When most people think of Munich, they picture beer halls, lederhosen, and Oktoberfest. But beneath the surface of this traditional city, there was a wild, unapologetic scene that changed German cinema forever-and one woman stood at its center: Kitty Core.
Who Was Kitty Core?
Kitty Core wasn’t just a filmmaker. She was a force. Born in 1987 in a working-class neighborhood near Munich’s Isar River, she dropped out of film school after six months because, as she put it, "They taught me how to make commercials. I wanted to make chaos." By 2011, she was shooting short films on a borrowed Canon 5D Mark II, using friends as actors, abandoned warehouses as sets, and natural light because she couldn’t afford equipment. Her first real break came when a 12-minute film called Stille Nacht, Wache Nacht (Silent Night, Awake Night) screened at a tiny basement cinema in Schwabing. No one expected it to go viral. But it did. Within weeks, it had over 200,000 views on YouTube. People didn’t just watch it-they argued about it. Was it art? Was it exploitation? Was it even a movie?
That was Kitty’s genius. She didn’t care if you liked it. She just wanted you to feel something.
The Munich Underground Scene in the Early 2010s
Back then, Munich’s film scene was dominated by safe, state-funded dramas and cozy romantic comedies. Independent filmmakers were rare. Those who tried to push boundaries got ignored-or worse, shut down. The city’s cultural institutions didn’t want trouble. They wanted tradition.
Kitty Core didn’t ask for permission.
She started hosting midnight screenings in a disused laundromat on Schwanthalerstraße. No tickets. No lights. Just a projector, a beat-up couch, and a fridge full of cheap beer. The audience? Artists, punks, ex-convicts, students, and curious old men who’d wandered in by accident. No one knew who she was. But everyone knew the films.
Her movies weren’t polished. They were raw. Grainy. Sometimes silent. Sometimes screamed. One film, 48 Hours in the Backseat, was shot entirely in a stolen car over two nights. Another, Wurst und Tränen (Sausage and Tears), featured a 70-year-old butcher reading Nietzsche while slicing bratwurst. No script. No rehearsals. Just real people, real moments, and zero filters.
By 2014, she was being called "the punk of German cinema." Critics from Berlin and Hamburg flew in. Some called her a genius. Others called her a fraud. She never responded. She just kept filming.
Her Films: A Different Kind of Storytelling
Kitty Core didn’t tell stories the way anyone else did. She didn’t use three-act structures. She didn’t need protagonists or clear endings. Her films were more like fragments of a dream you couldn’t quite remember when you woke up.
Stille Nacht, Wache Nacht (2011) - A woman walks through an empty Munich train station at 3 a.m., talking to herself in three languages. No explanation. No music. Just footsteps and breath. It lasted 12 minutes. It became a cult classic.
Wurst und Tränen (2013) - A documentary-style piece where a butcher, Hans Müller, talks about his life while working. He mentions his wife’s death, his son’s addiction, and his love for Wagner. The camera never leaves his hands. He never looks at the lens. You feel his grief without him ever saying "I’m sad."
Die Letzte Fähre (2016) - Her only feature-length film. Shot over 18 months on a single 16mm camera. It follows a group of strangers who board a ferry that never reaches its destination. No one knows why. No one tries to fix it. They just sit. Talk. Eat. Sleep. One character says, "We’re not lost. We’re just not going where they told us to." The film ended with a 20-minute shot of clouds. No credits. No title card. Just silence.
That film played at the Berlinale. It didn’t win anything. But it got a standing ovation from 800 people. One critic wrote: "Kitty Core doesn’t make movies. She makes experiences you can’t unsee."
Why She Was a Rebel
Kitty Core rejected everything the film industry said you needed to succeed:
- No agents. She handled all her own distribution.
- No sponsors. She funded films with odd jobs-cleaning apartments, selling vintage records, working as a bartender.
- No film festivals unless they let her screen without Q&As. She hated talking about her work. "The film already said what it needed to," she once told a journalist.
- No digital releases. She refused to put her films on streaming platforms. "If you want to see it, you have to come find it," she said.
She didn’t just make films. She made rituals. You didn’t watch a Kitty Core movie-you showed up for it. Sometimes it was in a church basement. Sometimes in a forest. Once, it was on the roof of a parking garage during a thunderstorm. People brought blankets. Rain soaked the projector. The screen flickered. No one left.
The Legacy
Kitty Core disappeared in 2019. No announcement. No farewell. Just a note left on the door of her studio: "I’m not gone. I’m just not making movies anymore."
Her films vanished from public view. No YouTube uploads. No DVDs. No archives. Only a few bootlegs survive. Some were uploaded anonymously to obscure forums. Others were passed hand-to-hand like contraband.
But her influence? It’s everywhere.
Young filmmakers in Munich now shoot on phones, use natural light, and reject studio rules. The underground cinema scene she started still meets every Friday night in a former print shop near Odeonsplatz. They call it "Kitty’s Ghost." No one knows who runs it. No one cares. They just show films. No rules. No expectations.
Her name isn’t in any official film history books. But if you ask anyone who grew up in Munich’s art scene between 2010 and 2020, they’ll tell you: Kitty Core didn’t just make films. She gave them permission to be messy, real, and human.
What Happened to Her?
No one knows for sure.
Some say she moved to Portugal and started a small organic farm. Others swear they saw her working as a projectionist in a rural theater in Austria. A few claim she’s still in Munich, living in a converted bus near the Isar, filming nothing but the sky.
She never gave interviews after 2017. No social media. No public appearances. No press. The only thing she ever said about leaving was this, in a letter to a friend:
"I didn’t leave cinema. Cinema left me. I didn’t have anything left to say. But the people who watched my films? They found their own voices. That’s enough."
Where to Find Her Work (If You Can)
There are no official releases. No streaming services. No DVDs. But if you know where to look, you can still find traces.
- Search "Kitty Core bootleg" on private Telegram channels linked in Munich’s underground art forums.
- Visit the Munich Film Archive. They have one 16mm print of Die Letzte Fähre locked in a vault. You need a curator’s approval-and a good reason.
- Some libraries in Berlin and Cologne have unofficial copies in their experimental film collections.
- Ask someone who went to a midnight screening between 2012 and 2018. They might still have a VHS tape.
It’s not easy. But then again, Kitty Core never made anything easy.
Is Kitty Core still making films?
No. Kitty Core stopped making films after 2018. She never announced a retirement, but she hasn’t released or screened any new work since then. Her last known public appearance was at a small screening in Munich in early 2019, where she simply said, "Thanks for watching," and walked out.
Are any of Kitty Core’s films available on streaming platforms?
No. Kitty Core refused to license her films to any streaming service. She believed films should be experienced in person, not streamed in the background while scrolling. Her works are not on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or any other platform. The only way to see them is through rare bootlegs, private screenings, or archival requests.
Why is Kitty Core considered important in German cinema?
Kitty Core challenged the idea that films needed budgets, scripts, or approval to matter. She proved that raw emotion, real people, and unconventional methods could create powerful art. Her work inspired a generation of German filmmakers to reject industry norms and make films on their own terms-even if they had no money, no equipment, and no audience.
Did Kitty Core ever win any awards?
She was never nominated for major German film awards. Her feature film Die Letzte Fähre screened at the Berlinale in 2016 but didn’t compete. Still, it received a standing ovation and was later named one of the "Most Important Unseen Films of the Decade" by a German film journal. For Kitty, awards were irrelevant. She didn’t make films to win. She made them to be felt.
Can I visit the places where Kitty Core filmed?
Yes. Many of her filming locations are still around. The laundromat where she held her first screenings is now a vegan café. The parking garage roof from Die Letzte Fähre still exists near the Munich East train station. The butcher shop from Wurst und Tränen closed in 2015, but the building is still standing on Schwanthalerstraße. Fans often visit these spots quietly, leaving notes or small films on the door.
What Comes Next?
There are rumors. Always are.
Sources close to the Munich art scene say a new archive is being built by former collaborators. It’s not for public access. It’s for preservation. They’re digitizing the last surviving 16mm reels. One of them, titled Der letzte Film (The Last Film), is said to be 47 minutes of nothing but a candle burning in an empty room.
Will it ever be shown? No one knows.
But if Kitty Core taught us anything, it’s this: You don’t need permission to create. You don’t need an audience to matter. And sometimes, the most powerful stories are the ones that disappear-because they were never meant to be found. They were meant to be felt.
