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FILM ARCHIVE

Time period: 2011 - 2020

Three contributions by Florian Schneider for Quarks & Co. / WDR television
Editor WDR Claudia Heiss

First broadcast Oct. 22, 2019, WDR
Repeat Aug. 13, 2020, WDR
Available in the media library until Oct. 22, 2024.

Nobody likes to throw food away, and yet it happens: at home, in the supermarket and at the manufacturers. 18 million tons of food end up in the garbage can in Germany every year. Quarks goes on a search and asks why so much good food ends up in supermarket containers.

A film by Lin Sternal
Commissioned by 3Sat, "Ab 18!"
First broadcast: 06.11.2017, 23:40 Uhr

A young woman leaves her hometown in eastern Poland and moves to Germany.
Now she turns to an old friend back home with a letter to explain what the real reason of her move was...
The film tells the personal story of Ewa (25), a Polish woman who aborted her child 6 years ago and suffers from this painful experience until today. Even worse for her than the traumatic experience itself is the way society deals with this issue. Her childhood and adolescence were shaped by a catholic conservative environment, by which she is still influenced despite her attempt at emancipation. To this day, she has hardly told anyone about her decision at that time. Instead, she has turned her back on her homeland and tries to suppress what she experienced.

Editors: Nicole Baum, Udo Bremer (3Sat)

A film by Karin de Miguel-Wessendorf
Commissioned by WDR
First broadcast: November 10, 2016 at 10:40 pm on WDR television

The Rhenish lignite mining area is the largest source of CO² in Europe. Opencast mining devours entire villages, and also the Hambach Forest. Resistance is rising against this. Tree houses are being built in the forest, and around 30 tree squatters are trying to prevent the clearing of the valuable biotope. And the residents of the affected villages are by no means all leaving their homes without a fight - some are staying as long as they can. They are supported by a citizens' initiative in neighboring Buir, and by 1,000 climate activists from all over Europe who are occupying the Garzweiler open pit mine for a day and symbolically stopping lignite mining. They want to send a signal to the international climate summits: End the most climate-damaging way of energy production.
The energy company RWE wants to mine lignite until the year 2045, but is under increasing pressure since church groups and local politicians have also joined the resistance. Day 7 accompanied the climate fighters for a year. For example, Clumsy, who built himself a tree house 18 meters above the ground. He has been living at 18 meters for four years to prevent the excavators from advancing: "Just by living on the tree house, I am already in the way." Or Lars Zimmer, one of the last residents of Immerath. Most of the residents have already been relocated, but he doesn't want to leave his home: "If there was more resistance, RWE wouldn't find it quite so easy to raze these villages here to the ground." And Antje Grothus from Buir, a few kilometers from the Hambach open pit mine: "If we can't stop it, the excavators will be here on our doorstep."

Editorial: Andrea Ernst (WDR)

First broadcast: each Thursday, 17. + 24.11.16 at 23:25, WDR
Repetition on 30.07.17, 02:47, WDR

First part in the short version
"I'm going to be a farmer now! - Big dream, hard everyday life",
30 minutes: 10.08.17, 22:10, Day7, WDR

Second part in the short version
"Ackern für den Lebenstraum - Die neue Lust auf Landwirtschaft",
30 minutes: 17.08.17, 22:10 Uhr, Tag7, WDR
Short version "Geliebter Mist - Ackern für den Lebenstraum",
30 minutes: 13.08.17, 17:30, Gott und die Welt, ARD

Two films by Jessica Krauss & Insa Onken
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN

Our series tells of people who want to get out of their virtual working world and back into a life that does not seem out of context.
In which you finish what you have started yourself, in which you bear responsibility and success is tangible in the truest sense of the word. In short: you want to become a farmer.
We tell of city dwellers who realize the romantic dream of country life.
Of career changers who are not satisfied with the learned profession and who want to start completely new as a farmer. And finally, from those who have grown up with sheep and pigs, but are now responsible for their own farm for the first time. Of people who set out to dare the great adventure: a new life.
As different as the biographies of the new beginners are, they are united by their attitude to life. They want to live it consciously, be mindful and farm sustainably.
Of course, that's easier said than done. Whoever becomes a farmer today needs a thick skin and good nerves. A lot of work, little free time, low social
status, high financial risk and dependence on factors that cannot be controlled: Weather, nature, animals - and not to forget the European bureaucracy and King Customer, who is becoming increasingly demanding but at the same time not more generous.
And so the new farmers all face the ethical challenge of wanting to produce considerately to people and nature on the one hand, but on the other hand, under the price pressure of the market, often being forced to do things that run counter to this maxim.
A dream job looks different, doesn't it?

Editing: Angelika Wagner (WDR)

A film by Karin de Miguel-Wessendorf and Valentin Thurn

First broadcast: 03.11. 2014, 20:15 clock, WDR
Repetition: 16.05.2015, RBB; 21.07.2015,
Phönix; 06.06.2015,17:00 clock; 07.06.2015,
10:15 clock and 08.06.2015 at 5:00 clock, HR

The milk in the supermarket is getting cheaper. For dairy farmers, this means: grow or weaken! In the last decade, a third of German dairy farmers have had to give up - at the same time, the number of mega farms has increased. Hundreds of cows stand close together in XXL barns. To ensure that they perform at their best, the animals no longer come out to pasture, even in summer.
Dairies are also getting bigger and bigger: multinationals like Arla or Friesland-Campina have taken over the small regional dairies and export milk as far away as China. But they too are dependent on the price dictates of supermarkets, primarily Aldi or Lidl. "Consumers are not honest with themselves," criticizes a farmer from Kleve on the Lower Rhine. "They tell us they are willing to spend more on organic and regional food, but then we meet them all at the checkout at ALDI." He believes the death of farmers is inevitable, and that only large farms are competitive: "We won't get anywhere with the romantic agriculture we had 20, 30 years ago. The harsh reality is that only those who have their costs under control will survive."
But some small dairy farmers are daring to rebel against the wave of concentration on the milk market: they are relying on direct marketing at better prices. For example, a farmer from the Soest district who, together with others, has founded a farmer's dairy to break away from the price dictates of the giants.
Or a young farmer's wife from the Siegerland region: "Even during our training, we are told that we should invest in larger stables. But I would like to see family farming, where every animal is not just a number." In March 2015, the last protection for small farmers will fall: with the EU-wide end of the milk quota. When the milk market is liberalized, many fear a new drop in prices. It's a David versus Goliath battle, because they don't need to hope for support from the farmers' association and the German government. They have long since decided that modern agriculture can only function in large-scale structures.

Editors: Angelika Wagner, Andrea Ernst

A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN

First broadcast: 13.05.2013, 22:45, ARD
Repetition: 14.06.2015, 16:15, WDR and 20.06.2015, 09:30, WDR

More than half of all food ends up in the trash! With this result, the documentary "Taste the Waste" (2011) shocked and triggered a heated public debate. Since then, big plans have been made. By 2020, Federal Minister of Food Ilse Aigner wants to ensure that only half as much food is thrown away in Germany as today. But so far there have been few concrete political steps. Why do legislators in Germany, unlike other European governments, only make rather non-binding appeals to the public?
"Unfortunately, throwing away is all too often worthwhile for companies because food is so cheap and labor is so expensive," says nutrition expert Prof. Guido Ritter of Münster University of Applied Sciences.
Why is that? Valentin Thurn looks into the matter and searches for solutions throughout Europe. In the process, he meets many people who no longer want to wait for politicians to act on this important issue for the future. For example, the Kotzur family from Ludwigsburg, who want to find out how much they can reduce their food waste with a waste diary. "This has only made us really aware of what we throw in the trash can every day!"
Companies in Holland, England, Denmark, Germany and Ukraine are also looking for solutions: A carrot juice factory also uses the small carrots that were previously sorted out, clever designers recycle originally grown vegetables under the label "Culinary Misfits" that the trade does not accept in this way, individual supermarkets no longer make junk offers that tempt customers to buy more than they need. Farmers and chefs produce and manufacture according to the maxim: "Feed the clients, not the bins!" - "Feed the customers, not the garbage cans!". But is the good will of individuals enough?

 

A film by Frank Bowinkelmann and Valentin Thurn
Produced for ARTE and NDR

First broadcast: 09.01.2014, 21:45, ARTE
Repetition:
20.02.2015, 21.45, ARTE
02.11.2019, 22.40, ARTE

A short version of the topic, "Antibiotics in animal husbandry", magazine feature for "W wie Wissen", was broadcast on 12. 05.2013 broadcast

"We must have the possibility to resort to antibiotics when animals actually get sick or flu comes into the group." This is an argument you hear over and over again from farmers when you ask them why so many antibiotics are used in animal fattening. Over 1700 tons per year are used in Germany alone - almost seven times as much as in hospitals. In France, the use of antibiotics is even twice as high, per kilo of meat produced. The result: dangerous resistant germs are forming in animal stables. Two pathogens in particular are found more and more frequently on our food: so-called MRSA and ESBL-forming germs. Both pathogens are multi-resistant, which means that many antibiotics are ineffective against them. They pose a danger not only to farmers who have direct contact with the germs in the barn. Scientists have found the bacteria on meat - and even on vegetables. How do the germs get there? What happens when we ingest them with our food? Frank Bowinkelmann and Valentin Thurn want to answer these questions. Scientists, farmers, veterinarians and human doctors in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have their say.

 

A Fim by Karin de Miguel Wessendorf
Commissioned by ZDF and ARTE

First broadcast: 01.10.2013 at 20.15, ARTE

No prosperity without growth. This has been the credo of business and politics up to now. Steady economic growth is seen as a guarantee for jobs and for the quality of life of the population. Anyone who doubts the growth dogma is ridiculed as being out of touch with reality.
But the economic crisis and climate change have shaken this belief. Population explosion, energy crisis and environmental pollution are problems that can no longer be suppressed. If all people on earth lived as the Germans do, we would already need the resources of three planets. More and more people are convinced: unlimited growth is not possible in a world of limited resources.
Despite an increase in gross domestic product, personal life satisfaction in the industrialized countries has not grown since the 1970s. Could it be that our consumer society is failing to deliver on the promise of happiness? What do we really need to live a good life?
We join the author as she explores the question: "What do I need to change to make my lifestyle sustainable? And what can I do without losing quality of life?" Karin de Miguel Wessendorf embarks on a journey through Europe. She visits people, initiatives and companies that have recognized that economic growth cannot be the measure of all things.
The demographic change, the limited resources of the planet and the current economic crises provide a brake on growth anyway, whether we want it or not. High time to rethink and to steer the exit from the destructive growth itself. A movement has emerged that is looking for alternatives. Instead of falling into the role of victim, entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists and activists are working in theory and practice to build a "post-growth society" - a society in which a better life for people and the environment should be possible in the long term.
On her journey, the author finds that the search for a sustainable lifestyle does not necessarily mean doing without, in many cases it is even a gain in quality of life.

Detailed background information and the opportunity to actively participate in the discussion can be found on the Facebook page for the film.

 

Time period: 2011 - 2020

Three contributions by Florian Schneider for Quarks & Co. / WDR television
Editor WDR Claudia Heiss

First broadcast Oct. 22, 2019, WDR
Repeat Aug. 13, 2020, WDR
Available in the media library until Oct. 22, 2024.

Nobody likes to throw food away, and yet it happens: at home, in the supermarket and at the manufacturers. 18 million tons of food end up in the garbage can in Germany every year. Quarks goes on a search and asks why so much good food ends up in supermarket containers.

A film by Lin Sternal
Commissioned by 3Sat, "Ab 18!"
First broadcast: 06.11.2017, 23:40 Uhr

A young woman leaves her hometown in eastern Poland and moves to Germany.
Now she turns to an old friend back home with a letter to explain what the real reason of her move was...
The film tells the personal story of Ewa (25), a Polish woman who aborted her child 6 years ago and suffers from this painful experience until today. Even worse for her than the traumatic experience itself is the way society deals with this issue. Her childhood and adolescence were shaped by a catholic conservative environment, by which she is still influenced despite her attempt at emancipation. To this day, she has hardly told anyone about her decision at that time. Instead, she has turned her back on her homeland and tries to suppress what she experienced.

Editors: Nicole Baum, Udo Bremer (3Sat)

A film by Karin de Miguel-Wessendorf
Commissioned by WDR
First broadcast: November 10, 2016 at 10:40 pm on WDR television

The Rhenish lignite mining area is the largest source of CO² in Europe. Opencast mining devours entire villages, and also the Hambach Forest. Resistance is rising against this. Tree houses are being built in the forest, and around 30 tree squatters are trying to prevent the clearing of the valuable biotope. And the residents of the affected villages are by no means all leaving their homes without a fight - some are staying as long as they can. They are supported by a citizens' initiative in neighboring Buir, and by 1,000 climate activists from all over Europe who are occupying the Garzweiler open pit mine for a day and symbolically stopping lignite mining. They want to send a signal to the international climate summits: End the most climate-damaging way of energy production.
The energy company RWE wants to mine lignite until the year 2045, but is under increasing pressure since church groups and local politicians have also joined the resistance. Day 7 accompanied the climate fighters for a year. For example, Clumsy, who built himself a tree house 18 meters above the ground. He has been living at 18 meters for four years to prevent the excavators from advancing: "Just by living on the tree house, I am already in the way." Or Lars Zimmer, one of the last residents of Immerath. Most of the residents have already been relocated, but he doesn't want to leave his home: "If there was more resistance, RWE wouldn't find it quite so easy to raze these villages here to the ground." And Antje Grothus from Buir, a few kilometers from the Hambach open pit mine: "If we can't stop it, the excavators will be here on our doorstep."

Editorial: Andrea Ernst (WDR)

First broadcast: each Thursday, 17. + 24.11.16 at 23:25, WDR
Repetition on 30.07.17, 02:47, WDR

First part in the short version
"I'm going to be a farmer now! - Big dream, hard everyday life",
30 minutes: 10.08.17, 22:10, Day7, WDR

Second part in the short version
"Ackern für den Lebenstraum - Die neue Lust auf Landwirtschaft",
30 minutes: 17.08.17, 22:10 Uhr, Tag7, WDR
Short version "Geliebter Mist - Ackern für den Lebenstraum",
30 minutes: 13.08.17, 17:30, Gott und die Welt, ARD

Two films by Jessica Krauss & Insa Onken
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN

Our series tells of people who want to get out of their virtual working world and back into a life that does not seem out of context.
In which you finish what you have started yourself, in which you bear responsibility and success is tangible in the truest sense of the word. In short: you want to become a farmer.
We tell of city dwellers who realize the romantic dream of country life.
Of career changers who are not satisfied with the learned profession and who want to start completely new as a farmer. And finally, from those who have grown up with sheep and pigs, but are now responsible for their own farm for the first time. Of people who set out to dare the great adventure: a new life.
As different as the biographies of the new beginners are, they are united by their attitude to life. They want to live it consciously, be mindful and farm sustainably.
Of course, that's easier said than done. Whoever becomes a farmer today needs a thick skin and good nerves. A lot of work, little free time, low social
status, high financial risk and dependence on factors that cannot be controlled: Weather, nature, animals - and not to forget the European bureaucracy and King Customer, who is becoming increasingly demanding but at the same time not more generous.
And so the new farmers all face the ethical challenge of wanting to produce considerately to people and nature on the one hand, but on the other hand, under the price pressure of the market, often being forced to do things that run counter to this maxim.
A dream job looks different, doesn't it?

Editing: Angelika Wagner (WDR)

A film by Karin de Miguel-Wessendorf and Valentin Thurn

First broadcast: 03.11. 2014, 20:15 clock, WDR
Repetition: 16.05.2015, RBB; 21.07.2015,
Phönix; 06.06.2015,17:00 clock; 07.06.2015,
10:15 clock and 08.06.2015 at 5:00 clock, HR

The milk in the supermarket is getting cheaper. For dairy farmers, this means: grow or weaken! In the last decade, a third of German dairy farmers have had to give up - at the same time, the number of mega farms has increased. Hundreds of cows stand close together in XXL barns. To ensure that they perform at their best, the animals no longer come out to pasture, even in summer.
Dairies are also getting bigger and bigger: multinationals like Arla or Friesland-Campina have taken over the small regional dairies and export milk as far away as China. But they too are dependent on the price dictates of supermarkets, primarily Aldi or Lidl. "Consumers are not honest with themselves," criticizes a farmer from Kleve on the Lower Rhine. "They tell us they are willing to spend more on organic and regional food, but then we meet them all at the checkout at ALDI." He believes the death of farmers is inevitable, and that only large farms are competitive: "We won't get anywhere with the romantic agriculture we had 20, 30 years ago. The harsh reality is that only those who have their costs under control will survive."
But some small dairy farmers are daring to rebel against the wave of concentration on the milk market: they are relying on direct marketing at better prices. For example, a farmer from the Soest district who, together with others, has founded a farmer's dairy to break away from the price dictates of the giants.
Or a young farmer's wife from the Siegerland region: "Even during our training, we are told that we should invest in larger stables. But I would like to see family farming, where every animal is not just a number." In March 2015, the last protection for small farmers will fall: with the EU-wide end of the milk quota. When the milk market is liberalized, many fear a new drop in prices. It's a David versus Goliath battle, because they don't need to hope for support from the farmers' association and the German government. They have long since decided that modern agriculture can only function in large-scale structures.

Editors: Angelika Wagner, Andrea Ernst

A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN

First broadcast: 13.05.2013, 22:45, ARD
Repetition: 14.06.2015, 16:15, WDR and 20.06.2015, 09:30, WDR

More than half of all food ends up in the trash! With this result, the documentary "Taste the Waste" (2011) shocked and triggered a heated public debate. Since then, big plans have been made. By 2020, Federal Minister of Food Ilse Aigner wants to ensure that only half as much food is thrown away in Germany as today. But so far there have been few concrete political steps. Why do legislators in Germany, unlike other European governments, only make rather non-binding appeals to the public?
"Unfortunately, throwing away is all too often worthwhile for companies because food is so cheap and labor is so expensive," says nutrition expert Prof. Guido Ritter of Münster University of Applied Sciences.
Why is that? Valentin Thurn looks into the matter and searches for solutions throughout Europe. In the process, he meets many people who no longer want to wait for politicians to act on this important issue for the future. For example, the Kotzur family from Ludwigsburg, who want to find out how much they can reduce their food waste with a waste diary. "This has only made us really aware of what we throw in the trash can every day!"
Companies in Holland, England, Denmark, Germany and Ukraine are also looking for solutions: A carrot juice factory also uses the small carrots that were previously sorted out, clever designers recycle originally grown vegetables under the label "Culinary Misfits" that the trade does not accept in this way, individual supermarkets no longer make junk offers that tempt customers to buy more than they need. Farmers and chefs produce and manufacture according to the maxim: "Feed the clients, not the bins!" - "Feed the customers, not the garbage cans!". But is the good will of individuals enough?

A film by Frank Bowinkelmann and Valentin Thurn
Produced for ARTE and NDR

First broadcast: 09.01.2014, 21:45, ARTE
Repetition:
20.02.2015, 21.45, ARTE
02.11.2019, 22.40, ARTE

A short version of the topic, "Antibiotics in animal husbandry", magazine feature for "W wie Wissen", was broadcast on 12. 05.2013 broadcast

"We must have the possibility to resort to antibiotics when animals actually get sick or flu comes into the group." This is an argument you hear over and over again from farmers when you ask them why so many antibiotics are used in animal fattening. Over 1700 tons per year are used in Germany alone - almost seven times as much as in hospitals. In France, the use of antibiotics is even twice as high, per kilo of meat produced. The result: dangerous resistant germs are forming in animal stables. Two pathogens in particular are found more and more frequently on our food: so-called MRSA and ESBL-forming germs. Both pathogens are multi-resistant, which means that many antibiotics are ineffective against them. They pose a danger not only to farmers who have direct contact with the germs in the barn. Scientists have found the bacteria on meat - and even on vegetables. How do the germs get there? What happens when we ingest them with our food? Frank Bowinkelmann and Valentin Thurn want to answer these questions. Scientists, farmers, veterinarians and human doctors in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have their say.

A Fim by Karin de Miguel Wessendorf
Commissioned by ZDF and ARTE

First broadcast: 01.10.2013 at 20.15, ARTE

No prosperity without growth. This has been the credo of business and politics up to now. Steady economic growth is seen as a guarantee for jobs and for the quality of life of the population. Anyone who doubts the growth dogma is ridiculed as being out of touch with reality.
But the economic crisis and climate change have shaken this belief. Population explosion, energy crisis and environmental pollution are problems that can no longer be suppressed. If all people on earth lived as the Germans do, we would already need the resources of three planets. More and more people are convinced: unlimited growth is not possible in a world of limited resources.
Despite an increase in gross domestic product, personal life satisfaction in the industrialized countries has not grown since the 1970s. Could it be that our consumer society is failing to deliver on the promise of happiness? What do we really need to live a good life?
We join the author as she explores the question: "What do I need to change to make my lifestyle sustainable? And what can I do without losing quality of life?" Karin de Miguel Wessendorf embarks on a journey through Europe. She visits people, initiatives and companies that have recognized that economic growth cannot be the measure of all things.
The demographic change, the limited resources of the planet and the current economic crises provide a brake on growth anyway, whether we want it or not. High time to rethink and to steer the exit from the destructive growth itself. A movement has emerged that is looking for alternatives. Instead of falling into the role of victim, entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists and activists are working in theory and practice to build a "post-growth society" - a society in which a better life for people and the environment should be possible in the long term.
On her journey, the author finds that the search for a sustainable lifestyle does not necessarily mean doing without, in many cases it is even a gain in quality of life.

Detailed background information and the opportunity to actively participate in the discussion can be found on the Facebook page for the film.

Time period: 2000 - 2010

A film by Valentin Thurn
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN

First broadcast: 20.10.2010, 23:30, ARD
Repetition: 06.08.2015, Phoenix

Supported by MEDIA (EU Commission), Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED), KOCCA (Korean film funding).
Editorial staff: Angelika Wagner (WDR), Andrea Ernst (WDR), Dirk Neuhoff (NDR) and Babeth Vanloo (BOS)
The international version (55 minutes) ran in the Netherlands (BOS), Sweden (SVT), Ireland (TG4), Spain (TV3), Lithuania (LVT), Finland (YLE), Switzerland (TSR), Norway (NRK), Cyprus (CYBC), Greece (ERT), South Korea (CREO) and in other countries (list to be updated).

The short version (29 minutes) ran on WDR television under the title "Essen im Eimer" on 25.10.2010 and on NDR television on 26.10.2010

More than half of our food ends up in the trash! Most of it already on its way from the field to the store before it even reaches our dining table: every second head of lettuce, every second potato and every fifth loaf of bread. That corresponds to about 500,000 truckloads per year. Director Valentin Thurn has researched the extent of this waste internationally - in the waste containers of wholesale markets, warehouses and supermarkets. He has documented overwhelming quantities of perfect food, some of it still in its original packaging, often with a valid best-before date. Up to 20 million tons of food are thrown away each year in Germany alone. And it is becoming more and more!
In his search for the causes, Valentin Thurn talks to supermarket managers, bakers, wholesale market inspectors, ministers, farmers and EU politicians.
What he finds is a worldwide system in which everyone participates. Everything should be available at all times, supermarkets offer the full range of goods throughout, bread must be fresh on the shelves until late in the evening, there are strawberries in every season. And everything has to look perfect: A wilted lettuce leaf, a crack in the potato, a dent in the apple - the goods are sorted out immediately. Yogurt pots end up in the trash two days before their best-before date expires.
The fact that half of the food already produced becomes waste has a devastating effect on the world's climate. Agriculture gobbles up huge amounts of energy, water, fertilizer, pesticides and clears rainforest, accounting for more than a third of greenhouse gases. When food rots in landfills, additional methane gas escapes, which has 25 times the impact on global warming as carbon dioxide.
Consumers' desire to have everything at their disposal at any time also exacerbates global hunger. Rising wheat prices prove it: today, industrialized countries buy their food on the world market, as do developing countries. If we threw away less, we would have to buy less; prices would fall and there would be more for the hungry.
But there is another way: Valentin Thurn finds people around the world who try to stop the insane waste: so-called garbage divers who rescue food from the waste containers of supermarkets, supermarket directors who convince their customers to buy less climate-damaging products, consumer associations that bring farmers and customers directly together. Small steps, but they could make a big difference: If we cut food waste in the industrialized countries by just half, it would have the same effect on the world's climate as if we gave up every second car.

 

A film by Britta Dombrowe
On behalf of ZDF
First broadcast: 08.10.2010, 22:40, ARTE

Statistically, they do not exist, the intersexuals. In the birth certificate must be entered within the first week after birth: Boy or girl - otherwise it is not issued at all. And without the birth certificate there is no passport, no child benefit, no school enrollment. In the case of ambiguous genitalia, many doctors advise gender reassignment surgery. The problem with this is that no one can predict what the child will later feel like: As a man or as a woman?
During the pregnancy, Andrea and her husband Nico agreed: "Whether it will be a boy or a girl didn't matter to us. That it could be both at the same time, we never thought of that!" Three months early, their baby is born. "At delivery, the midwife told me it was a little boy!" recalls Andrea, "then when my husband came to the hospital, the doctor told him it was a little girl!" Her child has a vagina, a uterus, testicles located in the abdomen and a small penis. Tests show that the sex chromosomes have an XY, meaning they are male.
But a person's biological sex can be read at several levels: through the chromosomes, hormones and sex organs. In normal development, these factors coincide; in intersexuality, they contradict each other. There are over 25 different diagnoses and every 5000th to 3000th newborn is affected.

Only in the last few years science has started to research the causes and effects of intersexuality at full speed: The new technical term is now DSD - Disorder of Sexual Development. It is high time, because since the 1950s medicine has been following the theses of the American psychologist John Money, who considered upbringing alone to be the decisive factor. So that the surrounding field can make however a clear sex-specific education, the child needs a clear body: Infants come on the operating table.
With the help of the surgery can be taken away, which is too much or be added missing. Hormone therapy does the rest. But often in the parforceride to the sexual unambiguity the signs are not read correctly or not recognized at all. Who wants to decide on the sex of infants if it is not foreseeable how they will later feel and develop as adolescents? How they want to live?
Even findings from brain research are not yet taken into account. But especially in the case of an intersexual genital, the brain provides important clues, according to brain researcher Dirk Swaab: "You have to wait until the brain starts to work in a sexually differentiated way. Only from the behavior of a person can we deduce whether he has a male or female brain."
The intersexual Christiane Völling (50) has suffered for decades from the discrepancy between body and feelings. At birth, the girl was assigned to the male sex due to an enlarged clitoris. Hormone treatment with testosterone followed. The subsequent removal of her uterus and ovaries were sold to her as tumor removal. Only thirty years after the operation does she learn from the files that she was deprived of her femininity at that time. In 2008, she sues her former surgeon - the court case attracts attention.

Inge's parents are fortunate that they have not been pressured by doctors to have "gender reassignment" surgery. They want to delay the decision as long as possible:
"We are raising our little Inge as a girl, but it may well be that she will become more of a young man during puberty, when her male gonads start working. We try to raise her as normally as possible. I do have some reservations about pink dresses. I always think, maybe she wants to live as a man later and then pictures in such an outfit are certainly embarrassing for her."
The documentary by filmmaker Britta Julia Dombrowe approaches the lives of those affected in intensive interviews and at the same time shows the current state of research: a French surgeon who operates on children for uniqueness explains his motivation to "save" the children from a cruel society. Inge's teacher tells us how the children deal with the fact that Inge is a boy and a girl. New findings from brain research make it clear: gender is created in the brain and not between the legs.
We know little about the lives of intersexuals, but also about how they are treated in science and medicine. That there is much more than man and woman, that is what this film is about.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn
As part of the Arte theme evening "Crime Scene Hospital".

First broadcast: 20.04.2010, 21:15, ARTE
Link to ARD report

Many movie fans celebrated Gérard Depardieu's son Guillaume as the greatest up-and-coming talent in French cinema. But things turned out differently. In 1995, the 24-year-old had to undergo knee surgery after a motorcycle accident. During the operation, the hospital germ MRSA penetrated the wound. There was no definitive cure, neither through 17 operations nor by means of antibiotics. Finally, in 2003, Guillaume Depardieu made a tough decision. To put an end to his unbearable pain, he had his right leg amputated.
In the fight against the killer germs, the actor founded the "Guillaume Depardieu Foundation" and drew attention to untenable conditions in French hospitals on talk shows. He threatened the health minister with a "crusade" if the government did not take action against the conditions in the hospitals. He soon found that the mass of inquiries overwhelmed him. He handed over his life's work to the patient protection association "Lien" and concentrated on his career. While he was filming in Romania, he fell ill with pneumonia. Suddenly, everything happened very quickly. On October 13, 2008, Guillaume Depardieu died at the age of 37.
What is his legacy? His angry appearances on television raised public awareness of the danger of antibiotic-resistant germs in France and created political pressure. The Ministry of Health, previously reluctant to publish figures on the problem, changed course in 2003. Since then, the diseases have been recorded and published nationwide. And patients can find out how active their hospital is in the fight against the killer germs.

Today, the reform is having an impact: France is the only European country to have reduced the number of infected patients over the past five years, while elsewhere the killer germs continue to spread in hospitals.

In his documentary, filmmaker Valentin Thurn lets Guillaume Depardieu's ex-wife Elise have her say. In addition, friends and colleagues express their views. The actor himself is present in numerous archive shots from documentaries and feature films.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 13.09.2009, 16:25, WDR
Link to the Whistleblower Network

"My loyalty to the constitution takes precedence over my loyalty to my boss," Rudolf Schmenger decides on August 30, 2001.
Until then, he is an efficient tax investigator, repeatedly commended by his employer, the Frankfurt tax office. On his behalf, he also searches a major bank and tracks down tax evaders who are smuggling millions into accounts abroad. Without giving any reasons, his employer forbids him to pursue these "cases" further. A presumably politically motivated instruction from the Hessian Ministry of Finance, because the investigations in the banks have a negative impact on the state as a business location.
"It can't be that we hang the small tax evaders and let the big ones go," says Rudolf Schmenger. But in the end, the Ministry of Finance orders the dissolution of his department.
Rudolf Schmenger resists - until the office management finally finds a way to get rid of him via a commissioned expert opinion: A psychiatrist certifies Rudolf Schmenger a "querulatory development" and writes him "life-long unfit for service".
Against his will, he is sent into early retirement in his early 40s. In the meantime, the Hessian Medical Association accuses the psychiatrist of having prepared a favorable opinion in the interest of the state government. Rudolf Schmenger fights for his reputation and continues to rally civil servants around him who, like him, want to follow their conscience.
tag7 rolls up the case of "Schmenger" in an exemplary report and asks what enables this man to put his ethical principles above his personal career despite fierce opposition.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn

First broadcast: 01.07.2009, 23:30, ARD

Link to the website of Harry Wörz
Link to the song of Nadeem

It is the nightmare par excellence, the day with which everything in life changes: The day when 'In the name of the people' a judge pronounces guilt. The convicted person knows he didn't do it - but no one believes him. Even the German criminal justice system, despite all the rules, all the instances, is not immune to errors. And, still worse: Who gets once into the mills of the justice, has hardly chances to come out again.
One of these rare cases is Harry Wörz (41) from Birkenfeld with Pforzheim. He allegedly strangled his ex-wife with a scarf in 1997. The victim has been a nursing case since then because of brain damage and can no longer testify. She was a police officer. Also under suspicion were her lover and her father, both also police officers. But for the police it is quickly clear that Harry Wörz is the culprit. He is not a police officer. The court followed the investigators' view and sentenced Harry Wörz to eleven years in prison in a circumstantial trial. In a later civil trial, however, which was about compensation for damages, the judges ruled that he could not be the perpetrator. They criticized that the criminal trial had 'not been objective in some points'. Wörz then tried to have the case reopened, which he actually succeeded in doing three years later. With success: acquittal by the Mannheim Regional Court. But a year later, in October 2006, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the acquittal. The follow-up trial began a few weeks ago and is scheduled to run throughout 2009.
90 percent of all miscarriages of justice are due to misidentification. That's because judges increasingly rely on expert witnesses. But they have been under heavy criticism for some time. A very serious error of such an expert has Donald Stellwag (50) for alleged bank robbery innocently behind bars. The expert had identified him 'beyond doubt' on a photo taken by the surveillance camera at the scene of the crime. Donald Stellwag tried to get a retrial - in vain. He served the full nine years, and was denied early release because he did not confess. Less than two weeks after he was released from prison, police caught the real culprit in a new bank robbery.

Unusual: In 2007, the expert was ordered by the Frankfurt/Main Higher Regional Court to pay 150,000 euros in damages for pain and suffering - the first case in which an expert has ever been held liable for an erroneous court opinion. The court-appointed counter-expert, Prof. Friedrich Wilhelm Rösing, criticized the fact that there are numerous incorrect verdicts due to the poor quality of surveillance cameras and the insufficient knowledge of many experts.
Rösing is now again the counter-expert in a current case: Andreas Kühn has been in the Heimsheim correctional facility near Stuttgart for almost nine years. He is said to be the so-called 'gorilla mask robber' who held up four banks in Stuttgart in the 1990s. Kühn maintains his innocence. The court based its conviction on several pieces of circumstantial evidence. The decisive factor was a photo from a surveillance camera. The expert witness at the trial - a retired police officer - said at the time that he could not rule out Kühn as the perpetrator. But Professor Wilhelm Rösing is convinced: Kühn cannot be the bank robber. The expert for facial recognition found 25 features on the pictures that do not match the convicted man - already with 3 features one could say that the picture does not show the person in question. Based on this expert opinion, Kühn is pursuing the reopening of his case. A laborious, agonizing process full of uncertainties and with an open outcome.

 

A film by Kadriye Acar and Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by NDR

First broadcast: 10.05.2009, 17:30, ARD
Link to ARD Theme Week

"If I had met Inge earlier, I would have become a more self-confident person. Many things would have been easier. I trust her more than other people because her help is voluntary and therefore comes from the heart," says 27-year-old Öznur Demir. She had been looking for help to complete her secondary school diploma - and found 69-year-old retiree Inge Alexy, at the "Senioren-Lotsen" project. The volunteer mentor helps the young Turkish woman learn German and find an apprenticeship.
There are currently thirty such senior pilots in Lübeck, and more are joining them at every meeting. Not only the young foreigners benefit, but also the seniors who want to do something useful in their retirement. A model project that so far only exists in Lübeck.

The volunteer "pilots" cannot replace the professionals at the counseling centers. But they can also provide moral support to young people when they find themselves in a desperate situation, like the 17-year-old Kurd Faysal Idris, who fled to Germany when he was 14. "Without Mr. Pawlowski," he said, "I wouldn't even have a roof over my head. I can't express it in words, but it's the most important person for me in Lübeck." Former teacher Jürgen Pawlowski came to Lübeck himself as a refugee after World War 2. He knows the feeling of being a stranger in a country. That's why he wants to help Faysal feel at home in Lübeck.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette

First broadcast: 19.12.2008, 22:35, ARTE

2009 ARGUS Foundation Journalism Award for Antibiotic Preservation and Development
36th International Festival of Sustainable Development Films, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2009
International Science Film Festival, Athens, Greece, 2009

The global spread of new super-bacteria in hospitals is causing concern among doctors. The most widespread and dangerous of the hospital germs is called MRSA (multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). In Germany alone, 15,000 patients become infected every year, in France almost twice as many. MRSA is resistant to common antibiotics. And the germ is becoming more and more aggressive: the number of drugs that can still be used is decreasing from year to year. MRSA can lead to severe wound infections, pneumonia, sepsis and not infrequently death. Across Europe, around 50,000 people die every year from the killer germ.
Super germs like MRSA have been around for over 40 years, but in countries like Germany or France the problem was underestimated for a long time. As a result, the germ spread to such an extent that hospitals can hardly control it today. Even the strictest hygiene precautions cannot reduce the risk of infection during surgery to zero.
Since the discovery of penicillin, doctors have relied on antibiotics to effectively fight bacterial infections. But as soon as a new drug was invented, there were resistant strains of bacteria just a few years later. They have spread mainly in countries where antibiotics are used particularly liberally. In contrast, where they are more targeted and sparingly given, there are also fewer super germs.
The filmmakers Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette pursue the question: What is being done in European hospitals to combat the spread of hospital germs? How have the Dutch managed to reduce the number of MRSA cases to almost zero? How do new germs spread against which no antibiotic can help anymore? What hope is there through research into vaccines? And: How do patients cope who were infected with a super germ in the hospital and will probably never get rid of it again?

 

A film by Britta Dombrowe and Valentin Thurn
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 18.05.2008, WDR

"The bread here is 1 A!", says Hanna and she is absolutely right. It looks appetizing and is neatly wrapped in plastic foil. Nothing seems to distinguish it from the others on the supermarket shelf, except that the 21-year-old has just fished it out of the trash. Hanna has not been buying her food in supermarkets for a long time now, but gets it from the dumpsters behind them.
"Containerizing" is what it's called in the scene of self-proclaimed leftover recyclers who refuse to follow the consumer cycle of the throwaway society. Not out of necessity, but out of conviction.
There are no concrete figures on how much food is thrown away in Germany. At the Cologne wholesale market alone, up to ten tons accumulate on a normal market day. The reasons for this vary: sometimes the imprint on the label has slipped, sometimes the refrigeration during transport was not up to standard. Often, however, it is simply cheaper for wholesalers and retailers to throw away food and buy new than to rent storage space. "Then the whole stuff wanders into the garbage box by box," knows remnant recycler Jens from Cologne, who has meanwhile said goodbye to his former bourgeois life completely via "containerizing": "I don't have to bend for anyone, but this freedom can be quite hard."
We accompany remnant recyclers on their forays into "free land". What freedoms does their self-chosen life bring them and where do they encounter health, social and political limits?

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 07.05.2008, 22:30 clock, Menschen hautnah, WDR
Link to the directory of German sperm banks

When Anna (28) learns from her mother that she was conceived with a sperm donation, she is initially paralyzed. For weeks she looks at the family photo albums, compares her face in the mirror with that of her father and sisters.
Anna's parents had separated eight years ago: to the social father Anna had since then only little contact. Her two younger sisters were born naturally, although a doctor had initially told the father that he was incapable of procreation. The parents had therefore sought the help of a sperm bank in Boston, USA, at the time.

Anna goes to Boston to look for her genetic father, or rather to find the "donor", because she avoids the word "father" in this context: "I already have a father!" The search is difficult because her mother Pauline had destroyed all the records at the time; after all, no one was supposed to know about the sperm donation. Realizing how important the "donor search" is to her daughter, and when Anna finds a possible donor through an Internet forum, her mother decides to go to Boston as well. They visit Randy, who had donated at the time Pauline was receiving treatment. After a very emotional conversation in his apartment, they take a saliva sample on a cotton swab . They have this examined at home in Munich in a gene laboratory. Anna learns the test result from the lab director in her search for her own identity....

 

A film by Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 27.11.2007, 21:40, ARTE

The invention of vaccines is one of the great success stories of medicine. Epidemics such as smallpox and polio, which terrified people for a long time, were defeated thanks to vaccinations. But the victories that have been won in the history of medicine have rarely been without undesirable side effects or even losses. Even though vaccines are many times safer today than they were 20 years ago, the possibility of vaccine damage still exists. The dangers from infectious diseases that can be prevented by vaccination are considered by experts to be much higher. The fatal consequences of measles are one example. And yet they are there: consequential damages that lead to disability or even death.
The filmmakers Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette trace the bright and dark sides of vaccinations. A journey into the history of immunization paves the way to the fates of those affected, then and now, and to current, controversial debates about vaccination.

Families from Germany and France tell of both sides of the success coin: what can happen if vaccinations are not given, and how even one vaccination can dramatically change lives. Six-year-old Micha is doomed to die because he contracted measles at the age of 5 months in a pediatrician's office. It took years for the disease to break out: SSPE, a chronic brain inflammation and consequence of the measles, which certainly leads to death. Little Joel is also affected. During Germany's largest measles epidemic, which broke out in Duisburg in 2006, he also fell ill. He died while the shooting was still in progress. Madame Zanakolona from Paris, on the other hand, had to fight for years to have the brain damage that her now 15-year-old son suffered after a whooping cough vaccination recognized by the courts. The vaccine has long been off the market, but new vaccines with potential risks are pushing ahead. The Schomaker family, at any rate, is convinced that the six-dose vaccine, introduced 6 years ago, was to blame for their son's death.
Coroner Prof. Randolph Penning has performed autopsies on several children in recent years after six-dose vaccinations. Results: abnormal and worrisome brain swelling. The former employee of the Paul Ehrlich Institute and insider Dr. Klaus Hartmann is also extremely critical of the new combination vaccines. Are they to blame for the death of the children? No one has been able to prove it yet, but the controversy is on. How openly must possible consequential damage be reported without stirring up fear among parents and thus producing low vaccination rates and the return of epidemics?
Most infectious diseases have lost their threat, not least because of the success of vaccinations. Vaccinations therefore no longer seem so important to many. Some vaccines, however, would be welcomed by many people around the world. Like, for example, the new vaccine against tuberculosis being developed at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. Millions of people worldwide are affected by TB, and resistant pathogens are spreading more and more. Vaccination could provide a remedy, scientists hope. Because TB is still on the rise.

A film by Valentin Thurn and Britta Dombrowe
First broadcast: 02.09.2007, 16:25, WDR

For hours in November 2006, inmates tortured a 20-year-old fellow inmate in the youth prison Siegburg and finally killed him. The prison staff did not notice the hours-long ordeal. The crime threw a spotlight on the conditions in German youth prisons: Cells are overcrowded, there is an acute shortage of staff, prisoners are locked away for up to 23 hours a day and left to fend for themselves.
19-year-old Ufuk, who is serving time in Siegburg, the "toughest youth prison," as he puts it, also knows this. Ufuk knows what he's talking about; at 14, he already had 140 crimes to his credit, is a regular in German prisons and knows the rules behind the walls. "When you arrive in jail, the first thing they do is check you out. Either they have respect or you have to get respect. That's where the law of the fist alone applies." Yet the penal code states: "In the execution of the prison sentence, the prisoner should become capable of leading a life without crime in the future with social responsibility."
The film shows the causes of growing brutality behind bars and presents new ways in juvenile penal system.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 06.02.2007, 20:40, theme night, ARTE

1001 Documentary Film Festival, Istanbul, 2008
Gold Panda Awards, International Sichuan TV Festival, China, 2007
E. Desmond Lee Africa World Festival, St. Louis, USA and Lagos, Nigeria, 2007
Film Festival Eberswalde - Die Provinziale, Germany, 2007: award for "best documentary"

Immigration brought female circumcision from Africa to Europe. But more and more black women decide, "Not with my daughter!" Three women from England, Germany and France tell of the day they were circumcised, of problems with urination and the pain of menstruation, the fear of sexual intercourse and childbirth. But there is hope: Dr. Pierre Foldes from Paris developed a technique with which he can restore the clitoris.
"Not with my daughter!" appears as a bonus track on the DVD of the feature film "Desert Flower" with Waris Dirie.

A film by Mauricio Estrella and Antonio Uscátegui
Co-writer: Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR.

First broadcast: 19.11.2006, ARD

Abelardo lives illegally in Germany. He has no residence papers, is constantly on guard against the police. Abelardo does not want to return to Ecuador to the slums of the port city of Guayaquil. His mother still lives there; she is sick but does not have health insurance. Abelardo sends her money for medicine.
For six years he has been struggling to make ends meet in Germany. A life in the shadows, determined by the search for cheap jobs where no papers are required. Then he meets Ines, a German, at a dance, quite normal. They fall in love. But does Ines trust him, or does she feel used? As a means to an end, to get a residence permit through her?
Over a million foreigners live illegally in Germany, like Abelardo. For more than a year, Mauricio Estrella and Antonio Uscátegui observed two families for whom the daily game of hide-and-seek has become the norm for fear of deportation. As so-called "economic refugees", they bravely and also astonishingly normally master a life in which there is everything but security.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn, co-written by Stephan Müller
Commissioned by NDR in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 29.08.2006, 20:40, ARTE

Nominated for the German Television Award for "Best Reportage"
International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig), 2006
Basel_Karlsruhe Forum (BaKaFORUM), Basel, Switzerland, 2007
Gold Panda Awards, Sichuan TV Festival, China, 2007

Zacarias Moussaoui is the only assassin to stand trial for the attacks on September 11. September 2001 to stand trial - it was a symbolic trial for the United States. In May 2006, he was sentenced to life in prison. For the rest of his life, he is to have no outside contacts.
Is he the so-called 20th assassin to pilot a plane into the White House? Or just a mentally ill would-be conspirator? What is certain is that he was arrested four weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon while trying to learn how to fly a Boeing 747. And it is also certain that the FBI could have prevented the September 11 attacks had Moussaoui's notebook and laptop been searched in time.

How does a young Moroccan-born Frenchman end up joining al-Qaeda and training to become a suicide bomber in camps in Afghanistan? In his youth, he was not religious, he loved parties and his girlfriend, and sometimes he drank alcohol - until the day he was converted to jihad by radical Muslim preachers in London.
His mother Aïcha El-Wafi fought against the death penalty for her son during the trial. On the sidelines of the trials, she met Phyllis Rodriguez in the U.S., the mother of Greg, who was killed in the flames of the World Trade Center. In his documentary, filmmaker Valentin Thurn shows the development of this extraordinary friendship and gently traces the history of the dysfunctional Moussaoui family. Intense interviews with friends and family members, including the two Moussaouis sisters, are complemented by exclusive footage, some of which has never been shown before - including a private video of the teenage Zacarias.

On the fifth anniversary of the New York attacks, the film takes a new and unfamiliar look at a young Frenchman from Morocco whose difficult family background and influence from Islamist circles turned him into a death pilot who ultimately did not make it to the field. But it also sheds an illuminating light on Moussaoui's behavior during the trial, his guilty plea, which he has since recanted, as well as the role of justice in the U.S. and the desire of many Americans to convict the only assassin who confessed in court.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF

First broadcast: 16.05.2006, 22:15, in the series "37°", ZDF

Surrogacy is forbidden - that's what the law says. But in the anonymity of the Internet, the black market is flourishing. There Hildegard and Anton come across Sarah. The conception of their child takes place in a toilet, with the help of an enema syringe. Hildegard and Anton tell no one, not even their parents. Quite secretly, the child is to be born.

Sarah, who receives a considerable amount of money for her surrogacy, also hides her pregnancy from her parents. She knows that her parents would never agree to it. Sarah tells them about the terms of the contract she negotiated with Anton and tries to suppress any emotional connection to the baby in her womb. It's not easy, after all, she is the baby's genetic mother. Finally the time has come, the delivery is imminent.
But when the longed-for phone call "The baby is here" arrives at Hildegard and Anton, a handover of the child does not take place. Hilde and Anton have obviously fallen victim to an impostor. It is never clarified whether Sarah wanted to keep her baby herself or sold it to another couple: the surrogate mother remains untraceable. Hildegard and Anton do not want to take such a risk of fraud again. They decide to look for a surrogate mother in Ukraine and find one in Kiev. In Ukraine surrogacy is allowed and there is a real surrogacy tourism. Ole and Ingrid also traveled to Kiev months ago to find a surrogate mother for their baby. The couple is convinced that they are doing nothing wrong.

In most surrogate motherhoods, the egg comes from a foreign woman, only the man is also the genetic father of the child through his sperm donation. With Ingrid and Ole it is different. The child is genetically entirely theirs, the surrogate mother has only carried it to term. At the notary's office, she assigns all rights to the baby to Ole and Ingrid. Overjoyed, Ole and Ingrid travel back to Germany with their child, who is still officially identified as their biological child on the spot.
Diana and Steffen find their surrogate mother in South Africa. There, too, surrogacy is legal, and the insemination is carried out in a clinic. Diana and Steffen are open about their planned surrogacy and have already told family, neighbors and work colleagues. They are convinced that the German youth welfare offices cannot do anything about it if they adopt the baby according to South African law.
"37º" tells about the three couples and asks about the responsibility for a child born through surrogacy. The child's identity can be a lifelong problem due to the knowledge of its different mothers.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ARTE

First broadcast: 10.01.2006, 20:40, Theme night: "Poor children", ARTE

Poverty in the rich EU - for many children, this means multiple disadvantages. First of all, in education: they perform less well at school and drop out more often. Or in health: they are sick more often than children from better-off families, and in material opportunities: Often no vacation is possible. However - as was shown in Germany as well as in England and France - when parents have little, they scrape together all the money they can to at least buy presents for their children, prefer to tighten their belts, save on food or the car and want to avoid at all costs that their children experience poverty as a restriction.

Governments are helping to varying degrees: the situation is still worst in England, but in the last 5 years the government has managed to reduce what was once the highest rate of child poverty in all of Europe by a quarter. Billions are being pumped into early childhood education to provide equal opportunities from preschool age. The situation in Germany is quite different. Whereas social inequalities were relatively cushioned in the past, they are now constantly moving down to the British level. France is slightly better off, but here, too, persistently high unemployment ensures permanently high child poverty.

A big contrast, however, in Scandinavia, first and foremost in Denmark, where there is virtually no poverty among children and families. What are the Danes doing better? The film takes us on a tour of four European countries in search of answers to the question of where the fight against poverty can begin and which models are promising.

 

A film by Valentin Thurn and Kadriye Acar
Commissioned by NDR

First broadcast: 02.08.2005, 20:40, ARTE

Fatma Bläser was threatened with death by her own family because she refused to marry the man chosen for her, and then still fled to her German boyfriend. There, brothers and uncles besieged the house, for six weeks, seeking her life in order to purify the family honor. Fatma was able to hide, and for over 15 years had no contact with her family, only secretly with her mother. Today her father is an old man. Fatma wants to reconcile with him. He has become meek with age, and yet he does not regret what he and the other men in the family did back then. Fatma is unsure: How will the clan in Turkey that expelled her back then react? We accompanied her to her Kurdish home village, located 1500 kilometers from Istanbul on the former border with the Soviet Union, and observe Fatma's cautious approach to a world that was once her home and is now so foreign. Fatma recalls how, as an eight-year-old, she watched the stoning of a woman accused of being an adulteress. She searches for the grave, but is told that such "eyesores" are buried far away in the mountains.

Hatun Sürücü was also disowned by her family and sought contact again out of longing. But her story ends tragically: she was murdered by her three brothers. The reason: she had separated from the man her family chose for her and wanted to raise her son Can alone. The crime took place on the open street in Berlin: The older brothers stood lookout, the youngest brother took the pistol and shot. Families often seek out the youngest because they know they will be punished more leniently under juvenile criminal law. Their friends and co-workers can't believe it. But immigration has carried the cruel tradition into the heart of Europe. Hatun's family also comes from southeastern Turkey, where tradition requires brothers to watch over the integrity of their sisters until they marry. Misconduct must be atoned for because the family honor is tarnished and the family runs the risk of being outcast from the village community. This still plays a role even in today's Berlin, because the clans keep close contact, even with relatives who have remained in Turkey.

Honor killings occur not only among Turks and Kurds, but also among other peoples such as Albanians. The conflicts often announce themselves years in advance: Ulerika Gashi had come to Germany from Kosovo with her family when she was two years old. The father often beat the mother, and later the four daughters, especially Ulerika, when she began to wear makeup and fashionable clothes at 16. When the father learns that Ulerika has a boyfriend, he strangles her with duct tape in the basement of his own house and throws the body into a quarry pond.
Many justify the honor killings with Islam. But in reality there is not a word about it in the Koran. However, few imams openly oppose this pre-Islamic tradition. But there are forces that help with honor conflicts: For example, a Kurdish member of the state parliament in Berlin, a Turkish cultural association in Paris and the Rosa e.V. association in Stuttgart, which maintains several girls' shared flats where young women who have been sentenced to death by the family council hide out. There, and in one of the strictly guarded women's shelters in Istanbul, it becomes clear that beatings alone are not enough to drive a Turkish woman into a women's shelter; the feeling of shame is too great, even among the women themselves, most of whom flee only after the first murder attempt in order to save their lives and those of their children.

For their documentary, shot in Germany, France and Turkey, filmmaker Kadriye Acar, who grew up in Germany as the daughter of Turkish parents, and her colleague Valentin Thurn spoke with Turkish, Kurdish and Kosovar women who hide out in anonymous high-rise apartments and closely guarded women's shelters to save their lives and those of their children. The film also depicts the stories of two women who, despite rejection and death threats, sought contact with their families again after years - out of an insatiable longing for life in the extended family. One, Fatma Bläser, who came to Germany as a child, was able to reconcile with her relatives in her native Kurdish village. The other, Hatun Sürücü, paid for her attempted rapprochement with the family with her life - she was murdered by her brothers on the open street in Berlin. The film also visits one of only two women's shelters in Istanbul and makes clear how similar the fates of the persecuted women are - whether in Berlin or in Istanbul.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 26.04.2005, 21:45, ARTE

Hans S. could no longer sleep without pills. He was an executive, but no one noticed his addiction, for over 17 years, until the breakdown came: first he lost his job, then his driver's license, then his children, finally he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for withdrawal. His doctor, who regularly prescribed him Rohypnol tablets, should have known that the pills were addictive. After Hans S. had overcome his addiction, he sued his doctor before the Arbitration Court of the North German Medical Associations, and was proven right: for the first time in such a case, the patient was awarded compensation and a medical malpractice was condemned. It is also called the "silent addiction" because it is not noticeable, but nevertheless about as many people are addicted to sleeping pills and tranquilizers as to alcohol: In Germany there are over one million tablet addicts, in France even three million. Housewives have the worst sleep: As early as 1967, the Rolling Stones sang about "Mother's little helper" - benzodiazepine-type pills.

Until the 1980s, the pharmaceutical industry, against its better judgment, concealed its addictive dangers - just as it had previously downplayed the damage to embryos caused by the sleeping pill thalidomide, and also the toxicity of barbiturates. These early sleeping pills were often used for suicides and have been banned since the 1960s. Today, they are only used in Switzerland - for euthanasia, which is legal there. Modern sleeping pills are now lethal only in combination with other drugs, but junkies quickly found that the pills mixed with heroin gave a longer high. And criminals found that sleeping pills could be used as knockout drops and rape drugs. Abuse is difficult to prove in court because sleeping pills break down quickly in the body.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 01.02.2005, 20:45, ARTE

Every sixth couple in Germany waits in vain for offspring. In order to have a child after all, more and more women and men are turning to modern reproductive medicine. Twenty years ago, the first German test-tube baby was born, and since then hundreds of thousands of children have been conceived in the test tube, using methods such as in vitro fertilization that are legal in this country and financed by health insurance up to a certain number. But if these attempts fail and the desire to have their own child is too powerful, then increasingly infertile couples also use techniques prohibited in Germany, such as egg donation or preimplantation diagnostics, and for this reason travel to nearby European countries.

Susanne and Hans Bünger-Biel Susanne and Hans desperately want a child. And they have wanted it for years. Because Susanne can't get pregnant naturally, they tried artificial insemination . After the seventh attempt, Susanne finally got pregnant. Again she lost the child. But they do not want to give up. To increase their chances, they travel to Belgium: Here, at Brussels University Hospital, couples who want to have children are allowed to have the genetic material of the fertilized cells examined for possible genetic damage by PGD, a method that is banned in Germany. Ines and Christoph have already had more than ten attempts at artificial insemination. They, too, simply don't want to give up; their desire to have a child together is too overpowering. Ines is now 45 years old. Their last attempt for the time being takes them to a fertility clinic in Cape Town, South Africa, where they want to try egg donation. This is prohibited in Germany. For Michaela and Ralf, egg donation is also the last chance to have a child. Although they are still young, they have been trying unsuccessfully for years to have a child. Michaela, who has already had eight miscarriages, suffers from a rare hereditary disease. To finally get closer to their wish, they travel to the Czech Republic. Will the three couples finally be able to fulfill their most ardent wish?

Filmmaker Valentin Thurn follows the often hard paths of the three couples to their desired child with great sensitivity and consideration. He explains the latest state of research, sheds light on the different treatments of fertilization in the laboratory and asks about side effects. He interviews clinic operators in the Czech Republic or South Africa, for whom the rigid German law means a welcome increase in profits, because here the desperate couples are now being charged large sums of money. Valentin Thurn provides a well-founded look at the status quo of artificial insemination in Germany and does one thing above all: he gives an ear to the couples who want nothing more in the world than a child.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF

First broadcast: 16.11.2004, 20:45, ARTE

Why is the population shrinking more in some European countries than in others? Why do France and Sweden succeed in convincing young families to have children? Among German politicians, an active population policy was frowned upon until recent times; people felt too much reminded of the Nazis' cult of motherhood. The consequences are unmistakable: In eastern Germany, entire high-rise neighborhoods are being demolished because there is a shortage of people. In the Ruhr region, the proportion of foreigners is rising because they have a higher birth rate. And aging threatens to unhinge the social systems - in thirty years at the latest, every working person will have a pensioner to support. To escape the demographic downward pull, municipalities and companies are working on solutions.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 26.04.2004, "Die Story", WDR

It was the German tropical physician and epidemiologist Dr. Siegwart-Horst Günther who first pointed out the highly dangerous late effects of so-called uranium bullets in 1991. During the Gulf War, this ammunition was fired by the US Army by the ton.
The film accompanies Günther and his American colleagues during their investigations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq. Everywhere there, American troops had used the dangerous uranium munitions. The film shows so far little known long-term consequences under which especially the children in the war zones have to suffer. After the end of the recent war in Iraq, the experts discovered contaminated war sites in the vicinity of Basra, whose radioactive contamination exceeds the natural earth radiation by a factor of 20,000.

As early as 1991, after the Gulf War, Prof. Günther had noticed people in Baghdad University Hospital with symptoms of illness that he had never seen before in the 40 years of his work in this country. He also examined many malformed infants and children, most of whom did not survive long, and documented the cases. He diagnosed severe kidney and liver dysfunction, cancer, and genetic damage. After similar disease symptoms then appeared in American and British Gulf War veterans and their children, the connection was clear to Günther and many other scientists. They are calling for a comprehensive ban on this ammunition, which is part of the standard armament of U.S. troops.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 14.03.2004, ARTE

Ben and Meret Becker were practically born to act. Mother and father are actors, and even their stepfather Otto Sander. But it's hard to develop your own profile in the shadow of overgrown parents. Valentin Thurn observed Ben and Meret during filming and concerts and shows how the siblings reached the goal of an independent artist personality on different paths. Now there is even a third generation at the start: Ben's daughter Lilith and Meret's daughter Lulu were there and moved on the set like the grown-ups, just as Ben and Meret had once accompanied their parents during filming.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF

First broadcast: 22.07.2003, in the series "37°", ZDF

Christian (14) was grossly neglected by his mother. His gay uncle kidnapped him in a night-and-fog action and saved him from the threatening children's home. He was nine at the time. Anything but enthusiastic, he spent the first weeks with his new "father" and his friend. His classmates teased him because everyone in the village knew that Christian was now living with the two "gays. In the small village in the Eifel there is no hiding, and Christian had to show his colors. This was increasingly easier for him
because his two new "parents" took care of him so touchingly that even the responsible youth welfare office was impressed by so much care and parental competence. Today, everyone in the village has almost gotten used to the somewhat different family model,
and Christian is happy to be with his uncle. Nevertheless, at the age of 14, it is clear to him that he is definitely more interested in girls than in boys.
With Patricia it was quite different, because her parents' marriage seemed happy when one day, Patricia was twelve at the time, her father told her that he wanted a divorce.

After 18 years of marriage, he had to realize that he could no longer dismiss his increasingly strong homosexual tendencies. He had fallen in love with a man. Patricia was stunned. That her father wanted to separate from her mother for such a reason was difficult for Patricia to cope with. Her glamorous image of her father collapsed from one day to the next. For almost a year, Patricia concealed the "shame" that her father had brought upon her. Her sister Carina spoke of Papa's new partner Bernd to her friends only as "Bernadette" to keep up appearances to the outside world. More than a year passed until one day she burst with rage when school friends made fun of gays.

Out of her need to explain why she was so involved, she took flight and talked about her father and his friend. Almost all of her friends stood by her. Patricia also gradually changed her attitude toward her father. The sisters moved in with their father and now live with him and his partner in Cologne.
Valentin Thurn tells how young people cope when fathers are suddenly very different from what they have assumed all along and from the usual role model. How does the relationship between father and child change - how does one change oneself?

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 10.07.2003, in the series "Weltweit", WDR

The focus is the cowboy Gerardo and his employer Cesar Chico. He owns a herd of fighting bulls that spend the winter on their farm in Andalusia, but move to the mountains of central Spain in the summer when the heat parches everything in southern Spain. To lead them, he hires a troop of cowboys every year. They are led by Gerardo. We follow the herd of bulls as they migrate 600 kilometers across Spain, experiencing the clash of the old and the new Spain: Gerardo and his cowboys encounter, for example, highways that cut through the traditional cattle migration routes, which they must laboriously avoid.

The Spaniards, however, are enthusiastic about the revival of the old tradition. They greet the cowboys like heroes when they roam their villages, because Spain's historical identity is closely tied to its large herds of cattle: The origin of cowboy culture is in Spain and was first brought to the Americas by Columbus and his successors. Bullfighting also originated in the cattle pasture, as a pastime for the cowboys. The Toros Bravos, as the Spanish call their fighting bulls, are bred to be as aggressive as possible. At the age of four, the bravest bulls are sold to the bullfighting arenas, for up to 5000 marks. The cattle breed still has the wandering instinct in its genes. Cowboy Gerardo doesn't have to show them where the trail leads. Already kilometers before the next watering hole, their pace quickens, the cattle know exactly where the water is.

A film by Valentin Thurn
On behalf of WDR
First broadcast: 31.01.2003, SWR / WDR / BR alpha

For more than 160 million years, the dinosaurs dominated life on earth. Then they disappeared from our planet in a period of a few hundred thousand years, and with them more than half of the animals living at that time. Why did they die out? And why so many species at once? Many scientists suspect that a huge meteorite impact triggered the mass extinction. Others believe rather in a series of devastating volcanic eruptions.
The end of the dinosaurs came suddenly, one believes the most well-known theory. 65 million years ago, a meteorite from outer space collided with Earth. When the ten-kilometer chunk hit the Earth's surface, its impact force was 10,000 times as powerful as the explosion of all nuclear weapons in existence today. It hurled soot and dust into the atmosphere. As a result, the sky darkened, the climate cooled, and the cold-blooded dinosaurs froze to death or their eggs could no longer develop in the cool climate.

Remains of the killer meteorite were found on the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula - but nothing can be seen of the 200-kilometer-wide crater today because it has been covered by younger layers of rock. That this meteorite changed the world climate seems to be proved by the metal iridium, very rare on earth but often contained in meteorites. Iridium was found in rock layers around the globe, exactly at the border between Cretaceous and Tertiary.
The rare metal could come however also from another source, because Iridium is ejected also by volcanoes. And from it the second theory proceeds to the extinction of the dinosaurs, which finds increasingly supporters in the science: Long-lasting volcanic eruptions spewed massive amounts of sulfur, carbon dioxide and dust into the atmosphere, causing global dimming and cooling. Location of the mega volcano: Central India. There one finds today the gigantic highland of Dekkan, whose volcanic rocks are exactly 65 million years old.
For the volcano thesis speaks that other known impacts of meteorites as for example in the Nördlinger Ries (Bavaria) no world-wide mass extinction released, but only short term and regionally limited devastations. Volcanoes, on the other hand, may have been a steady source of dust and gas for several 100,000 years. Finally, the dinosaurs did not die out suddenly, as would be expected from a meteorite impact, but over a long period of more than 500,000 years, about as long as the volcanoes in India were active. There are other examples of apocalyptic volcanic eruptions in Earth's history, for example at the end of the Permian, when the huge volcanic plateau in northern Siberia was formed. At that time, the trilobites, a crustacean family that previously virtually dominated the world's oceans, became extinct.
The reason that the killer meteor is so popular is probably because it is spectacular: In the course of the dino fashion, the catastrophe theory could be marketed simply better, for example in the dinosaur film of Walt Disney. That's where man's lust for the apocalypse wins out.

Why the climatic catastrophe at the end of the Cretaceous period survived other animal groups such as the mammals, but not a single dinosaur, the researchers ultimately do not yet know. Previously, they assumed that the dinosaurs froze to death because they were cold-blooded, meaning that their body temperature depended on the temperature of their environment. Accordingly, the mammals would have survived because they were warm-blooded. But today we know that this assumption is more than questionable. After all, other warm-blooded lizards also survived the Cretaceous period. And at today's cold pole of the earth in Siberia, the only vertebrate species living there is a salamander - truly not a warm-blooded animal. There is also evidence that some dinosaur species may have been warm-blooded.

This leads to the question: What would actually have happened if the dinosaurs had not died out 65 million years ago? Paleontologist Dr. Michael Maisch from the University of Tübingen suspects that in this case there would probably be no humans today. After all, "The dinosaurs were ahead of the game for over 100 million years and didn't let the mammals come up." The scientist's conclusion: If they had not become extinct, then perhaps intelligent dinos would dominate the world today, and not humans.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ARTE

First broadcast: 07.11.2002, ARTE

"Lucky housewife clears millions" - "Elementary school teacher stumbles over fourth-grade question. An embarrassment for the whole school" This is the stuff of the new tabloid headlines. Heroes and goofs are determined by the media in a fraction of a second these days: Bright spot or black out! - Winner or loser!

To be a contestant on a quiz show on television: Sybille, 28, and Jean-Pierre, 72, realized this dream.Sybille Longlez, 28, single, watches the quiz shows on TV with her mother, and they both guess.
Jean-Pierre is a "mordu," as the French would say, a "bitten" who spends almost every evening at a different quiz club, where the TV shows are reenacted - with his own questions. And why? "After being pushed into early retirement, I wanted to show the young whippersnappers that I'm not old news," says Jean-Pierre.
In Sybille's case, it was her mother, with whom she watches the quiz show "Questions Pour Un Champion" every day, who urged her to apply. Jean-Pierre has already applied seven times to no avail. Both manage to pass the rigorous test and prevail against more than 100 candidates from all over Belgium. But in the studio in Paris, the conditions are tougher: Jean-Pierre had hardly slept in the hotel the night before. And Sybille is at her wits' end. Fortunately, both have a support sitting in the audience.

The reportage will accompany the candidates, ask about motivations, record the preparations that are made in the family, in the circle of friends. We will be there when it goes into the studio, when the candidates are briefed once again, when the personal tension grows from hour to hour, until the moment when it is said "We are on the air!" - not entirely unobserved, of course...

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 17.06.2002, WDR

The clocks found with the 150 charred bodies all show the same time: 9 a.m. 11 p.m. The fire must have spread so lightning-fast in the narrow tunnel that the passengers of the Kaprun Glacier Railway suffocated and burned to death in one fell swoop - including those who ran up to 142 meters on the emergency stairs.

How did the flash fire happen, in which only twelve passengers survived because they smashed through the windows with their ski poles? WDR author Valentin Thurn spoke with survivors who report two explosions. He visited the ill-fated train and found a round steel tank that the force of an explosion shattered. It contained hydraulic oil for the emergency brake. The Gletscherbahn itself did not expect a fire at all, as its technical director explained. Therefore, there were neither emergency hammers nor fire extinguishers in the passenger compartments, and neither emergency lighting nor ventilation in the tunnel. The Gletscherbahn blames the manufacturer of the cable car, who installed a faulty fan heater and a body made of plastic. The manufacturer in turn blames the TÜV, which did not check the fire protection. The latter, in turn, blames the Ministry of Transport, which forgot to issue the appropriate regulations. A system of sloppiness. In which good money is made: This winter was a record winter, more skiers than ever before vacationed in Austria. In Kaprun, too, the accident seems to have been forgotten, the hotels are fully booked, and skiers are now being transported to the glacier by the gondola lift that was hastily built after the accident.

At the trial of 16 people responsible in Salzburg, the relatives of the dead can expect only a few thousand euros in compensation for pain and suffering under Austrian law. New York star lawyer Ed Fagan convinced most of them to sue in America for this reason. The looming billion-dollar U.S. lawsuit could become a precedent for other major accidents in Europe.

A film by Valentin Thurn
On behalf of ARD

First broadcast: 20.06.2001, ARD

When Barbara realizes in her mid-20s that she loves women, she says goodbye for the time being to a lifelong dream - the desire to have a child. Only gradually the thought matures: it also works without a man. Together with her partner Irmgard, she goes to a Dutch clinic and buys donor sperm. The adventure of lesbian motherhood can begin.

Ursula Ott and Valentin Thurn accompanied the two future mothers for nine months. They went with them to the sperm bank to buy sperm - forbidden in Germany for unmarried women, but common practice in Holland. They were there when the two women transferred the individual sperm samples into special nitrogen-cooled containers in their living room for storage purposes, and were shown how to carry out artificial insemination at home. They accompanied the lesbian couple to the gynecologist and to the ultrasound, to the scene disco and to the lesbian volleyball tournament, to the lawyer and to the priest, and finally to the postpartum. Little Lili will not be able to meet her father until she is 16. To do so, she must contact the sperm bank - but the mothers only know about the Dutch sperm donor that he has white skin, dark hair and neither AIDS nor hepatitis.

Despite new laws, the two women and their baby still encounter considerable reservations in Germany: It is true that Irmgard can commit herself by contract to pay child support for the rest of her life. But she hardly gets any rights in return: neither can she adopt the child as a "stepmother," nor can she be sure that she will still be allowed to visit the child in the event of separation.
For a long time now, this has no longer been the marginal problem of a social fringe group. Today, around 1.5 million children in Germany are growing up with homosexual parents, estimates Lela Lähnemann, the Berlin Senate representative for same-sex lifestyles. Most come from the heterosexual "previous life" of the now lesbian mothers, but more and more are created through insemination. The Munich family researcher Professor Wassilios Fthenakis even considers this number to be understated, because in the USA 10 million children already live with homosexual parents. And they don't live any worse than in "traditional" families, according to Fthenakis, who also advises the German government: "We haven't found any differences in child development." Neither would these children later develop behavioral disorders - nor would the likelihood increase that they themselves would become gay or lesbian.

Neighbors and teachers have already gotten used to the colorful new families in many places. For example, in Monschau in the Eifel, where two gay men are lovingly raising their foster son Christian on a former farm, among geese, rabbits and ducks. They are supported by neighbors in the village - and by the youth welfare office. "The two of them have a sustainable relationship and offer the child a stable home, which he hasn't had for a long time," praises the family nurse from the Youth Welfare Office. She can even imagine placing a second foster child with the gay couple.
Or that extended family of two gay fathers and two lesbian mothers raising two daughters together. Most of the time, the children live with their moms; they often spend weekends and vacations with their dads - and find it wonderful. Mia (9): "I have two moms and two dads at home, the other kids only ever have one."

In good times, these new "rainbow families" are an exciting social experiment. In bad times, however, human dramas play out. Because homosexual love can also break up, and the non-birth parent is then completely without rights. Like the social worker Sigrid, who took care of her friend's jointly planned baby for four years and, after the breakup, has no chance of ever seeing little Janek again. "I love you to the moon and back," she greets him over children's television on his birthday. But the courts have ruled: no kinship relationship, no rights.
The laws lag hopelessly behind social reality. Just a few years ago, homosexuals could not imagine having children at all - "today they sit in the pub and get big ears when it comes to having children," says Ingo Wolf, a gay father in Berlin. There's even an agency there that matches lesbian women with gay men who want to have children.Queer&Kids owner Susan Darrant has already advised 750 interested parties. She uses a questionnaire to find out who suits whom: "Homo, bi or hetero? Joint or separate custody? Living together or not?" The first babies created in this way will be born this spring.

Politicians and church representatives are still relatively helpless in the face of these new families. Is homosexual parenthood "unnatural", as Norbert Geis (CSU) thinks ? Do children with two gay fathers lack the "maternal breast", as Hanna-Renate Laurien of the Central Committee of German Catholics fears ? Or must children from homosexual relationships at least have the same rights as children of single parents, as Volker Beck (Greens) demands ? In any case, the law on "homosexual marriage", which Beck initiated, does not regulate the question of children at all. That two homosexuals go to the registry office was just about doable with the SPD, but that they now also want children went too far.

Time period: 2000 - 2010

A film by Valentin Thurn
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN

First broadcast: 20.10.2010, 23:30, ARD
Repetition: 06.08.2015, Phoenix

Supported by MEDIA (EU Commission), Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED), KOCCA (Korean film funding).
Editorial staff: Angelika Wagner (WDR), Andrea Ernst (WDR), Dirk Neuhoff (NDR) and Babeth Vanloo (BOS)
The international version (55 minutes) ran in the Netherlands (BOS), Sweden (SVT), Ireland (TG4), Spain (TV3), Lithuania (LVT), Finland (YLE), Switzerland (TSR), Norway (NRK), Cyprus (CYBC), Greece (ERT), South Korea (CREO) and in other countries (list to be updated).

The short version (29 minutes) ran on WDR television under the title "Essen im Eimer" on 25.10.2010 and on NDR television on 26.10.2010

More than half of our food ends up in the trash! Most of it already on its way from the field to the store before it even reaches our dining table: every second head of lettuce, every second potato and every fifth loaf of bread. That corresponds to about 500,000 truckloads per year. Director Valentin Thurn has researched the extent of this waste internationally - in the waste containers of wholesale markets, warehouses and supermarkets. He has documented overwhelming quantities of perfect food, some of it still in its original packaging, often with a valid best-before date. Up to 20 million tons of food are thrown away each year in Germany alone. And it is becoming more and more!
In his search for the causes, Valentin Thurn talks to supermarket managers, bakers, wholesale market inspectors, ministers, farmers and EU politicians.
What he finds is a worldwide system in which everyone participates. Everything should be available at all times, supermarkets offer the full range of goods throughout, bread must be fresh on the shelves until late in the evening, there are strawberries in every season. And everything has to look perfect: A wilted lettuce leaf, a crack in the potato, a dent in the apple - the goods are sorted out immediately. Yogurt pots end up in the trash two days before their best-before date expires.
The fact that half of the food already produced becomes waste has a devastating effect on the world's climate. Agriculture gobbles up huge amounts of energy, water, fertilizer, pesticides and clears rainforest, accounting for more than a third of greenhouse gases. When food rots in landfills, additional methane gas escapes, which has 25 times the impact on global warming as carbon dioxide.
Consumers' desire to have everything at their disposal at any time also exacerbates global hunger. Rising wheat prices prove it: today, industrialized countries buy their food on the world market, as do developing countries. If we threw away less, we would have to buy less; prices would fall and there would be more for the hungry.
But there is another way: Valentin Thurn finds people around the world who try to stop the insane waste: so-called garbage divers who rescue food from the waste containers of supermarkets, supermarket directors who convince their customers to buy less climate-damaging products, consumer associations that bring farmers and customers directly together. Small steps, but they could make a big difference: If we cut food waste in the industrialized countries by just half, it would have the same effect on the world's climate as if we gave up every second car.

A film by Britta Dombrowe
On behalf of ZDF
First broadcast: 08.10.2010, 22:40, ARTE

Statistically, they do not exist, the intersexuals. In the birth certificate must be entered within the first week after birth: Boy or girl - otherwise it is not issued at all. And without the birth certificate there is no passport, no child benefit, no school enrollment. In the case of ambiguous genitalia, many doctors advise gender reassignment surgery. The problem with this is that no one can predict what the child will later feel like: As a man or as a woman?
During the pregnancy, Andrea and her husband Nico agreed: "Whether it will be a boy or a girl didn't matter to us. That it could be both at the same time, we never thought of that!" Three months early, their baby is born. "At delivery, the midwife told me it was a little boy!" recalls Andrea, "then when my husband came to the hospital, the doctor told him it was a little girl!" Her child has a vagina, a uterus, testicles located in the abdomen and a small penis. Tests show that the sex chromosomes have an XY, meaning they are male.
But a person's biological sex can be read at several levels: through the chromosomes, hormones and sex organs. In normal development, these factors coincide; in intersexuality, they contradict each other. There are over 25 different diagnoses and every 5000th to 3000th newborn is affected.

Only in the last few years science has started to research the causes and effects of intersexuality at full speed: The new technical term is now DSD - Disorder of Sexual Development. It is high time, because since the 1950s medicine has been following the theses of the American psychologist John Money, who considered upbringing alone to be the decisive factor. So that the surrounding field can make however a clear sex-specific education, the child needs a clear body: Infants come on the operating table.
With the help of the surgery can be taken away, which is too much or be added missing. Hormone therapy does the rest. But often in the parforceride to the sexual unambiguity the signs are not read correctly or not recognized at all. Who wants to decide on the sex of infants if it is not foreseeable how they will later feel and develop as adolescents? How they want to live?
Even findings from brain research are not yet taken into account. But especially in the case of an intersexual genital, the brain provides important clues, according to brain researcher Dirk Swaab: "You have to wait until the brain starts to work in a sexually differentiated way. Only from the behavior of a person can we deduce whether he has a male or female brain."
The intersexual Christiane Völling (50) has suffered for decades from the discrepancy between body and feelings. At birth, the girl was assigned to the male sex due to an enlarged clitoris. Hormone treatment with testosterone followed. The subsequent removal of her uterus and ovaries were sold to her as tumor removal. Only thirty years after the operation does she learn from the files that she was deprived of her femininity at that time. In 2008, she sues her former surgeon - the court case attracts attention.

Inge's parents are fortunate that they have not been pressured by doctors to have "gender reassignment" surgery. They want to delay the decision as long as possible:
"We are raising our little Inge as a girl, but it may well be that she will become more of a young man during puberty, when her male gonads start working. We try to raise her as normally as possible. I do have some reservations about pink dresses. I always think, maybe she wants to live as a man later and then pictures in such an outfit are certainly embarrassing for her."
The documentary by filmmaker Britta Julia Dombrowe approaches the lives of those affected in intensive interviews and at the same time shows the current state of research: a French surgeon who operates on children for uniqueness explains his motivation to "save" the children from a cruel society. Inge's teacher tells us how the children deal with the fact that Inge is a boy and a girl. New findings from brain research make it clear: gender is created in the brain and not between the legs.
We know little about the lives of intersexuals, but also about how they are treated in science and medicine. That there is much more than man and woman, that is what this film is about.

A film by Valentin Thurn
As part of the Arte theme evening "Crime Scene Hospital".

First broadcast: 20.04.2010, 21:15, ARTE
Link to ARD report

Many movie fans celebrated Gérard Depardieu's son Guillaume as the greatest up-and-coming talent in French cinema. But things turned out differently. In 1995, the 24-year-old had to undergo knee surgery after a motorcycle accident. During the operation, the hospital germ MRSA penetrated the wound. There was no definitive cure, neither through 17 operations nor by means of antibiotics. Finally, in 2003, Guillaume Depardieu made a tough decision. To put an end to his unbearable pain, he had his right leg amputated.
In the fight against the killer germs, the actor founded the "Guillaume Depardieu Foundation" and drew attention to untenable conditions in French hospitals on talk shows. He threatened the health minister with a "crusade" if the government did not take action against the conditions in the hospitals. He soon found that the mass of inquiries overwhelmed him. He handed over his life's work to the patient protection association "Lien" and concentrated on his career. While he was filming in Romania, he fell ill with pneumonia. Suddenly, everything happened very quickly. On October 13, 2008, Guillaume Depardieu died at the age of 37.
What is his legacy? His angry appearances on television raised public awareness of the danger of antibiotic-resistant germs in France and created political pressure. The Ministry of Health, previously reluctant to publish figures on the problem, changed course in 2003. Since then, the diseases have been recorded and published nationwide. And patients can find out how active their hospital is in the fight against the killer germs.

Today, the reform is having an impact: France is the only European country to have reduced the number of infected patients over the past five years, while elsewhere the killer germs continue to spread in hospitals.

In his documentary, filmmaker Valentin Thurn lets Guillaume Depardieu's ex-wife Elise have her say. In addition, friends and colleagues express their views. The actor himself is present in numerous archive shots from documentaries and feature films.

A film by Valentin Thurn
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 13.09.2009, 16:25, WDR
Link to the Whistleblower Network

"My loyalty to the constitution takes precedence over my loyalty to my boss," Rudolf Schmenger decides on August 30, 2001.
Until then, he is an efficient tax investigator, repeatedly commended by his employer, the Frankfurt tax office. On his behalf, he also searches a major bank and tracks down tax evaders who are smuggling millions into accounts abroad. Without giving any reasons, his employer forbids him to pursue these "cases" further. A presumably politically motivated instruction from the Hessian Ministry of Finance, because the investigations in the banks have a negative impact on the state as a business location.
"It can't be that we hang the small tax evaders and let the big ones go," says Rudolf Schmenger. But in the end, the Ministry of Finance orders the dissolution of his department.
Rudolf Schmenger resists - until the office management finally finds a way to get rid of him via a commissioned expert opinion: A psychiatrist certifies Rudolf Schmenger a "querulatory development" and writes him "life-long unfit for service".
Against his will, he is sent into early retirement in his early 40s. In the meantime, the Hessian Medical Association accuses the psychiatrist of having prepared a favorable opinion in the interest of the state government. Rudolf Schmenger fights for his reputation and continues to rally civil servants around him who, like him, want to follow their conscience.
tag7 rolls up the case of "Schmenger" in an exemplary report and asks what enables this man to put his ethical principles above his personal career despite fierce opposition.

A film by Valentin Thurn

First broadcast: 01.07.2009, 23:30, ARD

Link to the website of Harry Wörz
Link to the song of Nadeem

It is the nightmare par excellence, the day with which everything in life changes: The day when 'In the name of the people' a judge pronounces guilt. The convicted person knows he didn't do it - but no one believes him. Even the German criminal justice system, despite all the rules, all the instances, is not immune to errors. And, still worse: Who gets once into the mills of the justice, has hardly chances to come out again.
One of these rare cases is Harry Wörz (41) from Birkenfeld with Pforzheim. He allegedly strangled his ex-wife with a scarf in 1997. The victim has been a nursing case since then because of brain damage and can no longer testify. She was a police officer. Also under suspicion were her lover and her father, both also police officers. But for the police it is quickly clear that Harry Wörz is the culprit. He is not a police officer. The court followed the investigators' view and sentenced Harry Wörz to eleven years in prison in a circumstantial trial. In a later civil trial, however, which was about compensation for damages, the judges ruled that he could not be the perpetrator. They criticized that the criminal trial had 'not been objective in some points'. Wörz then tried to have the case reopened, which he actually succeeded in doing three years later. With success: acquittal by the Mannheim Regional Court. But a year later, in October 2006, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the acquittal. The follow-up trial began a few weeks ago and is scheduled to run throughout 2009.
90 percent of all miscarriages of justice are due to misidentification. That's because judges increasingly rely on expert witnesses. But they have been under heavy criticism for some time. A very serious error of such an expert has Donald Stellwag (50) for alleged bank robbery innocently behind bars. The expert had identified him 'beyond doubt' on a photo taken by the surveillance camera at the scene of the crime. Donald Stellwag tried to get a retrial - in vain. He served the full nine years, and was denied early release because he did not confess. Less than two weeks after he was released from prison, police caught the real culprit in a new bank robbery.

Unusual: In 2007, the expert was ordered by the Frankfurt/Main Higher Regional Court to pay 150,000 euros in damages for pain and suffering - the first case in which an expert has ever been held liable for an erroneous court opinion. The court-appointed counter-expert, Prof. Friedrich Wilhelm Rösing, criticized the fact that there are numerous incorrect verdicts due to the poor quality of surveillance cameras and the insufficient knowledge of many experts.
Rösing is now again the counter-expert in a current case: Andreas Kühn has been in the Heimsheim correctional facility near Stuttgart for almost nine years. He is said to be the so-called 'gorilla mask robber' who held up four banks in Stuttgart in the 1990s. Kühn maintains his innocence. The court based its conviction on several pieces of circumstantial evidence. The decisive factor was a photo from a surveillance camera. The expert witness at the trial - a retired police officer - said at the time that he could not rule out Kühn as the perpetrator. But Professor Wilhelm Rösing is convinced: Kühn cannot be the bank robber. The expert for facial recognition found 25 features on the pictures that do not match the convicted man - already with 3 features one could say that the picture does not show the person in question. Based on this expert opinion, Kühn is pursuing the reopening of his case. A laborious, agonizing process full of uncertainties and with an open outcome.

A film by Kadriye Acar and Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by NDR

First broadcast: 10.05.2009, 17:30, ARD
Link to ARD Theme Week

"If I had met Inge earlier, I would have become a more self-confident person. Many things would have been easier. I trust her more than other people because her help is voluntary and therefore comes from the heart," says 27-year-old Öznur Demir. She had been looking for help to complete her secondary school diploma - and found 69-year-old retiree Inge Alexy, at the "Senioren-Lotsen" project. The volunteer mentor helps the young Turkish woman learn German and find an apprenticeship.
There are currently thirty such senior pilots in Lübeck, and more are joining them at every meeting. Not only the young foreigners benefit, but also the seniors who want to do something useful in their retirement. A model project that so far only exists in Lübeck.

The volunteer "pilots" cannot replace the professionals at the counseling centers. But they can also provide moral support to young people when they find themselves in a desperate situation, like the 17-year-old Kurd Faysal Idris, who fled to Germany when he was 14. "Without Mr. Pawlowski," he said, "I wouldn't even have a roof over my head. I can't express it in words, but it's the most important person for me in Lübeck." Former teacher Jürgen Pawlowski came to Lübeck himself as a refugee after World War 2. He knows the feeling of being a stranger in a country. That's why he wants to help Faysal feel at home in Lübeck.

A film by Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette

First broadcast: 19.12.2008, 22:35, ARTE

2009 ARGUS Foundation Journalism Award for Antibiotic Preservation and Development
36th International Festival of Sustainable Development Films, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2009
International Science Film Festival, Athens, Greece, 2009

The global spread of new super-bacteria in hospitals is causing concern among doctors. The most widespread and dangerous of the hospital germs is called MRSA (multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). In Germany alone, 15,000 patients become infected every year, in France almost twice as many. MRSA is resistant to common antibiotics. And the germ is becoming more and more aggressive: the number of drugs that can still be used is decreasing from year to year. MRSA can lead to severe wound infections, pneumonia, sepsis and not infrequently death. Across Europe, around 50,000 people die every year from the killer germ.
Super germs like MRSA have been around for over 40 years, but in countries like Germany or France the problem was underestimated for a long time. As a result, the germ spread to such an extent that hospitals can hardly control it today. Even the strictest hygiene precautions cannot reduce the risk of infection during surgery to zero.
Since the discovery of penicillin, doctors have relied on antibiotics to effectively fight bacterial infections. But as soon as a new drug was invented, there were resistant strains of bacteria just a few years later. They have spread mainly in countries where antibiotics are used particularly liberally. In contrast, where they are more targeted and sparingly given, there are also fewer super germs.
The filmmakers Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette pursue the question: What is being done in European hospitals to combat the spread of hospital germs? How have the Dutch managed to reduce the number of MRSA cases to almost zero? How do new germs spread against which no antibiotic can help anymore? What hope is there through research into vaccines? And: How do patients cope who were infected with a super germ in the hospital and will probably never get rid of it again?

A film by Britta Dombrowe and Valentin Thurn
A co-production with SCHNITTSTELLE KÖLN
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 18.05.2008, WDR

"The bread here is 1 A!", says Hanna and she is absolutely right. It looks appetizing and is neatly wrapped in plastic foil. Nothing seems to distinguish it from the others on the supermarket shelf, except that the 21-year-old has just fished it out of the trash. Hanna has not been buying her food in supermarkets for a long time now, but gets it from the dumpsters behind them.
"Containerizing" is what it's called in the scene of self-proclaimed leftover recyclers who refuse to follow the consumer cycle of the throwaway society. Not out of necessity, but out of conviction.
There are no concrete figures on how much food is thrown away in Germany. At the Cologne wholesale market alone, up to ten tons accumulate on a normal market day. The reasons for this vary: sometimes the imprint on the label has slipped, sometimes the refrigeration during transport was not up to standard. Often, however, it is simply cheaper for wholesalers and retailers to throw away food and buy new than to rent storage space. "Then the whole stuff wanders into the garbage box by box," knows remnant recycler Jens from Cologne, who has meanwhile said goodbye to his former bourgeois life completely via "containerizing": "I don't have to bend for anyone, but this freedom can be quite hard."
We accompany remnant recyclers on their forays into "free land". What freedoms does their self-chosen life bring them and where do they encounter health, social and political limits?

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 07.05.2008, 22:30 clock, Menschen hautnah, WDR
Link to the directory of German sperm banks

When Anna (28) learns from her mother that she was conceived with a sperm donation, she is initially paralyzed. For weeks she looks at the family photo albums, compares her face in the mirror with that of her father and sisters.
Anna's parents had separated eight years ago: to the social father Anna had since then only little contact. Her two younger sisters were born naturally, although a doctor had initially told the father that he was incapable of procreation. The parents had therefore sought the help of a sperm bank in Boston, USA, at the time.

Anna goes to Boston to look for her genetic father, or rather to find the "donor", because she avoids the word "father" in this context: "I already have a father!" The search is difficult because her mother Pauline had destroyed all the records at the time; after all, no one was supposed to know about the sperm donation. Realizing how important the "donor search" is to her daughter, and when Anna finds a possible donor through an Internet forum, her mother decides to go to Boston as well. They visit Randy, who had donated at the time Pauline was receiving treatment. After a very emotional conversation in his apartment, they take a saliva sample on a cotton swab . They have this examined at home in Munich in a gene laboratory. Anna learns the test result from the lab director in her search for her own identity....

A film by Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 27.11.2007, 21:40, ARTE

The invention of vaccines is one of the great success stories of medicine. Epidemics such as smallpox and polio, which terrified people for a long time, were defeated thanks to vaccinations. But the victories that have been won in the history of medicine have rarely been without undesirable side effects or even losses. Even though vaccines are many times safer today than they were 20 years ago, the possibility of vaccine damage still exists. The dangers from infectious diseases that can be prevented by vaccination are considered by experts to be much higher. The fatal consequences of measles are one example. And yet they are there: consequential damages that lead to disability or even death.
The filmmakers Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette trace the bright and dark sides of vaccinations. A journey into the history of immunization paves the way to the fates of those affected, then and now, and to current, controversial debates about vaccination.

Families from Germany and France tell of both sides of the success coin: what can happen if vaccinations are not given, and how even one vaccination can dramatically change lives. Six-year-old Micha is doomed to die because he contracted measles at the age of 5 months in a pediatrician's office. It took years for the disease to break out: SSPE, a chronic brain inflammation and consequence of the measles, which certainly leads to death. Little Joel is also affected. During Germany's largest measles epidemic, which broke out in Duisburg in 2006, he also fell ill. He died while the shooting was still in progress. Madame Zanakolona from Paris, on the other hand, had to fight for years to have the brain damage that her now 15-year-old son suffered after a whooping cough vaccination recognized by the courts. The vaccine has long been off the market, but new vaccines with potential risks are pushing ahead. The Schomaker family, at any rate, is convinced that the six-dose vaccine, introduced 6 years ago, was to blame for their son's death.
Coroner Prof. Randolph Penning has performed autopsies on several children in recent years after six-dose vaccinations. Results: abnormal and worrisome brain swelling. The former employee of the Paul Ehrlich Institute and insider Dr. Klaus Hartmann is also extremely critical of the new combination vaccines. Are they to blame for the death of the children? No one has been able to prove it yet, but the controversy is on. How openly must possible consequential damage be reported without stirring up fear among parents and thus producing low vaccination rates and the return of epidemics?
Most infectious diseases have lost their threat, not least because of the success of vaccinations. Vaccinations therefore no longer seem so important to many. Some vaccines, however, would be welcomed by many people around the world. Like, for example, the new vaccine against tuberculosis being developed at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. Millions of people worldwide are affected by TB, and resistant pathogens are spreading more and more. Vaccination could provide a remedy, scientists hope. Because TB is still on the rise.

A film by Valentin Thurn and Britta Dombrowe
First broadcast: 02.09.2007, 16:25, WDR

For hours in November 2006, inmates tortured a 20-year-old fellow inmate in the youth prison Siegburg and finally killed him. The prison staff did not notice the hours-long ordeal. The crime threw a spotlight on the conditions in German youth prisons: Cells are overcrowded, there is an acute shortage of staff, prisoners are locked away for up to 23 hours a day and left to fend for themselves.
19-year-old Ufuk, who is serving time in Siegburg, the "toughest youth prison," as he puts it, also knows this. Ufuk knows what he's talking about; at 14, he already had 140 crimes to his credit, is a regular in German prisons and knows the rules behind the walls. "When you arrive in jail, the first thing they do is check you out. Either they have respect or you have to get respect. That's where the law of the fist alone applies." Yet the penal code states: "In the execution of the prison sentence, the prisoner should become capable of leading a life without crime in the future with social responsibility."
The film shows the causes of growing brutality behind bars and presents new ways in juvenile penal system.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 06.02.2007, 20:40, theme night, ARTE

1001 Documentary Film Festival, Istanbul, 2008
Gold Panda Awards, International Sichuan TV Festival, China, 2007
E. Desmond Lee Africa World Festival, St. Louis, USA and Lagos, Nigeria, 2007
Film Festival Eberswalde - Die Provinziale, Germany, 2007: award for "best documentary"

Immigration brought female circumcision from Africa to Europe. But more and more black women decide, "Not with my daughter!" Three women from England, Germany and France tell of the day they were circumcised, of problems with urination and the pain of menstruation, the fear of sexual intercourse and childbirth. But there is hope: Dr. Pierre Foldes from Paris developed a technique with which he can restore the clitoris.
"Not with my daughter!" appears as a bonus track on the DVD of the feature film "Desert Flower" with Waris Dirie.

A film by Mauricio Estrella and Antonio Uscátegui
Co-writer: Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR.

First broadcast: 19.11.2006, ARD

Abelardo lives illegally in Germany. He has no residence papers, is constantly on guard against the police. Abelardo does not want to return to Ecuador to the slums of the port city of Guayaquil. His mother still lives there; she is sick but does not have health insurance. Abelardo sends her money for medicine.
For six years he has been struggling to make ends meet in Germany. A life in the shadows, determined by the search for cheap jobs where no papers are required. Then he meets Ines, a German, at a dance, quite normal. They fall in love. But does Ines trust him, or does she feel used? As a means to an end, to get a residence permit through her?
Over a million foreigners live illegally in Germany, like Abelardo. For more than a year, Mauricio Estrella and Antonio Uscátegui observed two families for whom the daily game of hide-and-seek has become the norm for fear of deportation. As so-called "economic refugees", they bravely and also astonishingly normally master a life in which there is everything but security.

A film by Valentin Thurn, co-written by Stephan Müller
Commissioned by NDR in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 29.08.2006, 20:40, ARTE

Nominated for the German Television Award for "Best Reportage"
International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig), 2006
Basel_Karlsruhe Forum (BaKaFORUM), Basel, Switzerland, 2007
Gold Panda Awards, Sichuan TV Festival, China, 2007

Zacarias Moussaoui is the only assassin to stand trial for the attacks on September 11. September 2001 to stand trial - it was a symbolic trial for the United States. In May 2006, he was sentenced to life in prison. For the rest of his life, he is to have no outside contacts.
Is he the so-called 20th assassin to pilot a plane into the White House? Or just a mentally ill would-be conspirator? What is certain is that he was arrested four weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon while trying to learn how to fly a Boeing 747. And it is also certain that the FBI could have prevented the September 11 attacks had Moussaoui's notebook and laptop been searched in time.

How does a young Moroccan-born Frenchman end up joining al-Qaeda and training to become a suicide bomber in camps in Afghanistan? In his youth, he was not religious, he loved parties and his girlfriend, and sometimes he drank alcohol - until the day he was converted to jihad by radical Muslim preachers in London.
His mother Aïcha El-Wafi fought against the death penalty for her son during the trial. On the sidelines of the trials, she met Phyllis Rodriguez in the U.S., the mother of Greg, who was killed in the flames of the World Trade Center. In his documentary, filmmaker Valentin Thurn shows the development of this extraordinary friendship and gently traces the history of the dysfunctional Moussaoui family. Intense interviews with friends and family members, including the two Moussaouis sisters, are complemented by exclusive footage, some of which has never been shown before - including a private video of the teenage Zacarias.

On the fifth anniversary of the New York attacks, the film takes a new and unfamiliar look at a young Frenchman from Morocco whose difficult family background and influence from Islamist circles turned him into a death pilot who ultimately did not make it to the field. But it also sheds an illuminating light on Moussaoui's behavior during the trial, his guilty plea, which he has since recanted, as well as the role of justice in the U.S. and the desire of many Americans to convict the only assassin who confessed in court.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF

First broadcast: 16.05.2006, 22:15, in the series "37°", ZDF

Surrogacy is forbidden - that's what the law says. But in the anonymity of the Internet, the black market is flourishing. There Hildegard and Anton come across Sarah. The conception of their child takes place in a toilet, with the help of an enema syringe. Hildegard and Anton tell no one, not even their parents. Quite secretly, the child is to be born.

Sarah, who receives a considerable amount of money for her surrogacy, also hides her pregnancy from her parents. She knows that her parents would never agree to it. Sarah tells them about the terms of the contract she negotiated with Anton and tries to suppress any emotional connection to the baby in her womb. It's not easy, after all, she is the baby's genetic mother. Finally the time has come, the delivery is imminent.
But when the longed-for phone call "The baby is here" arrives at Hildegard and Anton, a handover of the child does not take place. Hilde and Anton have obviously fallen victim to an impostor. It is never clarified whether Sarah wanted to keep her baby herself or sold it to another couple: the surrogate mother remains untraceable. Hildegard and Anton do not want to take such a risk of fraud again. They decide to look for a surrogate mother in Ukraine and find one in Kiev. In Ukraine surrogacy is allowed and there is a real surrogacy tourism. Ole and Ingrid also traveled to Kiev months ago to find a surrogate mother for their baby. The couple is convinced that they are doing nothing wrong.

In most surrogate motherhoods, the egg comes from a foreign woman, only the man is also the genetic father of the child through his sperm donation. With Ingrid and Ole it is different. The child is genetically entirely theirs, the surrogate mother has only carried it to term. At the notary's office, she assigns all rights to the baby to Ole and Ingrid. Overjoyed, Ole and Ingrid travel back to Germany with their child, who is still officially identified as their biological child on the spot.
Diana and Steffen find their surrogate mother in South Africa. There, too, surrogacy is legal, and the insemination is carried out in a clinic. Diana and Steffen are open about their planned surrogacy and have already told family, neighbors and work colleagues. They are convinced that the German youth welfare offices cannot do anything about it if they adopt the baby according to South African law.
"37º" tells about the three couples and asks about the responsibility for a child born through surrogacy. The child's identity can be a lifelong problem due to the knowledge of its different mothers.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ARTE

First broadcast: 10.01.2006, 20:40, Theme night: "Poor children", ARTE

Poverty in the rich EU - for many children, this means multiple disadvantages. First of all, in education: they perform less well at school and drop out more often. Or in health: they are sick more often than children from better-off families, and in material opportunities: Often no vacation is possible. However - as was shown in Germany as well as in England and France - when parents have little, they scrape together all the money they can to at least buy presents for their children, prefer to tighten their belts, save on food or the car and want to avoid at all costs that their children experience poverty as a restriction.

Governments are helping to varying degrees: the situation is still worst in England, but in the last 5 years the government has managed to reduce what was once the highest rate of child poverty in all of Europe by a quarter. Billions are being pumped into early childhood education to provide equal opportunities from preschool age. The situation in Germany is quite different. Whereas social inequalities were relatively cushioned in the past, they are now constantly moving down to the British level. France is slightly better off, but here, too, persistently high unemployment ensures permanently high child poverty.

A big contrast, however, in Scandinavia, first and foremost in Denmark, where there is virtually no poverty among children and families. What are the Danes doing better? The film takes us on a tour of four European countries in search of answers to the question of where the fight against poverty can begin and which models are promising.

A film by Valentin Thurn and Kadriye Acar
Commissioned by NDR

First broadcast: 02.08.2005, 20:40, ARTE

Fatma Bläser was threatened with death by her own family because she refused to marry the man chosen for her, and then still fled to her German boyfriend. There, brothers and uncles besieged the house, for six weeks, seeking her life in order to purify the family honor. Fatma was able to hide, and for over 15 years had no contact with her family, only secretly with her mother. Today her father is an old man. Fatma wants to reconcile with him. He has become meek with age, and yet he does not regret what he and the other men in the family did back then. Fatma is unsure: How will the clan in Turkey that expelled her back then react? We accompanied her to her Kurdish home village, located 1500 kilometers from Istanbul on the former border with the Soviet Union, and observe Fatma's cautious approach to a world that was once her home and is now so foreign. Fatma recalls how, as an eight-year-old, she watched the stoning of a woman accused of being an adulteress. She searches for the grave, but is told that such "eyesores" are buried far away in the mountains.

Hatun Sürücü was also disowned by her family and sought contact again out of longing. But her story ends tragically: she was murdered by her three brothers. The reason: she had separated from the man her family chose for her and wanted to raise her son Can alone. The crime took place on the open street in Berlin: The older brothers stood lookout, the youngest brother took the pistol and shot. Families often seek out the youngest because they know they will be punished more leniently under juvenile criminal law. Their friends and co-workers can't believe it. But immigration has carried the cruel tradition into the heart of Europe. Hatun's family also comes from southeastern Turkey, where tradition requires brothers to watch over the integrity of their sisters until they marry. Misconduct must be atoned for because the family honor is tarnished and the family runs the risk of being outcast from the village community. This still plays a role even in today's Berlin, because the clans keep close contact, even with relatives who have remained in Turkey.

Honor killings occur not only among Turks and Kurds, but also among other peoples such as Albanians. The conflicts often announce themselves years in advance: Ulerika Gashi had come to Germany from Kosovo with her family when she was two years old. The father often beat the mother, and later the four daughters, especially Ulerika, when she began to wear makeup and fashionable clothes at 16. When the father learns that Ulerika has a boyfriend, he strangles her with duct tape in the basement of his own house and throws the body into a quarry pond.
Many justify the honor killings with Islam. But in reality there is not a word about it in the Koran. However, few imams openly oppose this pre-Islamic tradition. But there are forces that help with honor conflicts: For example, a Kurdish member of the state parliament in Berlin, a Turkish cultural association in Paris and the Rosa e.V. association in Stuttgart, which maintains several girls' shared flats where young women who have been sentenced to death by the family council hide out. There, and in one of the strictly guarded women's shelters in Istanbul, it becomes clear that beatings alone are not enough to drive a Turkish woman into a women's shelter; the feeling of shame is too great, even among the women themselves, most of whom flee only after the first murder attempt in order to save their lives and those of their children.

For their documentary, shot in Germany, France and Turkey, filmmaker Kadriye Acar, who grew up in Germany as the daughter of Turkish parents, and her colleague Valentin Thurn spoke with Turkish, Kurdish and Kosovar women who hide out in anonymous high-rise apartments and closely guarded women's shelters to save their lives and those of their children. The film also depicts the stories of two women who, despite rejection and death threats, sought contact with their families again after years - out of an insatiable longing for life in the extended family. One, Fatma Bläser, who came to Germany as a child, was able to reconcile with her relatives in her native Kurdish village. The other, Hatun Sürücü, paid for her attempted rapprochement with the family with her life - she was murdered by her brothers on the open street in Berlin. The film also visits one of only two women's shelters in Istanbul and makes clear how similar the fates of the persecuted women are - whether in Berlin or in Istanbul.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 26.04.2005, 21:45, ARTE

Hans S. could no longer sleep without pills. He was an executive, but no one noticed his addiction, for over 17 years, until the breakdown came: first he lost his job, then his driver's license, then his children, finally he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for withdrawal. His doctor, who regularly prescribed him Rohypnol tablets, should have known that the pills were addictive. After Hans S. had overcome his addiction, he sued his doctor before the Arbitration Court of the North German Medical Associations, and was proven right: for the first time in such a case, the patient was awarded compensation and a medical malpractice was condemned. It is also called the "silent addiction" because it is not noticeable, but nevertheless about as many people are addicted to sleeping pills and tranquilizers as to alcohol: In Germany there are over one million tablet addicts, in France even three million. Housewives have the worst sleep: As early as 1967, the Rolling Stones sang about "Mother's little helper" - benzodiazepine-type pills.

Until the 1980s, the pharmaceutical industry, against its better judgment, concealed its addictive dangers - just as it had previously downplayed the damage to embryos caused by the sleeping pill thalidomide, and also the toxicity of barbiturates. These early sleeping pills were often used for suicides and have been banned since the 1960s. Today, they are only used in Switzerland - for euthanasia, which is legal there. Modern sleeping pills are now lethal only in combination with other drugs, but junkies quickly found that the pills mixed with heroin gave a longer high. And criminals found that sleeping pills could be used as knockout drops and rape drugs. Abuse is difficult to prove in court because sleeping pills break down quickly in the body.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 01.02.2005, 20:45, ARTE

Every sixth couple in Germany waits in vain for offspring. In order to have a child after all, more and more women and men are turning to modern reproductive medicine. Twenty years ago, the first German test-tube baby was born, and since then hundreds of thousands of children have been conceived in the test tube, using methods such as in vitro fertilization that are legal in this country and financed by health insurance up to a certain number. But if these attempts fail and the desire to have their own child is too powerful, then increasingly infertile couples also use techniques prohibited in Germany, such as egg donation or preimplantation diagnostics, and for this reason travel to nearby European countries.

Susanne and Hans Bünger-Biel Susanne and Hans desperately want a child. And they have wanted it for years. Because Susanne can't get pregnant naturally, they tried artificial insemination . After the seventh attempt, Susanne finally got pregnant. Again she lost the child. But they do not want to give up. To increase their chances, they travel to Belgium: Here, at Brussels University Hospital, couples who want to have children are allowed to have the genetic material of the fertilized cells examined for possible genetic damage by PGD, a method that is banned in Germany. Ines and Christoph have already had more than ten attempts at artificial insemination. They, too, simply don't want to give up; their desire to have a child together is too overpowering. Ines is now 45 years old. Their last attempt for the time being takes them to a fertility clinic in Cape Town, South Africa, where they want to try egg donation. This is prohibited in Germany. For Michaela and Ralf, egg donation is also the last chance to have a child. Although they are still young, they have been trying unsuccessfully for years to have a child. Michaela, who has already had eight miscarriages, suffers from a rare hereditary disease. To finally get closer to their wish, they travel to the Czech Republic. Will the three couples finally be able to fulfill their most ardent wish?

Filmmaker Valentin Thurn follows the often hard paths of the three couples to their desired child with great sensitivity and consideration. He explains the latest state of research, sheds light on the different treatments of fertilization in the laboratory and asks about side effects. He interviews clinic operators in the Czech Republic or South Africa, for whom the rigid German law means a welcome increase in profits, because here the desperate couples are now being charged large sums of money. Valentin Thurn provides a well-founded look at the status quo of artificial insemination in Germany and does one thing above all: he gives an ear to the couples who want nothing more in the world than a child.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF

First broadcast: 16.11.2004, 20:45, ARTE

Why is the population shrinking more in some European countries than in others? Why do France and Sweden succeed in convincing young families to have children? Among German politicians, an active population policy was frowned upon until recent times; people felt too much reminded of the Nazis' cult of motherhood. The consequences are unmistakable: In eastern Germany, entire high-rise neighborhoods are being demolished because there is a shortage of people. In the Ruhr region, the proportion of foreigners is rising because they have a higher birth rate. And aging threatens to unhinge the social systems - in thirty years at the latest, every working person will have a pensioner to support. To escape the demographic downward pull, municipalities and companies are working on solutions.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 26.04.2004, "Die Story", WDR

It was the German tropical physician and epidemiologist Dr. Siegwart-Horst Günther who first pointed out the highly dangerous late effects of so-called uranium bullets in 1991. During the Gulf War, this ammunition was fired by the US Army by the ton.
The film accompanies Günther and his American colleagues during their investigations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq. Everywhere there, American troops had used the dangerous uranium munitions. The film shows so far little known long-term consequences under which especially the children in the war zones have to suffer. After the end of the recent war in Iraq, the experts discovered contaminated war sites in the vicinity of Basra, whose radioactive contamination exceeds the natural earth radiation by a factor of 20,000.

As early as 1991, after the Gulf War, Prof. Günther had noticed people in Baghdad University Hospital with symptoms of illness that he had never seen before in the 40 years of his work in this country. He also examined many malformed infants and children, most of whom did not survive long, and documented the cases. He diagnosed severe kidney and liver dysfunction, cancer, and genetic damage. After similar disease symptoms then appeared in American and British Gulf War veterans and their children, the connection was clear to Günther and many other scientists. They are calling for a comprehensive ban on this ammunition, which is part of the standard armament of U.S. troops.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF in cooperation with ARTE

First broadcast: 14.03.2004, ARTE

Ben and Meret Becker were practically born to act. Mother and father are actors, and even their stepfather Otto Sander. But it's hard to develop your own profile in the shadow of overgrown parents. Valentin Thurn observed Ben and Meret during filming and concerts and shows how the siblings reached the goal of an independent artist personality on different paths. Now there is even a third generation at the start: Ben's daughter Lilith and Meret's daughter Lulu were there and moved on the set like the grown-ups, just as Ben and Meret had once accompanied their parents during filming.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ZDF

First broadcast: 22.07.2003, in the series "37°", ZDF

Christian (14) was grossly neglected by his mother. His gay uncle kidnapped him in a night-and-fog action and saved him from the threatening children's home. He was nine at the time. Anything but enthusiastic, he spent the first weeks with his new "father" and his friend. His classmates teased him because everyone in the village knew that Christian was now living with the two "gays. In the small village in the Eifel there is no hiding, and Christian had to show his colors. This was increasingly easier for him
because his two new "parents" took care of him so touchingly that even the responsible youth welfare office was impressed by so much care and parental competence. Today, everyone in the village has almost gotten used to the somewhat different family model,
and Christian is happy to be with his uncle. Nevertheless, at the age of 14, it is clear to him that he is definitely more interested in girls than in boys.
With Patricia it was quite different, because her parents' marriage seemed happy when one day, Patricia was twelve at the time, her father told her that he wanted a divorce.

After 18 years of marriage, he had to realize that he could no longer dismiss his increasingly strong homosexual tendencies. He had fallen in love with a man. Patricia was stunned. That her father wanted to separate from her mother for such a reason was difficult for Patricia to cope with. Her glamorous image of her father collapsed from one day to the next. For almost a year, Patricia concealed the "shame" that her father had brought upon her. Her sister Carina spoke of Papa's new partner Bernd to her friends only as "Bernadette" to keep up appearances to the outside world. More than a year passed until one day she burst with rage when school friends made fun of gays.

Out of her need to explain why she was so involved, she took flight and talked about her father and his friend. Almost all of her friends stood by her. Patricia also gradually changed her attitude toward her father. The sisters moved in with their father and now live with him and his partner in Cologne.
Valentin Thurn tells how young people cope when fathers are suddenly very different from what they have assumed all along and from the usual role model. How does the relationship between father and child change - how does one change oneself?

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 10.07.2003, in the series "Weltweit", WDR

The focus is the cowboy Gerardo and his employer Cesar Chico. He owns a herd of fighting bulls that spend the winter on their farm in Andalusia, but move to the mountains of central Spain in the summer when the heat parches everything in southern Spain. To lead them, he hires a troop of cowboys every year. They are led by Gerardo. We follow the herd of bulls as they migrate 600 kilometers across Spain, experiencing the clash of the old and the new Spain: Gerardo and his cowboys encounter, for example, highways that cut through the traditional cattle migration routes, which they must laboriously avoid.

The Spaniards, however, are enthusiastic about the revival of the old tradition. They greet the cowboys like heroes when they roam their villages, because Spain's historical identity is closely tied to its large herds of cattle: The origin of cowboy culture is in Spain and was first brought to the Americas by Columbus and his successors. Bullfighting also originated in the cattle pasture, as a pastime for the cowboys. The Toros Bravos, as the Spanish call their fighting bulls, are bred to be as aggressive as possible. At the age of four, the bravest bulls are sold to the bullfighting arenas, for up to 5000 marks. The cattle breed still has the wandering instinct in its genes. Cowboy Gerardo doesn't have to show them where the trail leads. Already kilometers before the next watering hole, their pace quickens, the cattle know exactly where the water is.

A film by Valentin Thurn
On behalf of WDR
First broadcast: 31.01.2003, SWR / WDR / BR alpha

For more than 160 million years, the dinosaurs dominated life on earth. Then they disappeared from our planet in a period of a few hundred thousand years, and with them more than half of the animals living at that time. Why did they die out? And why so many species at once? Many scientists suspect that a huge meteorite impact triggered the mass extinction. Others believe rather in a series of devastating volcanic eruptions.
The end of the dinosaurs came suddenly, one believes the most well-known theory. 65 million years ago, a meteorite from outer space collided with Earth. When the ten-kilometer chunk hit the Earth's surface, its impact force was 10,000 times as powerful as the explosion of all nuclear weapons in existence today. It hurled soot and dust into the atmosphere. As a result, the sky darkened, the climate cooled, and the cold-blooded dinosaurs froze to death or their eggs could no longer develop in the cool climate.

Remains of the killer meteorite were found on the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula - but nothing can be seen of the 200-kilometer-wide crater today because it has been covered by younger layers of rock. That this meteorite changed the world climate seems to be proved by the metal iridium, very rare on earth but often contained in meteorites. Iridium was found in rock layers around the globe, exactly at the border between Cretaceous and Tertiary.
The rare metal could come however also from another source, because Iridium is ejected also by volcanoes. And from it the second theory proceeds to the extinction of the dinosaurs, which finds increasingly supporters in the science: Long-lasting volcanic eruptions spewed massive amounts of sulfur, carbon dioxide and dust into the atmosphere, causing global dimming and cooling. Location of the mega volcano: Central India. There one finds today the gigantic highland of Dekkan, whose volcanic rocks are exactly 65 million years old.
For the volcano thesis speaks that other known impacts of meteorites as for example in the Nördlinger Ries (Bavaria) no world-wide mass extinction released, but only short term and regionally limited devastations. Volcanoes, on the other hand, may have been a steady source of dust and gas for several 100,000 years. Finally, the dinosaurs did not die out suddenly, as would be expected from a meteorite impact, but over a long period of more than 500,000 years, about as long as the volcanoes in India were active. There are other examples of apocalyptic volcanic eruptions in Earth's history, for example at the end of the Permian, when the huge volcanic plateau in northern Siberia was formed. At that time, the trilobites, a crustacean family that previously virtually dominated the world's oceans, became extinct.
The reason that the killer meteor is so popular is probably because it is spectacular: In the course of the dino fashion, the catastrophe theory could be marketed simply better, for example in the dinosaur film of Walt Disney. That's where man's lust for the apocalypse wins out.

Why the climatic catastrophe at the end of the Cretaceous period survived other animal groups such as the mammals, but not a single dinosaur, the researchers ultimately do not yet know. Previously, they assumed that the dinosaurs froze to death because they were cold-blooded, meaning that their body temperature depended on the temperature of their environment. Accordingly, the mammals would have survived because they were warm-blooded. But today we know that this assumption is more than questionable. After all, other warm-blooded lizards also survived the Cretaceous period. And at today's cold pole of the earth in Siberia, the only vertebrate species living there is a salamander - truly not a warm-blooded animal. There is also evidence that some dinosaur species may have been warm-blooded.

This leads to the question: What would actually have happened if the dinosaurs had not died out 65 million years ago? Paleontologist Dr. Michael Maisch from the University of Tübingen suspects that in this case there would probably be no humans today. After all, "The dinosaurs were ahead of the game for over 100 million years and didn't let the mammals come up." The scientist's conclusion: If they had not become extinct, then perhaps intelligent dinos would dominate the world today, and not humans.

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by ARTE

First broadcast: 07.11.2002, ARTE

"Lucky housewife clears millions" - "Elementary school teacher stumbles over fourth-grade question. An embarrassment for the whole school" This is the stuff of the new tabloid headlines. Heroes and goofs are determined by the media in a fraction of a second these days: Bright spot or black out! - Winner or loser!

To be a contestant on a quiz show on television: Sybille, 28, and Jean-Pierre, 72, realized this dream.Sybille Longlez, 28, single, watches the quiz shows on TV with her mother, and they both guess.
Jean-Pierre is a "mordu," as the French would say, a "bitten" who spends almost every evening at a different quiz club, where the TV shows are reenacted - with his own questions. And why? "After being pushed into early retirement, I wanted to show the young whippersnappers that I'm not old news," says Jean-Pierre.
In Sybille's case, it was her mother, with whom she watches the quiz show "Questions Pour Un Champion" every day, who urged her to apply. Jean-Pierre has already applied seven times to no avail. Both manage to pass the rigorous test and prevail against more than 100 candidates from all over Belgium. But in the studio in Paris, the conditions are tougher: Jean-Pierre had hardly slept in the hotel the night before. And Sybille is at her wits' end. Fortunately, both have a support sitting in the audience.

The reportage will accompany the candidates, ask about motivations, record the preparations that are made in the family, in the circle of friends. We will be there when it goes into the studio, when the candidates are briefed once again, when the personal tension grows from hour to hour, until the moment when it is said "We are on the air!" - not entirely unobserved, of course...

A film by Valentin Thurn
Commissioned by WDR

First broadcast: 17.06.2002, WDR

The clocks found with the 150 charred bodies all show the same time: 9 a.m. 11 p.m. The fire must have spread so lightning-fast in the narrow tunnel that the passengers of the Kaprun Glacier Railway suffocated and burned to death in one fell swoop - including those who ran up to 142 meters on the emergency stairs.

How did the flash fire happen, in which only twelve passengers survived because they smashed through the windows with their ski poles? WDR author Valentin Thurn spoke with survivors who report two explosions. He visited the ill-fated train and found a round steel tank that the force of an explosion shattered. It contained hydraulic oil for the emergency brake. The Gletscherbahn itself did not expect a fire at all, as its technical director explained. Therefore, there were neither emergency hammers nor fire extinguishers in the passenger compartments, and neither emergency lighting nor ventilation in the tunnel. The Gletscherbahn blames the manufacturer of the cable car, who installed a faulty fan heater and a body made of plastic. The manufacturer in turn blames the TÜV, which did not check the fire protection. The latter, in turn, blames the Ministry of Transport, which forgot to issue the appropriate regulations. A system of sloppiness. In which good money is made: This winter was a record winter, more skiers than ever before vacationed in Austria. In Kaprun, too, the accident seems to have been forgotten, the hotels are fully booked, and skiers are now being transported to the glacier by the gondola lift that was hastily built after the accident.

At the trial of 16 people responsible in Salzburg, the relatives of the dead can expect only a few thousand euros in compensation for pain and suffering under Austrian law. New York star lawyer Ed Fagan convinced most of them to sue in America for this reason. The looming billion-dollar U.S. lawsuit could become a precedent for other major accidents in Europe.

A film by Valentin Thurn
On behalf of ARD

First broadcast: 20.06.2001, ARD

When Barbara realizes in her mid-20s that she loves women, she says goodbye for the time being to a lifelong dream - the desire to have a child. Only gradually the thought matures: it also works without a man. Together with her partner Irmgard, she goes to a Dutch clinic and buys donor sperm. The adventure of lesbian motherhood can begin.

Ursula Ott and Valentin Thurn accompanied the two future mothers for nine months. They went with them to the sperm bank to buy sperm - forbidden in Germany for unmarried women, but common practice in Holland. They were there when the two women transferred the individual sperm samples into special nitrogen-cooled containers in their living room for storage purposes, and were shown how to carry out artificial insemination at home. They accompanied the lesbian couple to the gynecologist and to the ultrasound, to the scene disco and to the lesbian volleyball tournament, to the lawyer and to the priest, and finally to the postpartum. Little Lili will not be able to meet her father until she is 16. To do so, she must contact the sperm bank - but the mothers only know about the Dutch sperm donor that he has white skin, dark hair and neither AIDS nor hepatitis.

Despite new laws, the two women and their baby still encounter considerable reservations in Germany: It is true that Irmgard can commit herself by contract to pay child support for the rest of her life. But she hardly gets any rights in return: neither can she adopt the child as a "stepmother," nor can she be sure that she will still be allowed to visit the child in the event of separation.
For a long time now, this has no longer been the marginal problem of a social fringe group. Today, around 1.5 million children in Germany are growing up with homosexual parents, estimates Lela Lähnemann, the Berlin Senate representative for same-sex lifestyles. Most come from the heterosexual "previous life" of the now lesbian mothers, but more and more are created through insemination. The Munich family researcher Professor Wassilios Fthenakis even considers this number to be understated, because in the USA 10 million children already live with homosexual parents. And they don't live any worse than in "traditional" families, according to Fthenakis, who also advises the German government: "We haven't found any differences in child development." Neither would these children later develop behavioral disorders - nor would the likelihood increase that they themselves would become gay or lesbian.

Neighbors and teachers have already gotten used to the colorful new families in many places. For example, in Monschau in the Eifel, where two gay men are lovingly raising their foster son Christian on a former farm, among geese, rabbits and ducks. They are supported by neighbors in the village - and by the youth welfare office. "The two of them have a sustainable relationship and offer the child a stable home, which he hasn't had for a long time," praises the family nurse from the Youth Welfare Office. She can even imagine placing a second foster child with the gay couple.
Or that extended family of two gay fathers and two lesbian mothers raising two daughters together. Most of the time, the children live with their moms; they often spend weekends and vacations with their dads - and find it wonderful. Mia (9): "I have two moms and two dads at home, the other kids only ever have one."

In good times, these new "rainbow families" are an exciting social experiment. In bad times, however, human dramas play out. Because homosexual love can also break up, and the non-birth parent is then completely without rights. Like the social worker Sigrid, who took care of her friend's jointly planned baby for four years and, after the breakup, has no chance of ever seeing little Janek again. "I love you to the moon and back," she greets him over children's television on his birthday. But the courts have ruled: no kinship relationship, no rights.
The laws lag hopelessly behind social reality. Just a few years ago, homosexuals could not imagine having children at all - "today they sit in the pub and get big ears when it comes to having children," says Ingo Wolf, a gay father in Berlin. There's even an agency there that matches lesbian women with gay men who want to have children.Queer&Kids owner Susan Darrant has already advised 750 interested parties. She uses a questionnaire to find out who suits whom: "Homo, bi or hetero? Joint or separate custody? Living together or not?" The first babies created in this way will be born this spring.

Politicians and church representatives are still relatively helpless in the face of these new families. Is homosexual parenthood "unnatural", as Norbert Geis (CSU) thinks ? Do children with two gay fathers lack the "maternal breast", as Hanna-Renate Laurien of the Central Committee of German Catholics fears ? Or must children from homosexual relationships at least have the same rights as children of single parents, as Volker Beck (Greens) demands ? In any case, the law on "homosexual marriage", which Beck initiated, does not regulate the question of children at all. That two homosexuals go to the registry office was just about doable with the SPD, but that they now also want children went too far.