They live two lives. They work to survive, but music is their passion. At night they perform in sold out concert halls, and clean toilets the morning after. They tickle the ivories and sort out the trash in close succession. They interpret Beethoven just before repairing exhaust pipes. They are survival artists.

Grand opera in an unlikely setting. The small island of Gozo (right next to Malta) has 30,000 inhabitants and two opera houses. This means it has more opera per square kilometer than any other place in the world. The organization, the staging, and much of the singing are all done by amateurs. As the annual opera season draws closer, star tenor Joseph Calleja visits the opera houses.

One year, five seasons and 365 days uncovering the secrets of the Karneval. The film takes a glimpse behind the scenes of one of the world’s largest folk festivals. All in keeping with the motto “After the session is before the session”.
The Cologne Carnival is one of the biggest folk festivals in the world. For a few days every year, millions of people – locals and strangers, dedicated revellers and tourists – come together in a collective frenzy of intoxication. But is it really all over on Ash Wednesday?
After the Carnival is also before the Carnival. No culmination without a prelude, no spectacle without a rehearsal. What is the role of this giant festival outside the official season? In his documentary, Claus Wischmann takes a look behind the scenes and follows five Cologne carnival revellers for one year in ‘Carnival! Proud To be Mad’.

Two hundred orchestral musicians are playing Orff’s “Carmina Burana” in total darkness. A power cut has hit the Ngiri Ngiri district of Kinshasa, only a few bars before the last section of the work. Kinshasa’s power stations and main networks are insufficient to supply electricity to all the 8 million inhabitants of what is Africa’s third-largest city. Once again the lights have gone out in the “Salle des fêtes”, a kind of open garage where the orchestra practises. But for its members this is no reason to stop rehearsing. Most of them know their parts by heart. Small lapses of memory are compensated for by a talent for improvisation and the grace of God.