With the project THE RETURN OF NAMES, Bayerischer Rundfunk and the city of Munich are remembering 1,000 people who were persecuted and murdered during the Nazi era. Together with the KJR Munich and CultureClouds I am giving a workshop for young people on March 16th. Together we are developing a performance about murdered Jewish students from Munich, which will be shown as part of the event on April 11th.

Yesterday our rememberance project ALWAYS REMEMBER, NEVER FORGET  brought another play to the stage: UP THE HILL. This time it was particularly exciting - for two reasons. Firstly, we performed in the well-attended, large Carl-Orff- Hall in Munich. And secondly, it is our largest production to date with an international ensemble of over 30 young people. We have teamed up with students from Lithuania to do a project about our shared history.

On Tuesday, Bavarian television was attenting our rehearsals to produce a tv report for the Abendschau, which can be watched online here. We are also in a radio interview that can be listed to on the BR24 podcast “The intercultural magazine”.  

Today is International Day of People with Disabilities. I shot two film portraits on the subject of  inclusion in the workplace for the ROBUR Industry Service Group GmbH.

The Terra X series  GIGANTEN DER ART  that I have casted is now also running on ZDF for the first time. The broadcast dates are:

Sunday, July 3rd, 2022: VAN GOGH

Sunday, July 10, 2022: REMBRANDT

Sunday, 07/17/2022: MICHELANGELO

For the series GIGANTEN DER KUNST (ZDF/ARTE) produced by Bilderfest, FITZROY FILM took over the casting of all actors. This Sunday, December 5th, 2021, the first episode will be running on Arte: REMBRANDT. The wonderful Sven Hussock plays the lead role in this film directed by Christian Stiefenhofer .

Finally theater again! UM 2 UHR NOCHMAL KAFFEE celebrates its premiere today at the youth theatre festival RAMPENLICHTER. It was an incredibly great rehearsal time with very committed young people and that with such a difficult topic: The focus of the play is the former Milbertshofen camp, from where thousands of Munich Jews were deported to the concentration and extermination camps in the east during the Nazi era. With our play we hope to be able to tear this almost forgotten place and the human fate behind it from oblivion.

The second part of a trilogy about giants in art history for Terra X (ZDF) was shot this week for the film about Michelangelo in Landshut. As with the other two parts, FITZROY FILM again took on the casting of all actors for the re-enactments, which were designed according to historical models.

On behalf of ZDF, the filming of the elaborate historical re-enactments for the Terra X documentary about Vincent van Gogh took place in Meersburg on Lake Constance this week. FITZROY FILM was responsible for casting all of the actors.

IF YOU DON'T KNOW will celebrate its premiere at DOK.fest Munich @home 2020. Due to the Corona virus, the festival will only take place in its online version this year. That means you can watch the film comfortably from your sofa from May 7th to May 24th. You can use the following link to get access to the film during this time.

For the Terra X documentary ALBRECHT DÜRER SUPERSTAR , I took over the casting of the actors for the reenactments with FITZROY FILM. The film will run this evening at 7.30 p.m. on ZDF and can also be accessed from now on in the ZDF media library.

The Museum of Bavarian History in Regensburg has opened. I accompanied the construction of the museum for the House of Bavarian History with my camera last year. The films were produced by my film production company FITZROY FILM .

A highlight was certainly the introduction of the heaviest exhibit in the permanent exhibition, an old steam engine for agriculture, the so-called locomobile. My little film about it has now been published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

Tonight the time has finally come: TOLLER celebrates its premiere at Giesinger Bahnhof. It is the second play of our theatere group Happy Drama after the great success of HAPPY HOUR. TOLLER is about the time of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The play was written by Tankred Dorst in 1968.

Exactly 100 years after the Soviet Republic, in our production we combine the two time periods of the plot and the creation of the piece. In the style of a happening of the 1960s, elements of speech and figure theater mix with live music and dance to form a psychedelic rock revue.

Tickets are available at giesinger-bahnhof.de .

On the subject of 100 years of the Free State of Bavaria, I am directing a sketch with  wonderful comedian Christoph Süß, which was commissioned by the House of Bavarian History. Today we shot in the plenary hall of the Bavarian State Parliament.

I am very happy to be part of the jury for the DOK.education award at DOK.fest Munich this year. The award ceremony is today at 3 p.m. in the Bavarian State Parliament. I can only tell you this much: We did not have an easy decision at the jury meetings. I am thrilled how many great documentaries by young directors have been submitted.

In the past few weeks I have accompanied the student Katharina Steinegger with the camera for her research on the Jewish teacher Ferdinand Kissinger for the film ERINNERN (REMEMBERING). Thanks to the Bavarian Teachers' Association (BLLV), we now had the opportunity to travel to Kaunas. The second largest city in Lithuania was not only the last stop of our documentary about the Jewish teacher from Munich, but also represents the sad last chapter of his own life. In November 1941 he was shot here by the National Socialists.
I wrote a contribution for the project's official blog about our experiences on the trip.

My short film THE BLESSED LINE will premiere this evening at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne, Australia. My graduation film from the Victorian College of the Arts is a historical film about the Australian gold rush. In the ACMI the film runs in a program with other interesting short films. Further dates are December 7th and 14th.

Last summer we were in Kaunas with our international group of Lithuanian and German young people for our multimedia theater project UP THE HILL. We rehearsed and used to film in the former Jewish ghetto and Fort IX which served as an extermination camp during the Nazi era. The play about the sad shared history of the two cities of Kaunas and Munich in the Third Reich celebrated its premiere at Munich's Fat Cat in November.

Now we are returning to Kaunas to play the bilingual piece in front of a Lithuanian audience. On February 12th, 2024 we have two performances in the traditional Kino Teatras Romuva.

At the beginning of the year, I shot a historical portrait of a forefather of the Bavarian Teachers' Association for the first part of a film about the history of school politics in Bavaria. Christian Baumann plays Johann Grießhammer, who tries against all odds to rethink schools in the 19th century. You can see the film here .

For the Sky Original docu-drama 1972 - MUNICH'S BLACK SEPTEMBER about the Olympic assassination 50 years ago, I took over the casting of all the actors. The film is produced by BILDERFEST and directed by Christian Stiefenhofer and Mohamad Abou Falah. The lavishly produced documentary/feature film hybrid will be released on September 4th on Sky Documentaries. The historical events are told from the three perspectives of the Israelis, the assassins and the Bavarian police. All performers speak in their respective original languages. I have cast in different countries and cast roles in Hebrew, Arabic, Dutch, German and English. You can see the trailer for the film here. An interesting article about the film in German from the Süddeutsche Zeitung can be read here.

Together with the agency newsenses I have produced a corporate film with short portraits of employees for RODIAS Ltd. The film is out now on YouTube.

Last Saturday, November 20th, 2021, one of the darkest chapters in Munich's city history had its 80th anniversary, the deportation of around 1,000 Munich Jews to the Kaunas extermination camp. On this occasion, dance choreograher Dorothee Janssen and I, together with 11 young people from the ALWAYS REMEMBER, NEVER FORGET project of the youth organization "Spielen in der Stadt", did a performance at the site of the former "Milbertshofen Jewish settlement". Bayerisches Fernsehen is broadcasting a report about the performance today in the evening news, which can now also be accessed in the BR media library.

For the Bavarian Teachers' Association (BLLV) I was commissioned to produce four short image clips that were meant to show the importance of the BLLV staff councils for teachers. Here you can take a look at the campaign that even lead to the best result in the history of the BLLV.

When discussing Christmas in Corona times, emotions and facts collide. I directed a short film for science magazine QUARKS (TV channel: WDR) which deals with the conflict between good intentions and protection from the virus, The film CHRISTMAS IS A CELABRATION - FOR CORONA is not only shown on TV, but can can also be seen on YouTube , Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .

Definitely an emotional topic that moves the mind: Love it or hate it - but let's talk about it!

On Friday, October 16, 2020 my film IF YOU DON'T KNOW will be shown in the context of the symposium "Remembering" in the NS Documentation Center in Munich. Following the film screening, there will be an audience discussion with the young people, the project organizers and myself.

You can find all information about the event on the website of the NS Documentation Center .

Don't miss it: Almost a year after its premiere in early 2019 and many sold-out shows later, we will now play TOLLER for the last times between February 19th and 22nd at the Giesinger Bahnhof theatre in Munich. The shows will be accompanied by workshops at several schools around Munich.

The team of our theatre group Happy Drama sends out a huge thank you to the Giesinger Bahnhof, the technicians, the Pädagogisches Institut Munich, the Kulturreferat Munich, the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, and last but not least to the audience for their big support.

Dirk Wagner writes in today's edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the staging of TOLLER at Giesinger Bahnhof: " Julian Monatzeder staged Toller [...] in a refreshingly cheeky manner and also shows parallels to the political revolt of the 1960s."

The whole article can be read on sz.de and here as a PDF download .

Cheers to the young filmmakers!

The DOK.education Documentary Film Award for Young People was awarded today at the HFF Munich! I was lucky enough to be part of the jury for the second time. This year we were particularly impressed with the quality and narrative depth of the films submitted.

Rehearsals for the new play by my drama group Happy Drama are in full swing. TOLLER by Tankred Dorst will premiere at Giesinger Bahnhof in Munich on March 30th. Until then, however, we still have to practice. Therefore, we packed all performers and instruments and moved into an old barn in the Bavarian outback for an intensive rehearsal weekend. It will do the hippie spirit of the piece good.

My film production FITZROY FILM has moved to a new office directly at Max-Weber-Platz in Munich. The new company address is Max-Planck-Str. 8, 81675 Munich, Germany.

An interview with me was published in the Bayerische Schule magazine on the occasion of the premiere of my film ERINNERN (REMEMBERING). In it I talk about my experience with rememberance work with young people and the relationship of Germans to their history. It is also about the creation of the film and shooting with student Katharina Steinegger in Munich, Poland and Lithuania.

You can read the original interview here .

The filming for my documentary ERINNERN (REMEMBERING) has started. For the film, I accompanied student Katharina Steinegger while researching about the Jewish teacher Ferdinand Kissinger, who was murdered by the National Socialists in 1941. In Munich we went to Kissinger's places of residence in search of traces.

I wrote about the first days of shooting with Katharina for the blog of the Dachau memory book.

On behalf of the Center of remembrance culture I shot two films together with Dorothee Janssen about victims of the National Socialist "euthanasia"-murders. Edith Hecht was murdered in the Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home, Helmut Silberberg in the T4 killing center in Hartheim. In order to trace the chronology of the two cruel fates as soberly as possible, we decided on a very reduced style. We juxtaposed extracts from medical records, letters, notes and official documents with shots of the current locations of the crimes of that time. The films can be viewed here:

Verdrängt: Edith Hecht

Verdrängt: Helmut Silberberg

The multimedia rememberance project ALWAYS REMEMBER, NEVER FORGET CultureClouds e.V., for which I - together with Dorothee Janssen - am responsible for the artistic direction, was already awarded last year with the Intercultural Innovation Award of the United Nations and the BMW Group. Yesterday we also received the Munich Citizens' Award for Democracy - against forgetting.

In the justification of the jury it says:

​

“The 2023 award winners are distinguished by their special social commitment and their use of a sustainable and integrative culture of remembrance.”

This Saturday we have blocked off an entire street in the heart of Munich with our memory project ALWAYS REMEMBER. NEVER FORGET. The reason was our latest performance MEINE SCHULE BRENNT (MY SCHOOL IS ON FIRE). Gudrun Kosche wrote about the performance on nachtkritik.de today:

​

"It's about the fire in a Jewish school in the year of the November pogroms of 1938. The school was located exactly where the performance took place today - on Herzog-Rudolf-Strasse at the lower end of Munich's magnificent boulevard. Described from the children's point of view. Presented as a dance, theatre and music performance by young people which could have hardly been more impressive."

How quickly time flies: It's been 6 years now since I've started my own production company FITZROY FILM in Munich. Named after one of Melbourne's coolest neighborhoods and cultural hubs, where I used tolive while studying film in Australia, FITZROY FILM produces almost everything from fictional films and documentaries up to corporate films. We also organise castings for various TV and streaming formats. I'm really looking forward to the next 6 years!

I am incredibly thrilled to announce that our multimedia remembrance project ALWAYS REMEMBER, NEVER FORGET of the youth organization "Spielen in der Stadt e.V.", in which we developed the play  UM 2 UHR NOCHMAL KAFFEE and the performance FEDERBETTEN NUR FÜR KINDER, has won the Intercultural Innovation Award of the United Nations and the BMW Group. The award was presented today at the Expo in Dubai. 

In the multimedia project UM 2 UHR NOCHMAL KAFFEE, a group of 11 young people goes on a search for traces in order to keep memories alive in places of National Socialism in Munich by means of movement, film, dance and theater. The dance teacher Dorothee Janssen and I are taking on the artistic direction of the project that was organized by "Spielen in der Stadt e.V.". The piece is to have its premiere in July at the festival RAMPENLICHTER. I am very happy that, despite the corona restrictions, we were able to start with the first face-to-face rehearsals in small groups.

The young Munich fashion label DOÉ stands for classic designs and sustainability. In the newly opened FASHION ROOM , you can now take innovative sewing courses to learn how to tailor original collection pieces. I made a little corporate film about it.

"The film sensitively shows how the twelve- to 15-year-olds speak to experts from the Nazi Documentation Center, how they ask questions, reflect and cannot grasp what happened, but want to grasp it in order to prevent such horror for the future," writes Katrin Hildebrand in the cultural section of the Münchner Merkur about the premiere of IF YOU DON'T KNOW at DOK.fest Munich 2020.

You can read the whole article here .

TOLLER will be performed again in its third season. This time the shows will be accompanied by workshops for school classes to prepare the students for the historical topics of the play i.e. the German revolution and the time of the Soviet Republic of Bavaria. The workshops are made possible with the help of the Pedagogical Institute Munich. As director of the play, I will hold a few workshops myself.

A big thank you goes out to Christiane Wechselberger from the Münchner Feuilleton for this nice article about TOLLER . She writes: “Happy Drama not only provides a historical account of the revolution of 1919, but also a rock-musical rewriting of Tankred Dorst's scenic revue."

Tonight at 7 p.m. there will also be an interview with our singer Antun Opic, actor Benjamin Hirt and me about our play on M94.5.

In the latest broadcast of "Gespräche gegen das Vergessen (Talks against Forgetting)" on ARD alpha, excerpts from ma second film about rememberance work WIR WERDEN NICHT VERGESSEN (WE WILL NOT FORGET) will be shown. Here you can watch the tv show again.

Last year we played HAPPY HOUR in front of a sold-out house at Import Export and at Lihotzky Munich. Tonight, the party theater night after Ernest Hemingway continues at Giesinger Bahnhof Munich . If that's no reason to toast with our first-class cocktails!

The time has come! HAPPY HOUR is my first theater production with the newly founded theater group Happy Drama. Tonight is the premiere at Import Export in Munich. The piece is based on a short story by Hemingway and is a mixture of theater and party including cocktails and African club music.

The President of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria and former President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Dr. hc Charlotte Knobloch called ERINNERN (REMEMBERING) a  "moving film" . She also states that the film is “an impressive contribution of the sense of history and responsibility of the third and fourth generations after the Holocaust. Julian Monatzeder documents with a lot of empathy and sensitivity the need for a clever, sustainable culture of remembrance. His protagonists, especially the students, who get to the bottom of the individual fates of the persecuted and murdered, are role models for the important examination of the past, the Holocaust and its universal message for today."

My kids documentary DANIELA UND MICHE _ ZWEI KINDER AUS PERU (DANIELA AND MICHE - TWO CHILDREN FROM PERU) has been published on DVD at the Bavarian Teachers' association (BLLV) and can be ordered here. The film about the everyday life of two Peruvian kids between school, work and children's home is also suitable for use in class for grades 3 to 7.