As every year, the 21st edition of the 11mm Festival will present a diverse program of feature films, documentaries and short films that understand football as a mirror of cultural, social and political realities – and make its power visible far beyond the playing field.
by Camiel Schouwenaar | NL, D | 91 min | 2022 | DFmeU | live-action film | with Maik Cillekens, Anouar Kasmi, Kailani Busker and others.
Connected by their passion for football, Dylan and Youssef rediscover the power of friendship to overcome a life-changing event.
Sunday 27.04.2025
12:15 pm
Cinema 10
by Soleen Yusef | DE | 119 min | 2024 | OmeU | Feature film | with Andreas Döhler, Dileyla Agirman and others.
Mona fled Syria with her Kurdish family and went to a school in Berlin. Mona doesn’t speak German, but she does play soccer. Her teacher recognizes her talent and accepts her into the girls’ team. Mona soon realizes that only if she and the other girls play together can they win.
Monday 28.04.2025
10:30 a.m.
Cinema room 10
by Soleen Yusef | DE | 119 min | 2024 | OmeU | Feature film | with Andreas Döhler, Dileyla Agirman and others.
Mona fled Syria with her Kurdish family and went to a school in Berlin. Mona doesn’t speak German, but she does play soccer. Her teacher recognizes her talent and accepts her into the girls’ team. Mona soon realizes that only if she and the other girls play together can they win.
Monday 28.04.2025
10:00 a.m.
Cinema 7
by Soleen Yusef | DE | 119 min | 2024 | OmeU | Feature film | with Andreas Döhler, Dileyla Agirman and others.
Mona fled Syria with her Kurdish family and went to a school in Berlin. Mona doesn’t speak German, but she does play soccer. Her teacher recognizes her talent and accepts her into the girls’ team. Mona soon realizes that only if she and the other girls play together can they win.
Sunday 27.04.2025
12:00
Cinema 7
by Torsten Körner | DE | 89 min | 2024 | OmeU | documentary | world premiere | with Anne Trabant, Doreen Meier, Hannelore Ratzeburg, Heidi Vater, Bärbel Wohlleben and others.
The film tells the story of the struggle for a national women’s football team in the FRG and GDR. It portrays the forgotten achievements of the pioneering German women footballers and their fight for a place “on the pitch.” A struggle full of incredible, almost absurd twists and stories that reveal a great deal about male hero stereotypes and clichéd images of women in both East and West Germany.
Monday 28.04.2025
17:15
Cinema 9
by Alex Gale | UK | 58 min | 2022 | OmeU | Documentary | German Premiere | with Shadab Iftikhar and others.
In the heart of the Scottish Highlands, Shadab Iftikhar has become Britain’s only Asian football manager. Desperate for a break, he’s taken on one of the hardest jobs in the country. Can he save Fort William FC, ‘the worst team in the UK’, from relegation?
Monday 28.04.2025
17:30
Cinema 7
by Louis Myles, Ahmed Twaij | UK | 34 in | 2023 | OmeU | documentary | German premiere | with Allan Cockram and others.
Meet Special K, Peanut, Charlie, and the rest of Brentford Penguins, a soccer team with a difference: all the young players have Downs Syndrome. Mighty Penguins follows the team as they prepare to be guard of honour at a premier league match.
Monday 28.04.2025
17:30
Cinema 7
by Georg Nonnenmacher | DE | 99 min | 2023 | OmeU | Documentary | with Gerd Dahlheimer and others.
DIAMANTE-FUSSBALLGOTT tells the incredible story of footballer Rudi Varda. Varda was considered an exceptional talent in the mid-1970s, but never got beyond the status of a second division player and disappeared from the scene in 1982 after numerous escapades. Now Varda’s brother Ferdi, groundsman in Rübenach near Koblenz, has received information that Rudi lives on the other side of the world, in Brazil.
Sunday 27.04.2025
21:15
Cinema 9
by Adar Shafran| IL | 104 min | 2023 | OmeU | live-action film | with Chansela Mongoza and others.
Aumari, a young Eritrean refugee in Israel, faces deportation. After a failed escape at the airport, he is mistakenly identified as a Nigerian striker expected to arrive at the same time. Aumari seizes the opportunity and becomes the new star signing of Maccabi Netanya – lacking football talent but uniting the struggling team, while a tender romance blossoms.
Sunday 27.04.2025
18:45
Cinema 9
by Vinícius Menezes | BR | 15 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | German premiere
In 2022, Brazilians experienced two emotional events: the polarized presidential elections and the FIFA World Cup. The documentary images shed light on the tensions and conflicts between fans and voters during these emotional months.
Sunday 27.04.2025
16:30
Cinema 9
by Adriana Yañez | BR | 78 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | German Premiere | with Elane Rego, Leda Abreu, Maria Lima (aka Fia), Marilza Silva (aka Pelé), Marisa Nogueira and others.
This gripping documentary shows the lives of a group of women in their 60s who share a common past: They formed the skeleton of Brazil’s first women’s soccer team.
Thursday 25.04.2025
17:45
Cinema room 10
by George Georgakopoulos | GR | 18 min | 2023 | OmeU | Live-Actio-Film | with Fabricio Muco and others.
Sally, an immigrant youngster, dreams of leaving his small town to play football for Juventus. But to realize his dream, he must overcome the challenges in his life that threaten to hold him back.
Sunday 27.04.2025
14:00
Cinema 9
by Tobit Kochanek | DE | 72 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | with Philipp Lehfeldt, Bardo Böhlefeld, Folker Albrecht and others.
Mannschaft is a documentary and scenic portrait of players from a Kreuzberg soccer team and their images of masculinity. Kick-off to: pack formation and lovesickness, 3rd half and midlife crisis, brash attacking play and shy attempts at flirting.
Sunday 27.04.2025
14:00
Cinema 9
by Iulian Manuel Ghervas, Adina Popescu | RO, SK | 74 min | 2022 | OmeU | Documentary | Berlin Premiere | with Nelu Tîrnovan a.o.
His team loses game after game. But a soccer coach from a village in Transylvania never gives up. After every defeat, he starts all over again, because his job gives him a sense of vitality. A documentary about perseverance, life in the Romanian countryside and the magic of slowness.
Sunday 27.04.2025
20:45
Cinema 7
by Paolo Geremei, Simone Paragnani | IT | 91 min | 2024 | Italian | UT – English | Documentary | German premiere | with Marcello Lippi, Francesco Totti, Zinedine Zidane and others.
The life of one of the most valuable football coach of all Times, italian Marcello Lippi. How a discrete player of a second rate team turns in a serial winner coach of winning 5 league titles, a Champions Cup, an Asian Champions League and the World Cup in 2006. A charismatic family man, all in one piece.
Sunday 27.04.2025
18:30
Cinema room 7
by Raul de la Fuente| ES | 84 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | German Premiere | with Iñaki Williams, Nico Williams and others.
Many migrants live in search of a mirror in which to recognize themselves; they are not from here, but they are not from there either. “The Williams” is a family and sports film narrated in the first person by Iñaki and Nico Williams. Two brothers, footballers, Basque of Ghanaian descent, tell their story through 2 crucial years of their lives.
Sunday 27.04.2025
16:30
Cinema 7
by Andre Hörmann | DE | 88 min | 2025 | OmeU | Documentary | with Thomas Müller a.o.
Title collector, popular figure, advertising icon and the face of German soccer – that’s how we know Thomas Müller. But who is the person behind the superstar? We accompany Thomas Müller over the course of a season until his departure from the national team and experience him with his loved ones: honest, authentic and quick-witted – one like no other!
Sunday 27.04.2025
14:30
Cinema 7
by John Warrington | UK | 84 min | 2023 | OmeU | Documentary | with Tony Woodcock, Viv Anderson, Garry Birtles and others.
The story of how three young working-class lads from Nottingham, Viv Anderson, Garry Birtles and Tony Woodcock, went on the become unlikely heroes and readh the pinnacle of professional football.
Sunday 27.04.2025
19:00
Cinema 10
by Jesper Petzke| DE | 88 min | 2023 | OmeU | Documentary | with Ewald Lienen, Rosa Lienen, Sara Lienen, Joscha Lienen, Rainer Bonhof, Bella B. Felsenheimer, Oke Göttlich, Per Mertesacker and others.
This sensitive documentary looks back on the life of Ewald Lienen, who even as a player was different from most professionals of his time. It paints a portrait of a man who always wanted more than professional soccer could give him: as a coach, Lienen faced the biggest challenge of his career in the 2012/13 season in Greece during the debt crisis.
Sunday 27.04.2025
16:30
Cinema 10
by Sharmin Mojtahedzadeh, Paliz Khoshdel | IR | 70 min | 2022 | OmeU | Documentary | Berlin Premiere | with Zahra Khoshnavaz and others.
Zahra, a fervent Iranian football fan, defies the ban on ladies attending matches by way of disguising herself. As her audacious act profits viral momentum, Zahra emerges as a symbol of resistance in opposition to gender inequality in Iran. This cinematic journey captures her braveness, sparking a nationwide movement for women’s rights inside the realm of sports.
Sunday 27.04.202514:15
Cinema 10
by Geertjan Lassche | NL | 128 min | 2022 | OmeU | Documentary | with Louis van Gaal and others.
Unique portrait about the development of the phenomenon Louis van Gaal, his unprecedented career and the extraordinary man behind the much-discussed image. Followed for three years, the current national coach looks back on his colourful life together with national and international football stars, his wife and daughters.
Saturday 26.04.2025
20:45
Cinema 9
by Brigitte Weich | AT | 99 min | 2023 | OmU | Documentary | German Premiere | with Ri Jong Hi, Ra Mi Ae, Jin Pyol Hi, Ri Hyang Ok and others.
About five years after her film, Hana, dul, sed … (2009), filmmaker Brigitte Weich returns to North Korea to ask four women on the national football team how their lives have evolved. In a friendly and congenial cooperation between the filmmaker and her protagonists, a work arises that not only tells about the concrete life of a professional athlete in North Korea.
Saturday 26.04.2025
18:00
Cinema 7
by Camiel Schouwenaar | NL, D | 91 min | 2022 | DFmeU | live-action film | with Maik Cillekens, Anouar Kasmi, Kailani Busker and others.
Connected by their passion for football, Dylan and Youssef rediscover the power of friendship to overcome a life-changing event.
Saturday 26.04.2025
3:45 pm
Cinema 9
by Cecilia Lang | BR | 71 min | 2023 | OmeU | Documentary | German Premiere | with Evandro Mesquita, Cynthia Howlett, Karina Vela, Marcelo Adnet and others.
“Bola pro alto” is an aesthetic documentary about “altinha,” the sport inspired by soccer warm-ups that originated on Rio’s beaches. Today, it is practiced by thousands along the city’s sandy coastline. Due to the integrative power of this highly emotional sport, it is spreading rapidly and has become a trend in many Brazilian cities and abroad. The film shows how the movement originated and how it strengthens the coexistence of many people.
Saturday 26.04.2025
14:00
Cinema 9
by Hans van der Meer | NL | 25 min | 2020 | no dialogs | documentary | with Hans van der Meer a.o.
The video is part of European Fields project, in which Hans van der Meer shows the primal form of the game: twenty-two players on a pitch, no matter their talent, no matter where. His observations with mild irony of life at the bottom of the football pyramid show not only how football is part of the landscape, but but also how deeply the game and its rituals are rooted in human culture.
Saturday 26.04.2025
17:45
Cinema 7
by Steve Wharton, Ed Cooper | UK | 51 min | 2024 | OmeU | documentary | with Stuart Clarke and others.
German World Cup Summer Recalled with Homes of Football photographer Stuart Roy Clarke. A 50-minute documentary about the 2006 World Cup, its fans and the how the event redefined Germany’s national identity. A pre-Brexit, pre-Covid world with not a smartphone in sight. A lot has changed between Germany hosting huge football tournaments.
Saturday 26.04.2025
17:45
Cinema 7
by Andrea Zambelli | IT | 92 min | 2023 | Italian | UT – German | Documentary | with Claudio Galimberti and others.
Atalanta Bergamo, Curva Nord, and Claudio “Bocia” Galimberti – a trio that inevitably merged and had a profound influence on Italian and European ultra culture. A film that tells the story behind it.
Saturday 26.04.2025
20:15
Cinema room 7
by Joris Postema | NL | 88 min | 2021 | OmeU | Documentary | German premiere | with Andries Jonker, Pieter de Waard and others.
The flamboyant, ambitious football club Telstar from IJmuiden, an absolute underdog in Dutch professional football, tries to stay afloat in the world of professional football both sportingly and financially. The club derives its right to social existence from an exceptional group of people, whose inventiveness, humour, dreams and responsibility make the difference.
Saturday 26.04.2025
15:30
Cinema 7
by Ole Zeisler, Ben Wozny, Willem Konrad | DE | 112 min | 2025 | OmU | Documentary | with Ole Zeisler, Ben Wozny, Willem Konrad a.o.
More than just a game. Derbies represent football and culture, rivalry and bloody hatred. Following in the footsteps of the Old Firm in Glasgow, the Superclásico in Buenos Aires, and the City Derby in Hamburg. What makes these matches special? What significance do tradition, religion, or politics have?
Saturday 26.04.2025
20:15
Cinema 7
by Dan Gordon, Zakaria Rahmani, Arne Birkenstock | DE | 88 min | 2023 | OmeU | documentary | with Gerd Weber, Falko Götz, Ralf Minge, René Müller, Dirk Schlegel and others.
STASI FC traces a decade of East German football and tells a story of betrayal, murder, escape, and manipulation, demonstrating that football is about more than just men chasing a ball. A Cold War thriller on and around the football pitch.
Saturday 26.04.2025
16:45
Cinema 10
by Ben Unger | DE | 30 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | with Benjamin Unger and others.
Stefan “Paule” Beinlich. A guy: one of us. An icon at FC Hansa Rostock. A beloved star at Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Hertha BSC Berlin, and HSV. He was one of the defining Bundesliga players of the 1990s and 2000s. A career with ups and downs. With two promotions, one relegation, magical football and a Champions League appearance, but also with serious injuries and the “Unterhaching trauma.”
Saturday 26.04.2025
16:45
Cinema 10
by Soleen Yusef | DE | 119 min | 2024 | OmeU | Feature film | with Andreas Döhler, Dileyla Agirman and others.
Mona fled Syria with her Kurdish family and went to a school in Berlin. Mona doesn’t speak German, but she does play soccer. Her teacher recognizes her talent and accepts her into the girls’ team. Mona soon realizes that only if she and the other girls play together can they win.
Saturday 26.04.2025
14:00
Cinema 10
by Aysun Bademsoy | DE | 86 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | with Arzu Çalkılıç, Türkan Çelik, Nalan Keleş, Nazan Yavaş, Selina Çelik and others.
Aysun Bademsoy’s long-term observation of Turkish women football players in Berlin-Kreuzberg shifts its focus to the next generation, 30 years after the first encounter. Born and raised in Germany, they still find themselves asking: Do we truly feel accepted here? It seems that a cultural divide continues to shape their lives.
Friday 25.04.2025
20:00
Cinema 7
by Samuel Ab, Amine Kouti | FR | 72 min | 2022 | OmeU | Documentary | German premiere | with Samuel Ab and others.
“One, two, three, Viva Algeria !” signs the return of the Algerian team in the World Cup since 2009. Behind this slogan, and throughout the past ten years, the movie explores the emergence of a national epopee, one of collective pride first contained in the stadium, now reclaimed on the streets, starting a new chapter of the country’s history.
Friday 25.04.2025
21:45
Cinema 9
by Amina Krami, Kevin Koch | DE | 13 min | 2024 | OmeU | live-action film | with Killyan Guechtoum-Robert and others.
During football training, young Hamid is surprised by his Algerian father after years of absence, who confronts him with his ideas of home and family.
Friday 25.04.2025
21:45
Cinema 9
by Smari Gunn, Logi Sigursveinsson | IS | 79 min | 2023 | OmeU | Documentary | German Premiere
The Home Game is a feel-good underdog story about an Icelander’s clumsy attempt to complete his father’s failed mission: To finally get their beloved fishing village a home game on the unused football pitch he built 25 years prior.
Friday 25.04.2025
19:30
Cinema 9
by Paul Gredig | DE | 87 min | 2021 | OV | documentary | world premiere | with Domink “Domingo” Lemke and others.
When 1,100 fans from a village with 950 inhabitants travel to Kiel to support their team, SV Todesfelde, at the indoor football final, it shows what makes amateur football so special. The “Deathfield” residents prove that atmosphere in the stands can be just as important as what happens on the pitch.
Friday 25.04.2025
16:30
Cinema 9
by Lejla Zvizdić | BA | 86 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | German premiere | with Aziz Čeho and others.
This historical-sports documentary intertwines the rhythms of a musical journey with the chronological narrative of the club’s century-long existence and its developmental phases. From its humble beginnings, when Željo played on various city pitches amidst numerous challenges and obstacles, to the present day, where it boasts its own home, its own stadium.
Friday 25.04.2025
22:15
Cinema 7
by Katrin Hafemann, Marie Teresa Lasserre | DE, SE | 30 min | 2025 | OmeU | documentary | with Torkel Wächter and others.
In his father’s estate, the Swede Torkel Wächter discovers letters from Nazi Germany. They mention a man named Walter, who played football for HSV and was sent to a concentration camp. After years of research, he uncovers his father’s true identity. The film portrays the moving journey back into the dark history of Hamburger Sportverein, from football matches among prisoners in the concentration camp to the present day.
Friday 25.04.2025
16:30
Cinema 9
by James Erskine, Rachel Ramsay | UK | 91 min | 2023 | OmU | Documentary | with Elvira Aracen and others.
Told by the pioneering women who participated, this is the extraordinary story of the 1971 Women’s Soccer World Cup, a tournament witnessed by record crowds that has been written out of sporting history – until now.
Friday 25.04.2025
17:30
Cinema 9
by Marie Zrenner | DE | 10 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | with U23 Team Türkiyemspor Berlin 1978 e.V.
The players of the Berlin women’s football team Türkiyemspor are a close-knit community not only on the football pitch. At night, they even meet each other in a shared dream…
Friday 25.04.2025
17:30
Cinema 7
by Torsten Körner | DE | 154 min | 2024 | OmeU | Documentary | with Günther Jauch, Matthias Brandt, Jürgen Klinsmann, Arnd Zeigler, Walter Beckenbauer, Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Oliver Welke, Michel Platini, Didier Deschamps and others.
In three acts “Beckenbauer – The Last Emperor” recounts a life so extraordinary it feels like more than one. From Munich’s Giesing district to becoming “The Kaiser”, Beckenbauer’s journey unfolds as a time travel through German history.
Friday 25.04.2025
20:15
Cinema 10
by Torsten Körner | DE | 89 min | 2024 | OmeU | documentary | world premiere | with Anne Trabant, Doreen Meier, Hannelore Ratzeburg, Heidi Vater, Bärbel Wohlleben and others.
The film tells the story of the struggle for a national women’s football team in the FRG and GDR. It portrays the forgotten achievements of the pioneering German women footballers and their fight for a place “on the pitch.” A struggle full of incredible, almost absurd twists and stories that reveal a great deal about male hero stereotypes and clichéd images of women in both East and West Germany.
Thursday 24.04.2025
19:30
Cinema 10
by Alex Gale | UK | 107 min | 2023 | OmeU | Documentary | German Premiere | with Taras Stepanenko, Mykhailo Mudryk, Igor Jovicevic
As war rages in their homeland, Ukrainian football champions Shakhtar Donetsk find a way to continue playing in the world’s greatest club competition, the Champions League, fighting existential battles on and off the pitch, in a life-changing season for the players and their loved ones.
Friday 25.04.2025
17:45
Cinema room 10
