Max Mayer

When Pippi Langstrumpf moves into the abandoned Villa Villekulla, a whirlwind enters the lives of Annika and Tommy. Along with her monkey Mr Nilsson and her horse Little Old Man, Pippi turns the children’s lives upside down. With her charm and humour, the remarkable pirate’s daughter makes fools of anyone who tries to keep her in check, whether they are policemen, bandits or concerned neighbours – because she’s the strongest girl in the world!

Freddie Mercury, front man of the legendary British rock band Queen, spent a lot of time in Munich from 1979 to 1985. He lived in several apartments here, forged close friendships and recorded his first solo album. What drew him to the Isar? Love, the wild nightlife and the many meeting points of the city’s gay community? The Musicland Studios of Giorgio Moroder and their pioneering innovations in electronic music? Or did he simply want to avoid the rigid British tax laws?

A UFO in the shape of a weisswurst lands in front of the Bayerische Staatskanzlei: is this a film or reality? The film maker and asphalt cowboy Klaus Lemke embarks together with a group of aliens on a high speed, madcap journey through Munich’s history in search of what the city once was and could perhaps be in future. Albert Ostermaier’s new play is an affectionate homage to the film poet Klaus Lemke, who died in 2022, and both a hymn to and reckoning with his home city of Munich.

Jovana Reisinger’s novel follows nine women from early spring to the summer of an unspecified year not far from the present. All of them live in or around Munich and they are all named after women’s magazines. They live and fail representatively, each of them alone and yet collectively, by the images and ideals of what it means to be a woman.

After many years, Gregers returns to his home country. His father, a successful entrepreneur, offers him the opportunity to join the company management, from which he has to retire for health reasons. Gregers refuses and at the same time learns that his father is secretly financially supporting the family of his old friend Hjalmar Ekdal, who lives in the most modest of circumstances, and becomes suspicious. Why is the capitalist suddenly showing himself to be a philanthropist? In his tragedy, Henrik Ibsen shows how the capitalist system has a direct impact on the private sphere and undermines social cohesion. The Norwegian Johannes Holmen Dahl, one of the most sought-after directors in Scandinavia, is now staging his German debut with a major work by his famous compatriot.