Sieben Mulden und eine Leiche

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

2007-04-05 | de

The Way Things Go

Artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss create the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. The pair used found objects to construct a complex, interdependent contraption in an empty warehouse. When set in motion, a domino-like chain reaction ripples through the complex of imaginative devices. Fire, water, the laws of gravity, and chemistry determine the life-cycle of the objects. The process reveals a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, and improbability and precision, in an extended science project that will mesmerize the mind.

1987-06-01 | en

Waste Land

An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

2010-01-24 | en

Manufactured Landscapes

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

2006-09-09 | en

No Impact Man

Follow the Manhattan-based Beavan family as they abandon their high consumption 5th Avenue lifestyle and try to live a year while making no net environmental impact.

2009-09-04 | en

The Yes Men

A comic, biting and revelatory documentary following a small group of prankster activists as they gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television and at business conferences around the world.

2003-09-07 | en

Something Better to Come

Right outside of Moscow – home to the highest number of billionaires pr. capita – you’ll find the largest junkyard in the world: The Svalka. It’s a hard place run by the Russian mafia. And it's where Yula lives with her mother, her friends and many other people. Life is tough in the Svalka, but it’s also a place where beauty and humanity can arise from the most unlikely conditions. It is from this place that Yula dreams of escaping and changing her life, even if it seems impossible. Oscar-nominated director Hanna Polak followed Yula for 14 years, bringing us along on Yula's journey to achieve this dream.

2014-11-22 | en

Waste Not

Waste Not is a film about where your garbage goes, who sorts it for you, and what it is worth if it isn't just tossed into landfill. It's easier and cheaper to retrieve gold from old computers for instance, than to dig it up. Organics can be used to create fertiliser and green electricity and yet each Australian sends half a tonne of food waste to landfill each year where it is contaminated with chemicals and e-waste. We recycle only 50% of all our waste. There is an alternative to environmental apocalypse and we don't have to wait for the politicians to make it happen. All we really need to do is be creative and use our imaginations to turn this waste into wealth again. Waste Not talks to scientists, workers at waste depots, environment campaigners, gardeners and even a famous chef about how easy it is to save the planet by simply recycling properly.

2011-01-01 | en

Street Life

Street Life documents the lives of Chinese migrants in Shanghai, one of the world’s largest and most vibrant cities, now symbolic of China’s economic might. The film centers on Nanjing Road, one of China’s oldest commercial streets and today a popular destination for tourists and moneyed Chinese. The street has also become a Mecca for uprooted and homeless Chinese, who make ends by collecting garbage and recyclables. These characters and their stories are the focus of the film. The central character in Street Life is a migrant known as “Black Skin.” Black Skin faces numerous pressures in the course of the film, including police violence. In the end, these pressures are too much for him to bear and he goes mad. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who has been abandoned.

2006-01-02 | zh

The Vandals

Report on vandalism

1972-01-23 | en

Polluting Paradise

Villagers in Turkey's Black Sea village of Camburnu struggle with the government's decision to turn their community into a garbage dump.

2012-12-06 | de

Tom the Bottleman

Tom the Bottleman is a heartwarming documentary that tells the story of Thomas Morrison, a quiet yet resilient figure in Brunswick, Maine, who has spent over a decade walking the town’s streets collecting bottles and cans. More than a means of survival, Tom’s daily routine represents his deep connection to the community around him. When his essential cart was stolen in 2024, the town responded with unexpected generosity, coming together to support one of their own. Directed by Jake Jakubowski, this film captures the power of perseverance, the beauty of small-town solidarity, and the profound impact of everyday kindness.

2025-05-26 | en

Albatross

A powerful visual journey into the heart of a gut-wrenching environmental tragedy, while delivering a profound message of healing and renewal.

2013-01-01 | en

A Plastic Tide

Over eight million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean each year, killing sea life. Now new evidence says it's entering our food chain with unknown health effects.

2017-01-27 | en

Out of Fashion

A documentary following an Estonian fashion designer Reet Aus on a global tour to explore the origin process and the environmental footprints of today's fast paced fashion industry. On the road the mission takes an unexpected turn towards trying to introduce her "upcycling" inspired product line to some of the major fashion retailers to increase awareness of the massive resource waste built into the current product lifecycle.

2015-09-03 | en

A Land Betrayed

Produced by Alfred Higgins Productions with assistance from the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Academic Support Center Film Library, Keep America Beautiful, Inc., and Keep Los Angeles Beautiful, Inc., the 1963 short film A Land Betrayed examines the various ways people have spread the “cancer of ugliness” across America and offers call-to-action solutions to combat the nation-wide problem.

1963-01-23 | en

Holy Shit

What happens to the food we digest after it leaves our body? Is it waste that is thrown away or a resource that can be reused? In search of answers, director Rubén Abruña embarks on an investigative and entertaining search through 16 cities on four continents. He follows the trail of feces from the long sewers of Paris to a huge sewage treatment plant in Chicago.

2023-11-30 | de

Plastic China

This film tells a story about an unschooled 11-year-old girl Yi-Jie, she's a truly global child who learns the world through the United Nations of Wastes while working with her YI minority parents in this recycle workshop thousand miles away from their mountain village home town

2017-01-20 | zh

Bikes for Africa

Bikes for Africa is an entertaining, insightful and moving documentary following the life adventures of Hap Cameron and Mandy Todd, and their attempt to help implement a self sustainable bike workshop in rural Namibia with a container load secondhand donated bikes from Melbourne. The film investigates how a bicycle can fundamentally change the lives of rural Africans, and brings to focus the great works of two-wheeled charities Bicycles for Humanity and the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia.

2013-05-15 | en

Im Reich Des Squatters

2020-04-20 | de