DOCDAYS Productions
Long Distance Swimmer: Sara Mardini 2024
The documentary begins when the fictionalized drama ends. Sara spent three years volunteering to save refugees on the same journey that made her so famous, and was suddenly arrested in Aug. 2018, accused by Greek authorities of running a criminal enterprise with charges including “international espionage and people smuggling.” If convicted, she faces up to 25 years in prison and the end of her humanitarian career. Shot over three years, the film follows Sara’s fight for justice and journey of self-discovery.
Projections of America 2015
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Riskin headed up a secret film unit that sought to redefine America in the eyes of the world during the darkest days of World War II. The filmmakers created powerful short documentaries that showed America's strength not through images of tanks, but in portraits of farmers, school children and window washers. The "Projections of America" films were brilliant, moving portraits of America that were unlike any films ever made before, but seventy years later they are forgotten, hidden away in government archives.
Bedlam 2019
A psychiatrist makes rounds in ERs, jails, and homeless camps to tell the intimate stories behind one of the greatest social crises of our time. A personal and intense journey into the world of the seriously mentally ill.
Empire of Mirrors 2018
Bianca Charamsa made her way to Japan during this year's cherry blossom season to get to grips with the country's character through conversations with some of its artists. Although two violent atomic catastrophes - the bombing of Hiroshima and the Fukushima nuclear disaster - have shaken and shaped modern-day Japan, the artist Takahiro Iwasaki believes that memory of 6th and 9th August 1945 is slowly fading, despite all the folded cranes left by visitors to the memorial sites. Natural catastrophes like sea- and earthquakes also rock Japan time and time again; perhaps this explains why the Japanese aesthetic Wabi Sabi incorporates both beauty and decay...much like the beauty of the cherry blossom as it withers during the annual festival of Hanami
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall 2020
The life of Dr Han has become a permanent quest for perfection. From the livestreamed operating theatre to art fairs via fashion shows, the famous Chinese plastic surgeon has only one aim: beauty. Through the implacable portrait of this character, the film questions beauty as a simultaneously essential yet vain element of society in the era of selfies.
Robert Shaw: Man of Many Voices 2016
A small-town California boy planned to be a minister like his father, but instead became the greatest conductor of choral music the world has ever known. With no formal musical training, he moved from stunning early success in popular music to legendary interpretations of classical music's great choral masterpieces.
Inside Zaporizhzhia - A Nuclear Power Plant in the Midst of War 2024
A close-up of the dizzying escalation of nuclear risk since the largest power station on the European continent fell into the hands of Russia at the start of the war.
The Bloody Truth 2014
This film tells the story of the unknown pre-history of the AIDS virus, long before people started to die in the US and Europe. Following a team of scientists we uncover a forgotten medical archive in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that tells of an epidemic a full two decades before anyone knew about the novel killer. From high-tech labs in the US to African medics who have their boots on the ground, we trace HIV back to its origin in the jungles of Cameroon. In the decades around the turn of the 20th century, colonialism fundamentally changed the lives of millions of people in central Africa; it created an environment that allowed HIV to leave its original host, the chimpanzee, and start to spread in humans.
Leben hinter Gittern 2022
Liberation Diaries 2025
The end of World War II brings Europe a new political system, reshapes national and personal identities. Three women from Milan, Paris and Berlin report on the days of liberation in their diaries. Their personal stories expand the historical picture and make LIBERATION DIARIES a chronicle of female self-empowerment, resistance and resilience.
AGFA 1939. Journey Into War 2015
Young Polish filmmaker Michal Wnuk finds an Agfa box of 120 photographs and 2 reels of 16mm film. For the first time, he gets to see World War II through the eyes of his grandfather, who served in the Wehrmacht. Soon Michal discovers that the box didn't belong to his grandfather but to his great-uncle Elek - an anti-German fighter and a decorated war hero. Michal uncovers the intriguing story behind the Agfa box, traveling across Poland and Germany in a journey that leads him back to the last summer days of 1939.
Jonny Island 2023
Jonny, a young teacher from Berlin, starts working remotely during the Covid pandemic as he suffers from a chronic lung disease. When his school does not want to support his arrangement, he begins a passionate struggle against exclusion.
Beyond Punishment 2015
Three different countries and one case of deadly violence each. Three men who have killed and three families who have lost a beloved one. In the common idea of guilt and punishment this makes three who get punished and three who are meant to forget. Unthinkable to imagine the two sides will ever get closer. The film tells three times the impossible story: To meet your enemy - in thoughts, in messages, in real life. A film that challenges our ideas of guilt and punishment.
Loveparade: The Trial 2020
In 2010, during the Love Parade in Duisburg, following a crowd movement, the participants found themselves stuck in a tunnel, soon trampled and suffocated. Results: 21 dead and more than 600 injured. Spotlight on the extraordinary trial which followed this tragedy.