Hannes Lang's documentary short THE CLOUD FACTORY will have its US premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina — one of the most important platforms for international documentary film. The film is part of the main section NEW DOCS, which brings together 49 films from 31 countries. The festival takes place from April 16 to 19.

THE CLOUD FACTORY is a cinematic exploration of the sky above the Rhenish brown coal mining region, where emission-laden air masses rise into the atmosphere and alter the climate. The film asks what these man-made clouds reveal about our future — and whether visions of a different, more liveable world can still take shape within this artificial atmosphere. Excerpts from interviews with residents of the region shed light on the fragile relationship between identity, home, and threat.

THE CLOUD FACTORY was produced in co-production with the ARTE slot La Lucarne (editorial supervision: Kathrin Brinkmann). Direction and screenplay: Hannes Lang and Mareike Wegener. Camera: Felix Rier, sound and sound design: Peter Rösner and Isabel Cope. Editing: Hannes Lang, grading: Tobias Wiedmer, titles: Katrin Gruber. Poster: Caspar Newbolt (Version Industries), trailer: David Gruschka.

Funded by IDM South Tyrol, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, BKM, the Office for Culture and Media Bolzano, and the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Mareike Wegener’s feature debut ECHO is once again available to stream on ARD Mediathek (until January 30, 2026) and will be broadcast on WDR on December 30, 2025.

The film tells the story of the war-wounded chief inspector Harder (Valery Tscheplanowa), who survived a bomb attack as a police trainer in Afghanistan. Back in Germany, as a fresh start she is supposed to determine the identity of a bog body found in the moorland of a peaceful village. It's our first feature film production, co-produced with WDR. The production was supported by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, KJDF, BKM, and DFFF. After completion, the film premiered at the Berlinale 2022 and was distributed to cinemas by Grandfilm.

On the occasion of last year's TV premiere, Matthias Hannemann wrote in the FAZ: 'With her debut, the author and director skilfully reminds us that while German society engages with guilt and crime through the pervasive presence of crime shows on television, it fails to delve deeply into the complexities of guilt. The omnipresent public memory stands in no relation to the silence that prevails when remembering becomes uncomfortable: at one's own doorstep, in one's own house."

After its world premiere at the Cork International Film Festival, Hannes Lang’s new documentary THE CLOUD FACTORY will now be broadcast on television for the first time: ARTE is presenting the film on its renowned La Lucarne slot, which showcases exceptional voices in international documentary cinema. La Lucarne is known for its curatorial openness to experimental, radical and essayistic forms – an ideal context for Lang’s cinematic exploration of the anthropogenic clouds over the Rhenish lignite-mining region.

THE CLOUD FACTORY was filmed in 2023/24 with a small mobile team in the Rhineland. The film views the lignite-mining district as a site of climate change and seeks conversations with the people who regard this industrial landscape and its monumental structures as their home. What dreams and utopias can be imagined in the shadow of the cooling towers?

The film was created with the collaboration of Hannes Lang (writing, directing, editing, production), Mareike Wegener (writing, production), Felix Rier (cinematography), Peter Rösner and Isabel Cope (sound & sound design), Tobias Wiedmer (grading), Katrin Gruber (title design). The poster was designed by Caspar Newbolt and David Gruschka contributed the trailer. The film was overseen editorially at ARTE by Kathrin Brinkmann.

THE CLOUD FACTORY was funded by IDM South Tyrol, the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), the Office for Culture and Media Bolzano, and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Spectacle is a collectively run screening space in Brooklyn, NY, operated since 2010 by dedicated, cinema-loving volunteers. Its programming includes overlooked works, offbeat gems, contemporary art, radical polemics, live performances, and much more. This November, Spectacle devoted a series to Mareike Wegener’s debut film Mark Lombardi: Art and Conspiracy, presenting multiple screenings accompanied by a virtual Q&A. As part of the program, the film even received a new trailer and poster.

The documentary portrays American artist Mark Lombardi, whose graphic works traced the opaque power networks of global elites across finance, politics, and organized crime. After the attacks of September 11, his drawings even came to the attention of the FBI – yet Lombardi himself could no longer be questioned; he had died the year before, apparently by suicide, in his New York studio. The film follows an exceptional artist who used only publicly available information to make visible the hidden structures of a globalized world.

Mareike Wegener received the Gerd Ruge Grant for the development of this project in 2009. The film was produced by unafilm and shot in New York in 2010, with Sophie Maintigneux as cinematographer.

The final screening will take place on 29 November 2025.