“Munich – Secrets of a City” is an essay about life in cities, a mosaic of stories, longings and dreams and a declaration of love to Munich – and all other cities.

What do ticket inspectors dream of? What if two men discover they loved the same woman? What does the boy experience who catches the maid with her lover? What do the two boys discover when they want an autograph from a star? What story unfolds when two longing glances miss each other by a hair’s breadth at a concert? What happened to the woman who undressed in a photo studio in 1933? And what does the solar eclipse have to do with all of this?
This is the fictional portrait of a city, or the portrait of a fictional city, the city that everyone dreams of and the dream that each city represents.

So it’s about how the biography of each individual is entangled in the history of a city – and how the many individual stories of a city also result in something like a biography of this city. And the question is: What do you see when you take a close look at the city map? And what is the pattern if you follow the urban hustle and bustle?
The film goes like a cut through the city, so that the age rings become visible like on a tree. This does not mean the historical growth or the geographical expansion of the city, but the inner growth of the cityscape, which allows for new views over the course of a lifetime. These age rings represent, so to speak, the inner city that everyone carries within themselves: how certain city districts, streets, buildings gain or lose importance, hide or reveal secrets, how they appear or appear in the mind’s eye.
It begins with the child’s gaze at the distant, large, misshapen unknown, which is made up of names and shapes that hold 111 unknown promises. And it ends with the dead eyes of a blind man who has nothing left but memory.

“Munich – Secrets of a City” is an essay about life in cities, a mosaic of stories, longings and dreams and a declaration of love to Munich – and all other cities.
Dominik Graf has won for his movies “Hit”, “The Cat”, “Tiger, Lion, Panther”, “Player” and “Die Sieger” as well as for his TV films “The Scorpion”, “Sperling and the Burning Arm” and “Your best years ”has won countless awards and is considered one of the most renowned directors in Germany.
Michael Althen is film editor and critic for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” in Berlin and has written books on Rock Hudson, Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin.
Together they shot “The Whisper in the Mountain of Things”, a portrait of the actor Robert Graf, who was featured in the Panorama at the Berlinale and at the Cologne Conference and who won an Adolf Grimme Prize in 1999. “Munich – Secrets of a City” is their second collaboration.