An omnibus film is, by definition, a film in which various films by different filmmakers are brought together. Or, put another way: various episodes. Short films in a feature-length format, and thus predestined for a festival such as the Kurzfilmtage, where the second part of a series on omnibus films curated by Lukas Foerster will be screened in 2026.

There is no genre or form that cannot be varied, treated with irony, or simply viewed from a different perspective. “The idea is to showcase forms of the omnibus film that do not conform to the classic formats,” says Lukas Foerster, explaining the focus of this year’s programme. The film for the first screening, however, still remains within the framework. Stadt als Beute (2005), directed by Miriam Dehne, Esther Gronenborn and Irene von Alberti, functions like a time capsule today: three episodes from Berlin in the early 2000s (see also the interview with Irene von Alberti LINK). In terms of structure, Stadt als Beute is a classic omnibus film (three parts, three directors), but in terms of approach, it already breaks away from the canon. “The directors are attempting to rethink the form of the omnibus film,” says Foerster. “This is prompted less by an auteur film attitude and more by an attempt to create a film collectively.”

From there, we move to the fringes of the omnibus film. Take Final Flesh (2009), for example. It is no exaggeration to say that Vernon Chatman’s film is surely one of the strangest ever produced in the history of cinema. Chatman, known as one of the producers of the South Park series and as the voice of the stoned towel Towley, wrote an already ludicrous four-chapter screenplay about the end of days and sent it to four fetish porn production companies where customers can order films for home use, tailored precisely to their own fantasies and kinks. In other words, films that are not actually intended for public viewing.

The short film World at Stake (2025) is also the result of a collective production. The collective of artists, researchers and filmmakers Total Refusal has compiled images from three different sports video games. Here, too, the imagery stems from different production contexts. The difference is that the film as a whole is, so to speak, a montage of found footage: A golfer fails to tee off, a football team plays against itself (using a globe instead of a ball), and a rally team completely loses its bearings. World at Stake makes very little alterations to the images from the computer games, instead showing them largely as the game presents them. In a sense, one could say that the actual authors are the game developers. Or that there are several levels of authorship here: the programmers, the players who generate the material, and finally the filmmakers who edit it into a film.

The concept of the omnibus film is stretched even further with the short film The Valley Where LOAB Lives, created entirely using AI. A female character born of code: LOAB guides us through six iconic horror eras, from Nosferatu to Get Out.

The final film in this year’s omnibus programme is, in the traditional sense, the work of several directors, whose episodes are presented one after the other. However, the ten directors of China Villager Documentary Project (2006) are not professionals, but amateur filmmakers. The ten episodes document the attempts by residents of Chinese villages to organise and hold an election. This places China Villager Documentary Project in a line of omnibus films that have become popular since 2000. Namely, films consisting of footage shot by amateur filmmakers (Ridley Scott, for example, produced a whole series of such films with Life in a Day). Wu Wenguang, one of the leading figures in independent Chinese documentary filmmaking, gave cameras to villagers in various regions and organised filmmaking workshops with them. The films, each lasting around ten minutes, were then compiled into an omnibus film.

In all this, the programme approaches the omnibus film from the periphery, both in terms of production methods and the respective genres (softcore, participatory amateur film, pornography, horror). In doing so, it sheds a characteristic otherwise often flaunted: a sort of showcase of directors proudly presenting their respective artistic signatures as filmmakers. In their place come collectives, found footage, low-budget aesthetics, AI-generated fantasies and trash aesthetics.

Benjamin Moldenhauer

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Screenings
29 April, 5 pm, Stadt als Beute Tickets
30 April, 8.15 pm, World at Stake/The Valley where LOAB lives Tickets
1 May, 5.45 pm, China Villagers Documentary Project Tickets
1 May, 10.45 pm, Final Flesh Tickets
2 May, 8.15 pm, Luminous Void: Docudrama Tickets

In 2026, “Stadt als Beute” doesn’t feel as though it’s over twenty years old. What role does it play for you today?

At the time, I found German cinema to be rather unadventurous and lacking in courage, and I wanted to counter that. I had just moved from southern Germany to Berlin, with two small children and Frieder Schlaich [the producer of Stadt als Beute]. We’d previously shot an anthology film in Morocco, Paul Bowles – Halbmond, based on three short stories by Paul Bowles. But then I was primarily confronted with the city itself and had plenty of time to think about what sort of film I’d like to see or make. I went to the theatre a lot, always to the Volksbühne, and saw almost everything by René Pollesch, including Stadt als Beute. I found the completely different approach fascinating, the way in which the actors, in a sense, embody their text. I felt very drawn to this; I had the feeling that what was being explored there had something to do with my own life. That’s how the idea for this film came about. It was extremely important to me back then and still is today.

Was Pollesch’s play and the filming of “Stadt als Beute” a confrontation with Berlin in the noughties?

Yes, and the idea of combining Pollesch’s play with an episodic film by three female directors, telling the stories from different perspectives, arose partly from a love of experimental forms and partly from a collective vision. Each episode follows a single person, and each episode has a script written by the respective director herself. In the rehearsal scenes, all the stories then came together. We also wanted to see whether the individual parts would influence or enrich one another. In any case, we wanted to make a film that works as a whole, rather than simply compiling individual films.

I think it was a really good time to get projects off the ground in Berlin. Unlike today, it was less complicated and more vibrant.

Yes. Doors opened up quite quickly. Everything was much less bureaucratic. Shooting as we did for Stadt als Beute would probably no longer be feasible today.

I’ve never seen René Pollesch at rehearsals, but my impression is that, as it were, as the film’s fourth director, he plays a sort of subtle caricature of himself. That doesn’t strike me as documentary-like. How did the collaboration work?

When I asked René if we could use his texts for the film, he found it interesting: to see whether the texts were suitable for everyday use and how they would work in the film. When I asked him if he’d like to act in it, that was a bit trickier. He eventually said: “Okay, you’re the directors, and I’m your actor.”

Pollesch has worked collectively himself, hasn’t he? How did you approach these rehearsal scenes – more in a documentary style, or more as a re-staging?

The three of us attended many rehearsals beforehand and listened very carefully. With him, the text actually emerges through dialogue with the actors: the cast, in a sense, helps to write it. And he sits down at night and incorporates that into the text. In the end, it is his text that counts – that is, that is actually spoken. But during rehearsals, this can vary greatly, because he’s checking whether it really suits the characters, whether the actors can pull it off. It really is a group, a collective. And we tried to translate that spirit into the film.

In other words: were those rehearsal scenes in the film an attempt to recreate, in a documentary style, what you saw during the actual rehearsals? Or did you write your own script for them, one that deliberately diverges from reality?

The rehearsal scenes were inspired by the real rehearsals, but written and directed by us. There were certain lines that had to be spoken, in all three perspectives. Things like: ‘Should I ring someone else on Monday?’ There was practically no improvisation in the sense of ‘let’s just see how it goes’. That was the concept.

That brings me to the specific style of acting you see in the film. Particularly in your episode: an actor undergoes a transformation. At first he acts in this ‘classical’ style, which doesn’t work at all for René Pollesch in the film, and then the moment comes when, in the end, he ‘gets it’. Here, the film poses the question of what constitutes “authentic” expression, after authenticity has already been scrutinised with scepticism?

I found this acting technique in Pollesch’s work deeply fascinating. Also the fact that these questions always bring the very means of expression themselves into focus. This certainly anchors the individual stories within their respective contexts and time periods. And perhaps that also explains why the film still has such an impact today. Perhaps we were also ahead of our time back then. Today I keep hearing from people who’ve recently moved to Berlin and write to me: the film made their start in the city easier.

Apart from the multi-perspective approach, was there anything else that suggested making *Stadt als Beute* as an omnibus film?

There was also a practical consideration: I would have struggled to get the film financed on my own [laughs].

Each director wrote her own episode. Nevertheless, the film feels very cohesive; there are no real breaks in style. Was there, from start to finish – in the spirit of collective collaboration – any exchange between the directors? I mean, things like discussions about plotlines and character dynamics?

There was an overarching concept that I’d thought through beforehand, but it was then developed further by the three of us. The idea was that the rehearsals experienced by the three actors should take place over the course of a single day, told from each respective perspective. We shot the transition scenes at the Volksbühne im Prater, in the very room where Pollesch actually rehearsed. Each of us had our own team and even our own editor. In hindsight, it might have been easier to entrust the editing to a single person, but it was also fascinating to see how the respective edited versions kept influencing the other films, until a single complete film emerged in the end.

Does the film strike you as cohesive when you look back on it?

Of course, I still see the differences. But I’m pleased that’s how it’s perceived today. I think the impression of cohesion also stems from the fact that this atmosphere was present in all three teams: Prenzlauer Berg from the late nineties to the mid-noughties. It’s there in the choice of music and in the way the images are shot. An atmosphere that holds the film together.

Do you still see places or artists today where that spirit lives on?

I do believe it still exists. Berlin is probably the place where it’s most evident. But I get the impression that the younger generation is more afraid. Back then, we were somehow completely fearless; I don’t even know why. Perhaps it was also because you could easily afford to live in Berlin without necessarily having to build a career or earn money. Things are different today: many people are afraid of doing something wrong, saying the wrong thing, or not being able to make a living from it.

My impression is also that people have become more fearful. Things have really changed. I wonder, for example, what would happen today if an actor went on a rampage at the Sony Centre like David Scheller does at the end of the film.

On the day of filming, we really had more luck than sense. We did have a permit, but only for a narrow strip. The glass floor was extremely fragile. The way he dances around the whole pool wasn’t planned – nor was it insured. We also didn’t have permits for some of the other scenes in the city. Back then, shooting wasn’t taking place everywhere yet, and people were somehow more relaxed and generous.

The interview was conducted by Benjamin Moldenhauer

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The artist Ella Bergmann-Michel and the producer Paul Seligmann, both amateur filmmakers, found a unique perspective on (everyday) history at the end of the Weimar Republic through their joint productions.

The work of Ella Bergmann-Michel, born in 1895, combines mobile recording with a small Kinamo 35mm camera with a staged aesthetic characterised by a distinctive eye for light and shadow, for moods and the political and economic reality. As a painter, she created, among other things, collages influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism – traditions dedicated to the joyful transformation of form or the dissolution of forms. Her producer, the merchant Paul Seligmann, worked alongside Bergmann-Michel in the bund neues frankfurt, a network of architects, designers and artists active in the 1920s that published an innovative magazine and ran an avant-garde film club. In an essay published as late as January 1933, Seligmann speaks of the ‘inherent laws of film’.

Ella Bergmann-Michel’s documentary work (such as her ‘crowdfunded film’ The Unemployed Cooking for the Unemployed, 1932) is closely aligned with the ‘salvation of external reality’ and the utopian quality of cinema, as postulated by Siegfried Kracauer.

Shortly afterwards, Ella Bergmann-Michel made the 13-minute film Wahlkampf 1932 (Die letzte Wahl) (Election Campaign 1932 (The Last Election)), which shows street scenes during the election campaign in Frankfurt. The film features a montage of posters, crowds engaged in heated discussion and glimpses of a polarised and flag-bedecked society, as well as rather melancholic impressions of Frankfurt in the run-up to the last election, before the lights went out in Germany and later in Europe.

Ella Bergmann-Michel’s films are strongly shaped by the political climate of her time – she was arrested whilst filming Wahlkampf 1932 (Die letzte Wahl) [unfinished] (1932/33), and only a rough cut of this film could be saved. However, what it means to make a film as a persecuted person under the ever-growing threat and Nazi standardisation can be seen in the ephemeral evasive movements of Paul Seligmann’s recently rediscovered film Frühjahr 1933 (Spring 1933).

In the post-war period, Ella Bergmann-Michel was a frequent guest at our Festival.

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Screening
30 April, 5pm, Lichtburg Tickets

On 15 June 2025, the Cologne-based filmmaker, cinema operator, curator and collector Bernhard Marsch passed away at the age of just 63. He dedicated his life to cinema, not least to the work of the Bulgarian-German filmmaker Marran Gosov. This tribute to both honours Marsch’s tireless work with a screening of Gosov’s films.

At first glance, Marran Gosov’s films can be understood as insights into the worlds of life and relationships in the 1960s. Take Power Slide from 1966, for example: two young men compete for a young woman, and at first it seems as though the battle of the sexes is being played out as a car race. But it turns out to be nothing more than a Carrera toy racetrack. All of this is quite touching at first, though the men’s posturing over the woman’s head—who has little say in the matter here—is irritating.

With a single shot, Marran Gosov then shifts the scene into a coolly analytical commentary on the objectification of the female body in the ridiculous male one-upmanship: it’s the woman’s head, centred in the lower half of the frame, above which hangs a sign on the wall of the shop containing the table on which the cars are doing their laps: “Betting for money or other material goods is strictly prohibited.”

On second and, in particular, third glance, we are dealing here with snapshots that are comical, yet repeatedly profound, whose staging and aesthetics are closer to the Slovak New Wave than to contemporary German cinema of the 1960s. The programme “Collect, talk, show. Marran Gosov via Bernhard Marsch” features nine films by Marran Gosov. As the title suggests, this is not just about one filmmaker, but about two cinema figures: a director and his collector.

Until his accidental death in June 2025, Bernhard Marsch was curator, projectionist, archivist – and executor of Marran Gosov’s estate. For decades, he was primarily active at the Cologne Filmclub 813, which he co-founded and which remains the last venue in Cologne to screen 35mm prints. Marsch organised screenings and travelled through the country’s arthouse cinemas with a handcart laden with Gosov’s films. “He rarely showed all 27 of Gosov’s short films, but usually a selection that he put together anew each time, depending on the venue and the context,” explains Felix Mende, who compiled the programme for the Oberhausen and worked with Marsch at Filmclub 813 for almost fifteen years. Without Bernhard Marsch, these films would probably be forgotten today.

A life dedicated to cinema and to films that risk falling into oblivion (it should not be forgotten that Bernhard Marsch was himself a filmmaker; “He treated Gosov’s films with the same care as his own,” says Felix Mende). “Marsch was one of a kind,” recalls Mende. “Not everyone got on with him, but many were drawn into his world by his energy and persuasiveness.”

Nach langen Jahren ein Wiedersehen mit meinem Bruder aus Bulgarien während einer kurzen Zwischenlandung in München (A Reunion with My Brother from Bulgaria After Many Years During a Brief Stopover in Munich, 1973) and Schöner Abschied (A Beautiful Farewell, 1970), too, combine a sober, documentary-style approach with a subtle sense of quiet absurdity that can veer into the oppressive. In the 1960s, Gosov was active within the Munich circle around Lemke and Rudolf Thome, yet remained on the periphery here too. “The films have that lovely Schwabing lightness, yet there is much that is melancholic and even abysmal within them,” says Felix Mende of the work.

In that sense, it is no coincidence that Bernhard Marsch and Marran Gosov found each other. In the Munich film scene, Gosov was “someone who was always only half-involved, yet still did his own thing entirely,” says Mende; the taz recognised in Marsch’s work an “independent, enviably headstrong approach”. One worked in a thriving niche, the other devoted his life precisely to those niches of film history where what threatens to be overgrown by the canon flourishes.

Benjamin Moldenhauer

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Screenings
3 Mai, 3.15 pm, Lichtburg Tickets

Related links
Marran Gosov-Homepage operated by Bernhard Marsch

Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah stands like a monolith in film history. A film in which, despite all the pauses, an incredible amount is spoken over the course of its nine-hour running time. And yet it deals, time and again and incessantly, with various forms of silence: the silence of the perpetrators, the attempt to draw the survivors out of their silence in front of the camera, and the stunned silence of the film itself in the face of the monstrous.

What is left unsaid and unseen: the footage that Lanzmann shot but ultimately did not use in Shoah is not simply outtakes; it has become a field of research in its own right. Since 2015, 220 hours of film footage containing outtakes have been made available digitally to anyone interested.

At the 2025 Festival, film historian Christoph Hesse led a workshop in which he reviewed and discussed outtakes with the participants. The seminar will resume in 2026 with a new focus. This year’s workshop will centre on the concept of ‘resistance’, which had no place in the finished film. The reason was a conceptual choice: Shoah was intended to centre on speaking about and remembering the extermination of European Jews. Despite the film’s nine-hour running time, there was no room for other aspects.

This deliberate omission by Lanzmann also includes the resistance of ghetto inhabitants, partisans and camp inmates. Lanzmann, incidentally, dedicated a later film to the latter, edited from footage shot during the several years of filming for Shoah: Sobibór, 14 October 1943, 4 pm.

This year’s workshop, however, approaches ‘resistance’ from yet another angle: as resistance on the part of the interviewees towards Lanzmann himself. This resistance can be divided into the inner, involuntary resistance of the survivors, who were often initially barely able to speak about what they had experienced and endured, and the resistance of the perpetrators whom Lanzmann interviewed and whom he tried to get to speak.

At times, this resistance on the part of the perpetrators manifested itself quite simply in a slammed front door; this can be heard in one of the conversations (or, in this case, more accurately, a brief altercation) recorded only on tape, which Lanzmann and his colleagues held with witnesses before filming began, including numerous individuals who were ultimately not filmed at all.

Audio recordings also form part of the archive material covered in the seminar and are no less revealing than the images. The audio interviews, which the Jewish Museum in Berlin is currently editing, provide a first-ever insight into the research undertaken prior to the actual filming and give a sense of the scale of the entire Shoah project from which the film emerged. The workshop will focus, by way of example, on such conversations in which prospective witnesses question the film project as Lanzmann explains it to them.

The outtakes, which were created during the filming of Shoah over the course of more than a decade, thus constitute more than just a supplement. They represent a hitherto unexplored retrospective extension of the project: testimonies that are both historical and film-historical, through which one can begin to make sense of the key documentary film about the extermination of European Jews by means of the images that could not be included in it.

Benjamin Moldenhauer

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Screenings
30 April, 5.45 pm, Lichtburg Tickets
1 Mai, 12.45 pm, Lichtburg Tickets

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