21. UNDER|DOX 08 – 14 OKT 2026

in focus: from brazil with love & Bernardo Zanotta

Our Artist in Focus Bernardo Zanotta is also linked to our country focus From Brazil with Love. We have taken the title from a film by the American avant-garde legend Vivian Ostrovsky, who lived in Brazil for many years. Both are united by their queer filmmaking and their use of the medium of film as an archive and a form of remembrance; both are cosmopolitans of cinema. Bernardo Zanotta grew up in Brazil and went to Amsterdam to study film. Vivian Ostrovsky, born in New York, also grew up in Brazil and studied in Paris. Both express themselves through experimental forms of cinema and, through them, arrive at a deeper form of visual truth – one that lies hidden in the vague interstices of montage and the blurriness of overlapping or out-of-focus images.

Bernardo Zanotta and Vivian Ostrovsky are our guests!

Wild Fruits © Bernardo Zanotta

Go to from brazil with love – artist in focus Bernardo Zanotta

Festival

6. September 2026

Nicht kategorisiert
Theme: Remembering

With its theme of ‘Remembering’, UNDERDOX places the evocative and preservative power of the cinematic medium at the heart of its 21st issue.

© Stanley Schtinter | LAST MOVIES

Statement by the festival directors on the theme of ‘Remembering’

“We understand this year’s theme, ‘Remembering’, as an invitation to a form of seeing that reaches deep into the past. Through films, we encounter images of what has been. With them, we remember bygone times—also in the sense of a shared culture of remembrance. We recall films we have seen before, making memory itself an aesthetic question.
At the moment of projection, films also open up a biographical space of resonance. They connect with the thoughts and memories we ourselves bring into the cinema, allowing personal recollection and collective history to intertwine.“ – Dunja Bialas and Bernd Brehmer, Heads of UNDERDOX 

Archivio Aperto (Bologna) – German Premiere

The archive occupies a singular place within cinema’s capacity to preserve and remember. In collaboration with Archivio Aperto in Bologna, the festival organised by Fondazione Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, the 21st edition of UNDERDOX presents Memory & Archive, a programme of contemporary short films selected from previous editions of the festival that creatively reuse archival footage, with a particular focus on private and amateur memories.
Within these fragile moving images, the past is reactivated in the present moment of projection. The screening space, in turn, becomes inhabited by our own memories, as archival images enter into dialogue with personal recollections. – Curated as part of Young People’s Choice.

Michal Kosakowski: HOLOFICTION

The Polish-German media artist Michał Kosakowski examines the iconography of the Holocaust in narrative cinema through a montage composed of thousands of fictional after-images. Recurring visual patterns draw on the historical footage recorded at the end of the Second World War, unfolding into a haunting essay on collective memory—on the ways in which the images of the Holocaust have become inscribed in our visual consciousness.

Stanley Schtinter: LAST MOVIES – German Premiere

In his compilation feature LAST MOVIES, the British filmmaker Stanley Schtinter assembles a meticulously researched, idiosyncratic history of cinema through the final films watched by celebrated figures before their deaths. What were the last films seen by Franz Kafka, F. W. Murnau, Charlie Chaplin, Sergio Leone, John F. Kennedy, Olof Palme, or Kurt Cobain—before memory itself was extinguished forever?

Norbert Pfaffenbichler: ADGIN PRRRX – German Premiere

The Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Norbert Pfaffenbichler dismantles John Frankenheimer’s Formula One classic Grand Prix (1966) into its individual shots before reassembling them according to the strict metric principle of shot duration. The result is a mesmerizing choreography of remembrance in which the relentless repetition of images seems to suspend the forward movement of time. Even as we watch the film unfold, we find ourselves already remembering what we have just seen.

Laura Coppens: SEDIMENTE

Laura Coppen’s grandfather was born during the Second World War, came of age in the GDR, and trained as a physician. Later recruited by the Stasi as an unofficial collaborator, he was abruptly abandoned after refusing to sever ties with his daughter, who had fallen in love with a Spaniard and emigrated to Madrid. “We are the people!”—Christa Wolf’s speech on 4 November 1989 in East Berlin. Super 8 memories of young grandparents: summer holidays, first love, black hair. An intoxicating essay film in which private memory and political history become inseparably intertwined.

Festival

29. July 2026

Underdox 2026
UNDERDOX halftime: Alexander Kluges’ A.I.

We are delighted that Angelika Lepper’s talk on ‘Alexander Kluge’s Artificial Intelligence’ at the UNDERDOX halftime event, attended by just under 100 people, was so well received. She has therefore kindly provided us with her manuscript for publication, for which we are very grateful!

Primitive Diversity. Alexander Kluge and the subjunctive of images

Lecture by Angelika Lepper on 11 June 2026 at the Filmmuseum Munich

© UNDERDOX

“Let’s start with a problem: “artificial intelligence.” The term has long since entered everyday language. It appears in almost every funding call, in every cultural section, in every strategy paper. It has become the buzzword of the moment, of the decade, probably of the century. And yet it is — and remains — a rather substantial lie.

In 2021, the media artist and theorist Francis Hunger gave a lecture with the programmatic title “Unhype AI.” His central argument: the term “intelligence” is an inaccurate and illegitimate anthropomorphization. It attributes qualities to the technology that it simply does not possess — and in doing so obscures what it actually does. Hunger proposes alternative terms instead: “automated pattern recognition,” “machine conditioning,” or “weighted network.” These may be less emotionally charged, but they are much closer to what is actually being described.

So what lies behind Hunger’s skepticism?”

[Translated by A.I.]

Click here to read the full text of the lecture [PDF, GER]

Festival

25. June 2026

halftime, Nicht kategorisiert
UNDERDOX half-time 2026: Alexander Kluge

In memory of the great pioneer of a new film

Halftime program: Alexander Kluge’s Artificial Intelligence

On June 11, 2026, UNDERDOX will dedicate its half-time event at the Filmmuseum Munich (7 p.m.) to the great thinker and adventurer Alexander Kluge, who passed away in Munich on March 25, 2026. We present an evening featuring a talk by Angelika Lepper!

As recently as 2024, Alexander Kluge was a guest at UNDERDOX, where he presented a compiled program together with the Philipinian ARTIST NOT IN FOCUS KHAVN. Alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Kluge was one of the most experimental and inquisitive filmmakers of our time. With KHAVN, he created unseen film correspondences. One of his final cinematic adventures was devoted to artificial intelligence, through which he revisited his own biography from a new perspective.

Regarding PRIMITIVE DIVERSITY (2025), Alexander Kluge writes: “Some films from the period 1895–1929 that I love as a filmmaker are counted as part of the tradition of Primitive Diversity. ‘Primitive’ here is not used as a buzzword, but rather—according to the English usage in the Oxford Dictionary—means ‘original,’ ‘early,’ ‘unsophisticated.’ It is about simple diversity. And today, in 2025, it is as essential as our daily bread.”

© Rapid Eye Movies | Alexander Kluge

Currently, one of his last major installations, Ontime/Offtime (2024), is still on view at the Lenbachhaus in Munich. It can be regarded as a summation of Alexander Kluge’s diverse body of work. (As part of Shifting the Silence, on view until January 31, 2027.)

Festival

30. March 2026

Nicht kategorisiert
Impressions 2025

Art & Archive: Films and Panel

from left: Ute Adamczewski, Anke Hoffsten (NS-Dokumentationszentrum), Susanne Touw (Sammlung Goetz)

from left: Dunja Bialas with Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko

Young People’s Choice: junge Kurator*innen

The curators Lilith Klaus and Sol (in red)

In conversation with the Parisian filmmaker Robinson Drossos

Mathieu Sauvat from Paris

Hangout place: Favorit Bar

Connecting futures: Sol and the Irish filmmaker Declan Clarke

Country & Artists in Focus: LONDON ORBITAL

Chris Petit

Chris Petit with curator Sven Koch

Andrew Kötting with curator Sven Koch

Meet & Greet: Fraunhofer Wirtschaft

Bavarian meal

from left: Alexandre Koberidze, Bernd Brehmer, Neil Young

Chris Petit & Alexandre Koberidze

Guests of the 20. UNDERDOX

Festival

30. March 2026

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The VIDEODOX Award 2025 goes to Chaeeun Lee and Eva Schmeckenbacher

Chaeeun Lee, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, was awarded the VIDEODOX Award 2025 for her work “We Don’t Know How To Cry” (2025). The Stuttgart-based artist Eva Schmeckenbacher received the award ex aequo for “Drei Hauben” (2024).

The 1000 Euros endowed prize was presented during the awards ceremony by the founder, Peider A. Defilla (B.O.A. Videofilmkunst).

Festival

30. March 2026

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FILM TALKS | Želimir Žilnik & Sarita Matijević Žilnik

Restitucija, ili, San i java stare garde (Eighty Plus)

Filmmaking in post socialist times, rethinking coming of age.

Director Želimir Žilnik, producer Sarita Matijević Žilnik and Paula Ruppert (moderation)
Munich, Filmmuseum, 10 Oct 2025

© Fotos & Video: Dunja Bialas

Festival

11. October 2025

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Film Talks: Andrew Kötting

UNDERDOX country focus & artists in focus: LONDON ORBITAL

Walking & poetry, filmmaking as performance art
Director Andrew Kötting and Sven Koch, translator of the works of Iain Sinclair – film talk about BY OUR SELVES. Munich, Filmmuseum, 10 Oct 2025.

© Foto & Video: Dunja Bialas

Festival

11. October 2025

Nicht kategorisiert
The opening of the 20th UNDERDOX

Bernd Brehmer, Dunja Bialas

Rainer Knepperges

Ulu Braun

DIE SCHÖNE REISE III and GERHARD

Michael Kowalski, Otrun Bauer, Sasha Pirker, Gerald Weber

Sasha Pirker

EVERYONE DESERVES A SLICE OF PIE

© Fotos: Florian Geisterstanger

Festival

11. October 2025

Nicht kategorisiert
20. UNDERDOX – the trailer

Text: Iain Sinclair, “A Walk By Waiting”
Music: Adam Scovell

Here is the entire short film by Adam Scovell, which we used as the basis for our trailer, as an atmospheric introduction to our Country Focus LONDON ORBITAL.

More information about Adam Scovell’s cinematic approach, who stages a walk to Harold Pinter’s house here, can be found at celluloidwickerman.com.

Festival

9. October 2025

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