Das Paradies vertreibt uns / Die Lügen der Sieger
Director
Christoph Hochhäusler
Germany / 2026
11 min.
/ DCP
/ Original version with English subtitles
A woman and a man are sitting at a table covered with photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. They all show a man and a woman, always positioned in front of different vacation backdrops—sometimes in black and white, sometimes in color. The two people at the table have a script in front of them—from which unfolds a dialogue between an actress (Henriette Confurius) and an actor (Jakob Diehl) that oscillates between analyzing and appropriating the scenes depicted in the photos. Hochhäusler’s latest short film organizes photographs found at a Berlin flea market into a narrative structure and reflects on the unstable relationship between images and truth. “Were we just pretending to be a couple? That’s what you wanted, after all!” (bik)
Director
Christoph Hochhäusler
Germany / 2014
112 min.
/ DCP
/ Original version with English subtitles
Fabian Groys (Florian David Fitz) is a player who soon becomes a pawn himself: as an investigative reporter at a news magazine’s Berlin bureau, he’s working on a story about Bundeswehr kickbacks in Afghanistan when a trainee reporter (Lilith Stangenberg) uncovers a toxic waste scandal behind a tabloid report, and the two of them suspect a connection. He realizes only too late that they’ve been led down the garden path by lobbyists. Hochhäusler’s first film shot in Berlin is a political thriller that explores the entanglements of politics, industry and the media. Far from being a heroic journalistic tale, it features not only iconic locations in the city—Alexanderplatz, Kottbusser Tor, the Chancellery, the Neue Nationalgalerie—but also numerous glass facades and the reflections they create, cross-fades and surveillance footage. Glass-walled rooms, prying eyes, opaque machinations—and far too many unknowns at play. (bik)
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