Eleven-year-old Santino is a child of the circus. Travelling across the country with animals and caravans—here today, gone tomorrow. For Santino, home is not a place, but his family. He loves to spend time with his 88-year-old great-grandfather Ehe, one of Europe‘s last great circus directors, who has become his best friend. Together they share heartwarming stories: tales of a friendship with an elephant, of farewells, new beginnings, and life on the road. Circusboy is an internationally acclaimed documentary that chronicles the lives of these modern nomads, capturing a young boy‘s experience growing up among an extended family and animals—a life without a safety net, as free as a bird.

BADABUM (Anna Koch & Julia Lemke)
Since graduating from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) in 2016, Anna Koch and Julia Lemke have been working together as the directing duo BADABUM. Their documentary Schultersieg, a coming-of-age drama set in the professional female wrestling scene of East Germany, won the award for Best Documentary at the 2016 International Hofer Film Festival and was featured at IDFF in Amsterdam in 2016 and SXSW in 2017. Their latest film Circusboy premiered at the Berlinale in 2025. It is the first documentary created through the Special Children’s Film Initiative, a project launched in 2013 by the German Federal Film Board with the aim of giving greater visibility and importance to children’s films based on original stories.