Flare Film

In the Texan “Hands on a Hardbody” competition, contestants stand around a new pickup truck for days, touching it with one hand. Whoever holds out the longest wins the truck.

Janik and Samuel are best friends and enjoy the end of high school. Their worlds are different: Janik has parents who always do everything right, while Samuel comes from a broken home. Samuel wants order, Janik wants chaos. A thoughtless moment puts the close bond between the two friends in jeopardy. As they set off on their long-planned trip to Istanbul, the boys are looking to save their friendship, enjoy their freedom and try out a new life.

Two sex workers meet in a Berlin brothel. In a place where the female body is a commodity, they experience moments of happiness. A feisty love story about attraction, fears and self-determination.

A coming-of-age tale with a difference about the grumpy doctor Annebarbel Buschhaus donning her ice skates again at the age of 58 after an absence of 40 years. Back on the ice, she tries to revive long suppressed childhood dreams – and makes a new friend, Jolina Kuhn, Berlin’s youth figure skating champion. Through her new friend, Annebarbel begins to open up and break away from her dominant mother.

If there is such a thing as a family memory that carries forward over the course of history, then it determines the actions of every generation. The director tells the story of the women in her family, set amongst Walchensee, hippie dreams and the commune surrounding Rainer Langhans.

In a dystopian 2054, three young rebels go on a journey to find traces of the long lost beauty of nature, hoping to discover what happened to their planet.

Isn’t the trajectory of a shared life determined in advance? Get married, have kids, be like everyone else… According to Dietrich Brüggemann, who competed in Vary six years ago, 30-somethings conceivably have it all, yet they fail in their attempts to achieve their set ideals. Nö delivers a critique of contemporary values, while also highlighting the struggle to find and nurture love.

A portrait of Berlin’s most famous bouncers – Sven Marquardt, Frank Künster and Smiley Baldwin. The three men have been part and parcel of the capital’s club scene for more than 25 years – from the days after the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day – but aren’t yet considering calling it a day even though life makes more demands on them as they turn 50.

It's the summer of 1990, two teenagers in Germany fall in love - an innocent first love, shortly before the German reunification. Katja (16) is from West-Berlin, Thorben (17) from GDR. Their families are fighting over a house in Kleinmachnow (a suburb of East-Berlin), where Thorbens family has been living since the 70ies, but where Katjas father grew up. The family had to emigrate to West-Berlin in 1961, just before the Berlin Wall was built. Later, the house was dispossessed under GDR-rule. Now, Katjas father demands restitution. The conflict grows bitterer and threatens to tear apart both families. It is about old wounds and new prejudices. While being in the middle of Germanys swiftly progressing process of reunification, Katja and Thorben have to fight for their love.

Karl, a 17-year-old boy who spends most of his time collecting pictures and videos for his blog, finds a new purpose when he falls in love with his fellow student Doro.

Colombia, 1990’s. A single mother attempts to keep her family together after her son is drafted by the army and assigned to the front in the country’s most dangerous war zone. To do this, she embarks on a journey against time in a society ruled by men, corruption and violence.

Astrid is in her late forties and has her life firmly under control. She has fallen in love with Paul, and their first weekend trip together takes them to Budapest for a few romantic days, just the two of them. But in the Hungarian capital things happen differently than they'd planned: They run into Julius, Astrid's first great love, whom she'd met at an artists' party in East Germany in 1986.

Three men and a houseboat: Three crisis-plagued Stuttgarters sailed for a week on the Havel in the direction of Müritz. The unfamiliar and not so tranquil Dreisamkeit brings so many things to light, which has hitherto been successfully concealed and repressed. The summer boat trip paves the way to the realization that a turnaround in life could not hurt.

"One in a Million" tells the story of two girls coming of age. As gymnast and YouTuber Whitney Bjerken from the US struggles with setbacks, she turns to music to express her feelings. Yara from Germany is one of her biggest fans and part of a show-acrobatics team. When she falls in love with a girl for the very first time, she barely finds time for her fan-account anymore. While navigating the exciting world of social media, Yara and Whitney begin to find out who they are and what they want in life.

Two brothers grow up in the Saxon province (part of Germany) at the turn of the millennium, where the dream of family happiness in a new house quickly turns into a nightmare of decay, violence and xenophobia as they desperately search for stability and belonging.

Andi's life is a constant battle for his home, his three children and the woman he still loves. He only has two weeks to pay her back the borrowed 5,000 EUR. When he loses his job, an amateur boxing tournament looks like the only solution.

A house by the lake near Berlin: this is where former pop star Arthur Weyer, 75, and his wife Elsa, who is ten years his junior, spent many happy hours. But that is a long time ago. The couple separated four years ago - Arthur had fallen in love with a much younger woman. This relationship failed since Arthur fell ill with dementia. Despite all the bitterness, Elsa still feels responsible for Arthur and is looking for a place in a nursing home. In order to be able to finance this, the house on the lake has to be sold - but against Arthur's will. For clearing out and repairs, the two hire 45-year-old Sorin, who lives alone on a houseboat and works as a DJ. Sorin and Arthur get along great right away. First, there are violent arguments between Elsa and Sorin. But slowly Elsa and Sorin are getting closer. Suddenly things are brought up that have been repressed for years.

When her father Helmut dies in an accident, Uli receives a box of her father's clothes from her mother, in which she finds women's clothing. She also receives his diaries, and thus uncovers the family secret that Helmut had been a "transvestite" since his youth, who only acted out his inclinations to appear as a woman in other cities.