Bestselling film adaptations and mystery stories

"I Was, I Am, I Will" won several awards in 2019 - now Hamburg Media School graduate İlker Çatak is back with his new feature film: In "The Teachers' Lounge", European shooting star Leonie Benesch slips into the role of a Hamburg teacher. When one day one of her pupils is suspected of theft, she decides to investigate the matter personally - and threatens to break her ideals and the school system. "The Teachers' Lounge was filmed entirely in Hamburg.

The series "Davos" is currently still in production - but Berlinale visitors can take an exclusive first look at the World War I epic in a showcase. Dominique Devenport, Jeanette Hain and David Kross can be seen in the leading roles - Executive Producer is the Hamburg-based company Letterbox.

What is it about? The First World War devastates Europe. In contrast, Davos, the noble mountain resort, seems like an oasis of peace. But behind the scenes, a relentless war of agents is raging between the world powers in neutral Switzerland. The young, war-hardened nurse Johanna Gabathuler unexpectedly finds herself caught between the fronts of the spies.

In "The Measures of Men", Director and Script Writer Lars Kraume tells the story of a young Berlin ethnologist who witnesses the genocide of the Herero and Nama in the colony of "German South West Africa" at the beginning of the 20th century - and crosses his own moral boundaries in the process. The film was shot entirely in Namibia and most of the film crew came from South Africa and Namibia. Leonard Scheicher, Girley Charlene Jazama and Peter Simonischek appear in front of the camera. The soundtrack to the film is by the Hamburg composer duo Kaiser Maas.

In this documentary by Volker Koepp, people in the Baltic Sea regions of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein talk about Leaving and Staying, about persevering in their places of origin and about their motives for moving away to foreign regions and landscapes. The script was written by Barbara Frankenstein.

In her new mystery thriller, Hamburg-based Director and Script Writer Ayse Polat follows a German film crew shooting a documentary in north-east Turkey. In a remote Kurdish village, they witness how an elderly woman performs a recurring ritual to keep the memory of her missing son alive. The Kurdish translator Leyla is also the nanny of 7-year-old Melek. Her father Zafer works for a sinister organisation. When his daughter seems to be haunted by a mysterious force, he is torn between loyalty to his employers and fear for his family. "In the Blind Spot" had one day of shooting on Hamburg's Reeperbahn and post production took place in Hamburg.

In the schizophrenic world of Tehran, the paths of three self-confident women and a young musician cross. In the city's shadowy realm, sex, corruption, prostitution and drugs lead a parallel life alongside the restrictive religious regime. Circumventing bans has become a popular sport, breaking taboos a means of self-realisation. Tehran Taboo is a captivating and disturbing post-animated journey to the dark corners of Iranian society, where nothing is as it seems from the outside and where the public gaze does not normally reach. Directors Ali Soozandeh's film was honoured with the FIPRESCI Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Camera in Cannes in 2017.

In Hambach Forest, the failure of climate policy meets activists in tree houses. In the midst of this chaos, Steffen Meyn breaks through a suspension bridge and dies. He leaves behind his collected film footage, on which this Documentary by Fabiana Fragale, Kilian Kuhlendahl and Jens Mühlhoff is based. A film about politics with one's own body and about a state in which there is sometimes no other way. Part of the post production took place in Hamburg.

Funny and full of absurd moments and incidents: Joachim Meyerhoff's original novel was a huge success in Germany - now the bestseller has been adapted into a film by Director Sonja Heiss and is celebrating its world premiere in the children's and youth section of the Berlinale. Filming took place in Berlin, Brandenburg, NRW, Canada and, of course, Schleswig-Holstein. Sonja Heiss wrote the script for the story about Joachim, who grows up on the grounds of Schleswig-Holstein's largest psychiatric hospital, together with Lars Hubrich.