Movies Similar to Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat(1896)

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

7.1

Microcosmos(1996)

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

7.5

Koyaanisqatsi(1983)

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

7.9

Bauhaus 100(2019)

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

6.5

Sans Soleil(1983)

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

7.5

Nanook of the North(1922)

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

7.1

Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations(1938)

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.

6.9

Olympia: Part Two – Festival of Beauty(1938)

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.

6.7

The Case of Bruno Lüdke(2021)

The incredible story of Bruno Lüdke (1908-44), the alleged worst mass murderer in German criminal history; or actually, a story of forged files and fake news that takes place during the darkest years of the Third Reich, when the principles of criminal justice, subjected to the yoke of a totalitarian system that is beginning to collapse, mean absolutely nothing.

6.1

Chimera(2024)

A non-binary folk watches the handover of the first non-binary ID in the history of Chile. As they try to do the paperwork, they will face the bureaucracy of the legal proceeding.

0.0

It Is Not the Brazilian Homosexuals Who Are Perverse, But the Situation in Which They Live(2021)

Two queer Brazilians go skinny dipping in a lake where they talk about love, sex, colonialism and migration, on a pandemic summer afternoon in Berlin.

1.0

Casual Workers(2020)

An abstract perspective into two young South African workers in the heart of Johannesburg's industrial sector during Covid-19

0.0

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The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk(2007)

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

7.0

Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony(2008)

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

10.0

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Berlin Hauptbahnhof(1988)

Documents the remodeling of the Ostbahnhof in Berlin Friedrichshain into the central station of the GDR.

0.0

Dark Days(2000)

A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.

7.3

Powaqqatsi(1988)

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

7.3

Man with a Movie Camera(1929)

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

7.8

A, B, C... Z(1971)

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

6.8

Days of Thrills and Laughter(1961)

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

5.5