Films about filmmaking far from home

In 2025, we once again show works by filmmakers living in exile and currently unable to return to their home countries. The section is a collaboration with the Goethe-Institut in Exile project, which offers refugee, exiled, and migrant artists a place where they can continue their artistic work.

Filmmaking in Exile – films about filmmaking far from home aims to provide a platform in Germany for artists from countries where the Goethe-Institut can no longer be active. The section includes five films by directors from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Sudan. In different ways, their films make the experience of exile tangible and reflect on what exile and new beginnings mean for the artistic creative process.

Carmen Herold (Goethe-Institut in Exile): “The Filmmaking in Exile section shows the many ways in which the forfeited homeland can be told from exile. (...) The films open up intimate, political, and contradictory perspectives on the filmmakers’ contexts of origin.”

In cooperation with