
16: across the network

Berlin across the network →

All briefs6

13:00

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1980

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1980 fourteen-part television adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s novel traces Franz Biberkopf’s failed attempts at honest living in late-Weimar Berlin. Shot by Xaver Schwarzenberger, scored by Peer Raben, and edited by Juliane Lorenz, it treats the city as a system of pressures — economic, legal, sexual — that wear down individual agency. With a cast including Barbara Sukowa, Gottfried John, and Hanna Schygulla, it avoids psychological exposition in favour of documentary texture, rhythmic repetition, and moral density. At 894 minutes, it asks for time not as concession but as condition.

13:00

Christiane F.

Uli Edel · 1981

Christiane F. (1981) is a West German drama adapted from a real teenager’s account of heroin addiction in 1970s West Berlin. Directed by Uli Edel and shot with non-professional actors on location, it charts Christiane’s descent from bored 13-year-old to dependent user over two years, using unflinching realism, restrained performances, and a grey, grounded visual style. It omits her full biography — beginning and ending abruptly — and makes no claim to diagnosis or resolution. David Bowie appears in concert footage and contributes to the soundtrack, but his role is atmospheric, not symbolic.

13:00

Moonage Daydream

Brett Morgen · 2022

Moonage Daydream is a 140-minute documentary about David Bowie, directed and edited by Brett Morgen from five million items in Bowie’s personal archive. It uses montage, remixed music, and unreleased footage to construct a non-linear, sensory portrait — avoiding biography in favour of immersion. Premiered at Cannes in 2022, it won a Grierson Award and was shortlisted for an Oscar. It is structured as a series of associative chapters, emphasising Bowie’s intellectual and aesthetic preoccupations over career milestones.

13:00

People on Sunday

Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann · 1930

A 1930 German silent film shot on location over several Sundays, People on Sunday follows five Berliners — a wine seller, a taxi driver, a record clerk, a film extra, and a model — through a weekend of minor encounters, quiet arguments, and lakeside leisure. Made by a collective of young filmmakers including Billy Wilder and the Siodmak brothers, it uses non-professional actors playing versions of themselves, and relies on observation rather than plot. Its power lies in its unadorned realism, its rhythmic editing, and its poignant, unsentimental view of ordinary life in the final years of the Weimar Republic.

13:00

Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders · 1987

Wings of Desire (1987) is a West German–French arthouse fantasy set in Cold War Berlin, following an angel who abandons immortality to experience human sensation. Shot in black-and-white for the angels’ perspective and colour for human life, it uses poetic narration, restrained performances, and location-based realism to explore silence, memory, and embodiment. Directed by Wim Wenders with cinematography by Henri Alekan and music by Jürgen Knieper, it won European Film Awards and critical acclaim, though its deliberate pace and abstract structure divide viewers.

13:00

Faraway, So Close!

Wim Wenders · 1993

Wim Wenders’ 1993 fantasy sequel Faraway, So Close! follows the angel Cassiel as he becomes human in reunified Berlin, navigating bureaucracy, addiction, and criminal enterprise. Shot by Jürgen Jürges and scored by Laurent Petitgand, it trades the poetic stillness of Wings of Desire for a grittier, more fragmented register — one that reflects the city’s uncertain new reality. Though it won the Grand Prix at Cannes, its loose structure and tonal shifts divided critics. It is a film of texture over trajectory, best approached as a sustained meditation on presence, not a story with stakes.