Kitty Core isn’t just a name. It’s a movement that shook the quiet corners of Munich’s film scene in the early 2010s. While mainstream German cinema chased funding from public broadcasters and festival prestige, Kitty Core rolled up her sleeves, borrowed a 16mm camera, and started shooting raw, unfiltered stories about people nobody else cared about. No grants. No agents. No permission.
How It All Started in a Basement on Schleißheimer Straße
In 2011, Kitty Core was a 22-year-old art student with a broken laptop and a pile of expired film stock. She lived in a rented basement apartment near the Isar River, where the pipes rattled every time a tram passed. That’s where she edited her first short, Wasted on the 8th Floor, using free software on a computer that crashed every 47 minutes. She screened it in a friend’s garage to six people - three of them were her roommates, two were strangers who wandered in looking for the bathroom, and one was a retired projectionist who stayed until the end and said, “You’ve got something.” That film became the seed. By 2013, she was showing work in abandoned warehouses, public libraries, and even a disused tram depot in Schwabing. No tickets. No program. No lights. Just a projector, a white sheet, and a speaker hooked up to a car battery. People came because word spread like gossip in a neighborhood pub: “There’s this girl. She films people who don’t exist in movies.”What Makes Her Work Different
Most indie films in Germany try to look like they were made by someone who went to film school. Kitty Core’s films look like they were made by someone who lived through them. Her camera doesn’t glide. It stumbles. It lingers. It watches too long. In Stations of the Unseen (2015), she spent six weeks following a 68-year-old woman who cleaned offices at night in downtown Munich. The film has no narration. No music. Just the sound of mops on linoleum, a radio playing old Schlager songs, and the occasional cough. One scene lasts 12 minutes - the woman sits on a stool, eating a cold sausage sandwich, staring out a window at snow falling on a parked BMW. No one else in cinema would have let that shot breathe. Kitty Core did. Her editing style is deliberate chaos. Scenes cut mid-sentence. People walk out of frame. Background noise is left in - dogs barking, neighbors arguing, train horns. She doesn’t clean up reality. She lets it breathe. That’s why her films don’t feel like cinema. They feel like stolen moments.The Munich Scene That Refused to Embrace Her
Munich’s cultural institutions didn’t know what to do with Kitty Core. The Bavarian Film Commission called her work “unprofessional.” The Munich Film Festival rejected her submissions three years in a row, saying her films “lacked narrative structure.” Critics called her “a glorified voyeur.” But here’s what they missed: her films didn’t need structure. They needed truth. And truth doesn’t follow three-act rules. By 2017, her audience had grown - not because of festivals, but because of YouTube uploads. A 17-minute clip of a Syrian refugee playing piano in a church basement, recorded on a smartphone, got 2.3 million views. No one promoted it. People just watched. And then they shared it. That’s when the real pressure started. Galleries wanted to exhibit her footage. Publishers offered book deals. A Berlin producer offered €200,000 to make a “polished version” of her work. She turned them all down.
The Rebellion Was Never About Fame
Kitty Core doesn’t want to be a director. She doesn’t want to be a star. She doesn’t even want to be remembered. In a 2020 interview with a local zine, she said: “I’m not making films for people who go to cinemas. I’m making them for the people who sit in the back of buses, who don’t have time to think, who just need to see someone like them on screen - even if it’s blurry and half-lit.” She still shoots on film. She still edits on a 12-year-old laptop. She still screens in places no one thinks are worth visiting - a homeless shelter in Neuperlach, a community garden in Laim, a refugee center in the suburbs. Her crew? Usually just her and one sound person who works as a night nurse. Her most recent project, Midnight Shifts (2024), documents the lives of hospital cleaners in Munich during the winter surge. It’s 87 minutes long. No credits. No title card. Just a single line at the end: “This was filmed by hand. No one asked for permission.”Why She Matters Now More Than Ever
In a world where every film feels curated, polished, algorithm-tested - Kitty Core’s work is a slap in the face. She proves you don’t need a studio, a budget, or a film degree to make something that lasts. Her films aren’t about Munich’s famous beer halls or Christmas markets. They’re about the people who keep those places running. The woman who empties the trash bins at the opera house. The man who fixes the elevators in high-rises at 3 a.m. The teenager who works two jobs and still draws comics on her lunch break. She doesn’t romanticize poverty. She doesn’t villainize wealth. She just shows it. And in doing so, she gives dignity to lives that society ignores.
Where to Find Her Work
You won’t find Kitty Core’s films on Netflix. Or Amazon Prime. Or even Vimeo. Her work lives in places you have to stumble into. - Every third Thursday of the month, she screens new material at Die Rote Laterne, a tiny bar in the Glockenbachviertel. No website. No tickets. Just show up at 9 p.m. - A few of her shorts are archived at the Munich City Library’s Media Lab, under “Local Unlicensed Film Projects.” You need a library card and a request form. - Her YouTube channel, KittyCoreUnfiltered, has 12 videos. The most popular one - a 23-minute silent film of a woman knitting in a hospital waiting room - has 1.8 million views. There’s no merchandise. No Patreon. No interviews on podcasts. She doesn’t do TikTok. She doesn’t tweet. She just keeps filming.What Comes Next
At 34, Kitty Core still lives in the same basement. The pipes still rattle. The laptop still crashes. But now, young filmmakers from Berlin, Hamburg, and even Vienna come to Munich just to sit in the back of her screenings and watch how she works. Some ask her for advice. She always says the same thing: “Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait for gear. Don’t wait for a story that sounds important. Start with what’s right in front of you - even if it’s ugly. Even if it’s quiet. Even if no one else thinks it’s worth seeing.” That’s the real legacy of Kitty Core. Not the films. Not the views. But the quiet rebellion she started - one shaky frame at a time.Who is Kitty Core?
Kitty Core is an underground filmmaker based in Munich who began making raw, unedited documentaries in the early 2010s. She films everyday people - cleaners, night workers, refugees, and others ignored by mainstream media - using borrowed equipment and no budget. Her work rejects polished storytelling in favor of real, unfiltered moments.
Where can I watch Kitty Core’s films?
Her films aren’t on streaming platforms. You can see them at monthly screenings at Die Rote Laterne, a bar in Glockenbachviertel, Munich. A few shorts are archived at the Munich City Library’s Media Lab under “Local Unlicensed Film Projects.” She also uploads a handful of videos to her YouTube channel, KittyCoreUnfiltered.
Why was she rejected by the Munich Film Festival?
The festival rejected her work three times, calling it “unstructured” and “unprofessional.” But her films don’t follow traditional narrative rules - they capture reality as it happens, without editing for dramatic effect. This clashed with the festival’s preference for polished, curated storytelling.
Does Kitty Core accept funding or sponsorships?
No. She has turned down offers from film commissions, publishers, and producers, including a €200,000 offer to make a “polished” version of her work. She believes funding changes the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject. She films with no agenda - not even financial.
What’s her most famous film?
Her most viewed film is a 23-minute silent documentary titled “Woman Knitting in a Waiting Room,” uploaded to YouTube in 2021. It shows a woman quietly knitting while waiting for news about a loved one in a hospital. It has over 1.8 million views and sparked global discussions about quiet dignity in everyday life.
