A side project for German cinema.

Hey — Filmlotse is a passion project of mine. I don't make films myself. But I know people who do, and with them it always came down to the same thing: twenty browser tabs, guidelines buried in PDFs, and the question of whether the deadline had already passed.

It surprised me that no good overview existed. So I started collecting the programmes in one place — regional funds, BKM, broadcasters, the EU — with deadline, funding volume and project stage right next to each other. That became Filmlotse.

What genuinely matters for German films lands here. No bureaucratic language, no dead links: every deadline gets checked, every entry reviewed by hand. The idea is simple — one person does the research so everyone else can work on their films.

German cinema runs on small productions that can apply without hiring a law firm. If Filmlotse helps one debut get shot that would otherwise have stalled, the site has already paid for itself.

— ALI, BERLIN · SINCE 2026