SEE THE SOUND (July 15–19, 2026), the film festival of SoundTrack_Cologne, invited filmmakers, producers and distributors to submit films with a focus on music and sound.
Eight films have been selected for the competition this year:
Broken English - Marianne Faithfull
Pauline Black - A 2 Tone Story
Music is a Frame - Manos Tsanigaris
The Magic City: Birmingham according to Sun-Ra
Cerrone Supernature
Ensemble Modern - Why We Play
Ihre Kinder - Pioniere der deutschsprachigen Rockmusik
The Musician and the Whale
See the nominated films at ODEON Kino 2 & 3 during SEE THE SOUND
The Best Music Documentary Award will be announced during the award ceremony on July 17, 2026 at 7:00 pm in COMEDIA Theater. The prize winner will receive 2,500 euros.
The award ceremony will be accompanied by a concert featuring orchestral interpretations of film scores. Participants with STC23 accreditations (except Day Passes or AI MusicCon Passes) can attend the ceremony. Tickets can be also purchased separately for the event.
Over six decades and thirty-five albums, Marianne Faithfull never stopped reinventing herself. Made with her full involvement shortly before her death, the film traces a life shaped by fame, creativity, and public scrutiny—drawing on a rich mix of music, memories, and famous faces. It unfolds within the Ministry of Not Forgetting, an imagined institution where memory and mythology collide.
A portrait of Pauline Black, lead vocalist of The Selecter and pioneer of the 2 Tone movement, whose fusion of punk and ska carried an unambiguous anti-racist message through the turbulent late 1970s. Jane Mingay's documentary explores the paradox at its heart: how a Black artist attracted a following that partly drew from skinhead and neo-Nazi subcultures, and how Pauline Black continues to carry that message today.
After the screening, a Q&A with protagonist Pauline Black will follow.
As a student, drummer Manos Tsangaris chose a new kind of activism: he became a composer. His stages are forests, cafés, retirement homes, underground stations, and opera houses. When he told filmmaker Barbara Lubich in 2015 that no film could be made about his work, and then asked her to try, she accepted. A film about the power of listening, and how the world shifts when we truly hear it.
The film's protagonist, Manos Tsangaris, and director Barbara Lubich will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening.
On May 22, 1914, Herman Blount arrives on Earth in Birmingham, the "Magic City", a segregated Southern factory town. At the age of 32, he leaves to become Sun Ra. This film returns to the city-universe that birthed his cosmic philosophy: political and magical.
Nearly fifty years in the music industry, over thirty million albums sold, and a new generation of rappers and electronic producers sampling his tracks, Cerrone revolutionised disco music and left his mark on the French Touch movement. This biopic traces the wild decades-long journey of a man whose mantra, "Right Time, Right Place," still rings true today.
The first feature-length documentary dedicated to one of the world's leading contemporary music ensembles. Going beyond the concert stage, the film immerses us in the charged space of rehearsals, where sound is still alive, fragile, and taking shape. With works by Rebecca Saunders, Heiner Goebbels, and Mark Andre, alongside a younger generation of composers, it presents music not as something fixed, but as a restless, collective search for the sound of our time.
In the early 1970s, Ihre Kinder forged a sound unlike anything in German music, bridging the gap between Schlager and English-language rock with progressive, folk-inflected songs addressing social injustice, environmental destruction, and cultural change. This documentary traces the band's legacy through archival material and voices from music and culture, revealing their foundational role in the history of German-language rock.
After discovering that his music attracts cetaceans, composer Rone embarks on an extraordinary journey to meet a humpback whale and create music for it. In the middle of the ocean, the two engage in a unique, touching exchange, does the whale sing back?
Where: Odeon 3
When: 18.07.2026 21:30
SEE THE SOUND 2026 Jury
Cécile Lacharme
Cécile Lacharme explores the cello with a sensitive and modern approach as the unique musician that she is.
Her music creates immersive sound landscapes, between neoclassical and contemporary textures, that are both soft and powerful, where time expands. Alone on stage, with her pedalboard, she superimposes loops and sonic layers with a 360° sound system, offering an absorbing and cinematographic experience.
From the still horizon of a lake to the might of a storm, Cécile Lacharme subverts her instrument to craft an instrumental journey inspired by her wanderings and encounters, to be found in her first instrumental album in the spring of 2026.
Olaf Karnik has worked as a journalist, editor, writer, and director across a range of cultural media projects, with a particular focus on music publications. He also lectures at several universities and has been active as a DJ since 1985.
After studying media studies, German language and literature, and political science at the University of Cologne, Olaf Karnik (1962) worked as a journalist and editor for various daily newspapers (e.g. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, taz), music magazines (Spex, Intro), radio programmes (WDR 3) and television features (3Sat, ARTE).
He has published books and book chapters on soul and African-American pop music, reggae in Germany and music videos with publishers such as Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Suhrkamp and Ventil.
From 2009 to 2013, Karnik worked as a lecturer on the Popular Music and Media course at the University of Paderborn, as well as a visiting lecturer at various universities.
Later he has worked as a writer and director for cultural features and radio programmes (including Deutschlandfunk, SWR 2 and WDR 5) and has also been teaching German in DaZ and DaF courses since 2017. He has been working as a DJ (e.g. The Soulful Shack) since 1985.
Sonia Gonzalez is a director based in Bordeaux. Following her studies in journalism, she spent several years abroad and directed many documentaries, mostly for ARTE. Her work reflects her passion about feminist issues and alternative cultures.
Born in Toulouse in 1980, Sonia Gonzalez lives in Bordeaux. Between various stays of varying lengths in Paris, following her studies in German and French-English journalism, she spent several years abroad: Trier, Bristol, Berlin, and New York. There, she participated for a year in a documentary arts residency based in Brooklyn, Union Docs, and directed her first short film, Desperately Seeking Stagg Girls, a highly subjective investigation in the South Williamsburg neighborhood, following the imagined trail of a girl gang active in the 1980s.
Passionate about feminist issues and alternative cultures, she co-wrote the film Princesses, Pop Stars, and Girl Power (directed by Cécile Denjean, ARTE) and directed a documentary on the feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl, Riot Grrrl: When Girls Took Power (ARTE). She also directed a web series on the role of girls in video games, Les filles aux Manettes (Arte Creative). In 2022, her film Des femmes face aux missiles traces the history of the all-female Greenham Common Peace Camp in Thatcher’s England. Selected for several festivals (FIPADOC, Femmes en résistance) and broadcast in France (ARTE), Switzerland, Belgium, and Japan, it notably won the Terre(s) d’Histoire Award at Figra 2022 and the Special History Award at the Luchon TV Festival in 2023.
In 2024, she co-directed with Christine Tournadre International Adoption: A Global Scandal, which aired in France (ARTE), Switzerland, and Belgium—an investigative documentary exposing the systemic nature of fraud in international adoption. In her latest film, Il suffit d’écouter les femmes (FRANCE 5), produced by the INA as part of a major archival project on clandestine abortion, she gives a voice to women who had abortions before the Veil Law. The film won the Autrement Vu Award at Figra 2026. Returning to the realm of music documentaries, she has just directed Kate Bush, a timeless genius for ARTE.
Reality Check Masterclass - "Kate Bush, a timeless genius" with Sonia Gonzalez
