TACHELES is the story of a building which miraculously withstood Berlin’s most turbulent century. After its construction in 1906 as a state-of-the-art shopping center in Mitte’s Jewish Quarter, it was seized by the Nazis, then the Soviets, and finally the East Germans who dynamited it. After the wall fell, artists and anarchists from both sides squatted the bombed-out ruin, creating an avant-garde arthouse.

Tacheles becomes synonymous with experimental art and alternative lifestyles in this newly reclaimed social freedom. The film zooms in on the golden era of the building’s life in the 2000s: A thriving art sanctuary with free ateliers where international artists of all backgrounds and mediums flock to live, work and breathe art, fiercely independent of the established art system.

Our guide through the graffitied ruin and the surrounding bullet-ridden streets of Berlin-Mitte is Tim Roeloffs, a humorous, charismatic photomontage artist, whose work preserves the scars of WW2 as well as DDR Cold War culture for future generations to learn from. He leads the Tacheles artists, whose work reflects a neighborhood struggling with reunification and gentrification, as they fight various investors who try to evict them in order to develop the hottest property in the center of Berlin.

Director Biography - Andy Cohen

Born and raised in New York City, Andy Cohen is a three-time Emmy nominated independent filmmaker whose recent films received three Academy Awards nominations spanning both scripted and documentary genres: The Apprentice in 2025 for Best Actor (Sebastian Stan), Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Strong) and To Kill A Tiger (Directed by Nisha Pahuja) in 2024 for Best Feature Documentary.

Cohen wrote, directed and produced the documentary Beijing Spring (2021, FIFA jury Award), Ximei (2019, Movies that Matter Activist Award), and the upcoming titles Tacheles: A Berlin Story (2025), Rough & Polished (2026), and Ukraine Rising (2026).

Cohen's work as a feature documentary producer includes: Ai Weiwei's Human Flow (2017, short-listed Academy Award for Best Documentary), Hooligan Sparrow (2016, short-listed Academy Award for Best Documentary), Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012, short-listed Academy Award for Best Documentary), and The World Before Her (2012, Best Documentary, Tribeca Film Festival).

His feature fiction titles also include: Little Death (2024), starring David Schwimmer, directed by Jack Begert, produced alongside Psycho Films and Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures, which premiered at Sundance in 2024, winning the Next Innovator Award.

His work has been screened at the Venice Film Festival, Telluride, TIFF, Berlin, Sundance and Cannes, and streams on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Mubi and Apple TV.