Highly Explosive (2025)

The Old Oak

A pub landlord in a previously thriving mining community struggles to hold onto his pub. Meanwhile, tensions rise in the town when Syrian refugees are placed in the empty houses in the community.

Synonymous With

A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.

Welcome

Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

Retalhos

Plot unavailable

Silent Night

Fact-based World War II story set on Christmas Eve, 1944, finds a German Mother and her son seeking refuge in a cabin on the war front. When she is invaded by three American soldiers and then three German soldiers, she successfully convinces the soldiers to put aside their differences for one evening and share a Christmas dinner.

Skeet

After being released from prison, Billy Skinner returns to his low-income neighbourhood feeling like a fish out of water; the area has changed dramatically, and what was once a predominantly white neighbourhood is now mostly occupied by refugee families.

Walk With Me

​While walking his dog, Eric bumps into the confident and carefree Ryan. Taking a nervous leap, Eric accepts Ryan’s invitation to walk through the city en route to a concert. In the next six blocks, the two men discover that intimacy through anonymity also exposes one another’s flaws and insecurities. Will they make it to the concert in one piece?

One Night Only

In this defiantly affirming queer tale, a gorgeously decked-out Australian calls out his date for chastising his "femme" qualities.

Sugar Island

An unwanted pregnancy triggers the journey into adulthood for Makenya, a Dominican-Haitian teenager who lives in the Batey, a community surrounded by sugarcane fields.

Harmony

Zane finds solace in their time at church, a peace that is not always reciprocated by others in the community. With a pastor they have known since childhood, they break down how they perceive their spirituality and gender to intersect, and hope that he has the heart to listen.

A Spot for Frog

Locked out of the school art room, a creative non-binary teen named Frog grapples with anxiety as they seek a new place to eat lunch. Imagination blurs with reality in this hybrid work of live action and animation about finding a place to belong.

Gigantic

The Hamburg friends Walter, Ricco and Floyd take each day as it comes between the estates of tower blocks and fast food restaurants. All three are in their early twenties and are dreaming of another life when Floyd suddenly takes a job on a freighter going to Singapore.

Hideous

Musician Oliver Sim is the main guest of a talk-show that soon slides into a surreal journey of love, shame, and blood.

Lavender Men

Taffeta, a contemporary queer person of color, summons Abraham Lincoln to perform an elaborate historical fantasia within her own head — only to learn that she can’t hide from her own present-day demons in the shadows of someone else’s past.

The Day After

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

Wild is the Spring

Through a series of vignettes from the ancient and war-torn Levant, WILD IS THE SPRING captures moments in the lives of diverse ethnic communities who struggle to survive when life descends into chaos.

Turtles Can Fly

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

Chiko

This is the story of Isa, who grows up in a Hamburg suburb. It might be one of the world's richest cities but every beast has its belly and here, in the very underbelly, Chiko lives in a world where violence, staking and keeping a claim, and drug taking are the norm. Where down is not an option, Chiko is determined to rise to the top, whatever and whomever it costs.

Head-On

With the intention to break free from the strict familial restrictions, a suicidal young woman sets up a marriage of convenience with a forty-year-old addict, an act that will lead to an outburst of envious love.

Hotel Rwanda

Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.

Port of Desire

Pierre is in Hamburg on a merchant ship with his friends Georges and Jean-Marie. While they are just looking for a good time in the twenty-four hours they have to waste in the city, Pierre is seized by the memory of a young German girl, Maria, whom he had known and probably loved when he was a prisoner of war in the bombed-out port of Hamburg. He abandons his companions in search of her, but is unable to trace her, her house having been destroyed and the search services having no record of her.

The Flood

Wendy, a hardened immigration officer is offered a high-profile asylum case, judged on her ability to quickly and clinically reject applicants. Through her interrogation, she must uncover whether Haile is lying and has a more sinister reason for seeking asylum.

What's the Matter with Gerald?

A hypochondriac irks his partner by embracing the advice of an eccentric healer.

The Angels of the Street

Angels of the Street or The Angel of St. Pauli is a 1969 West German crime film directed by Jürgen Roland and starring Horst Frank, Herbert Fux and Werner Pochath. It is set in the St. Pauli red light district of the port of Hamburg.

Der Pfarrer von St. Pauli

A former U-boat commander becomes a pastor to ease the suffering of young Hamburg women in trouble.

The Secret

A stranger enters into and forever alters the life of a couple. He claims to be pursued by certain authorities who intend to prevent him from disclosing a secret that only he holds, whence the title. Is he lying, or insane - or is he telling the truth? Who, if anyone, is after him? And what *is* - the secret?

Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter

Isabella, Jonata and Pedro are stuck at home for a weekend. Distressed by the state of the world and financial difficulties, the trio decides to go out on the streets of a dystopian São Paulo to relax, which allows them to meet many individuals in a similar situation, causing tragicomic and fantastic situations.

Birder

A birdwatcher invades a nude queer campground on a remote lake in the New Hampshire wilds. He wears whatever he needs to ensnare the locals in his dark fetish in this nightmarish erotic thriller. Consent has never been more deadly.

The Hurt Locker

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

Short Sharp Shock

Gabriel, Bobby and Costa are old friends from Altona, a multicultural hood in Hamburg. Just out of prison, Gabriel wants to turn his back on crime, but the others continue to operate as petty criminals. Friendships are tested as the trio navigate a dark world of mafia bosses and deals gone wrong.

The Way Things Go

A lifetime of loneliness ends when Elise meets a kindred spirit, finally finding understanding and friendship in an unexpected encounter.

The Bourne Identity

Wounded to the brink of death and suffering from amnesia, Jason Bourne is rescued at sea by a fisherman. With nothing to go on but a Swiss bank account number, he starts to reconstruct his life, but finds that many people he encounters want him dead. However, Bourne realizes that he has the combat and mental skills of a world-class spy—but who does he work for?

Erbsen auf halb 6

It all starts with a bang. The car breaks through the crash barrier and falls off the bridge. The lights go out. After that, he is not able to see anymore. His optic nerve is severed, from now on the young stage-director Jakob is blind. His life will change and nothing will ever be the same. Jakob cannot handle the idea of never being able to see again and screams at the only woman who is able and willing to help him, Lily. A rehabilitation teacher, she helps the blind deal with the darkness. Lily has been living with it since birth, she too is blind.

Sounds of Sand

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

Land of empty promises

Plot unavailable

Serenity

Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.

Haus

A displaced black queer boy finds refuge in his city's underground Kiki Ballroom scene.

Sequin in a Blue Room

A teenager tries to track down a man he met at an anonymous sex party, trawling through hook-up apps to find him.

Sofia Was

Sofia was forced to leave her home and is now homeless. The young woman spends her days wandering the alleys of the University of São Paulo campus, where she offers her services as a tattoo artist. One ethereal night, her wanderings mingle with memories of an unfulfilled love. Wrapped in a dark, melancholy atmosphere, the film contemplates the fragility of a youth left behind. In a story that transcends borders, the life of an impenetrable fictional Sofia is imbued with the experiences of the actress of the same name who plays her. As enigmatic as an oracle, the original Portuguese title evokes the impermanence and ambiguity that haunt Sofia. She is carried away by perpetual motion, her future forever unknown.

Blue Egg

A queer stop-motion animation live-action hybrid film following four women in a surrealist parallel narrative unconstricted to heteronormative space and time.

In This Moment

“In This Moment” follows Love, a trans woman navigating the complexities of polyamory and self-discovery in a world that often challenges her right to exist. As she unravels what it means to be truly seen and cherished, she confronts the ways love manifests—fluid, unpredictable, and boundless, much like the ocean itself. This story is a testament to resilience, intimacy, and the ever-shifting tides of identity and belonging.

Dogville

When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.