SEE THE SOUND 2026
Award Ceremony + Concert
The SoundTrack_Cologne awards ceremony is once again open to the public this year. Five prizes will be awarded during the event, including the Career Achievement Award to to composer Christopher Young, one of the most prolific and versatile voices in contemporary film music.
DetailBook Presentation: This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich
For over seven decades, generations of artists have forged unsettling connections with the aesthetics, mass hysteria, and ideology of Nazism. Whether born of shock, recklessness, or outright provocation, rock 'n' roll has harboured these associations more than any other art form. This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll, the new book from bestselling author, journalist, and former musician Daniel Rachel, explores why and how some of rock's most prominent figures flirted with Nazi imagery. Daniel Rachel will present the book in conversation with Pauline Black — singer of The Selecter, actress, and author.
DetailBoy George & Culture Club
With humor, heart, and plenty of glitz and glam, this documentary dives into the chaos, charisma, and enduring bond of one of the most iconic bands of the 1980s. Director Alison Ellwood combines interviews with all four members with TV footage from the era—a love story of fondness, drama, and heartbreak behind a worldwide Number 1 hit.
DetailCerrone Supernature
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.
DetailDiane Warren: Relentless
Four decades, 15 Oscar nominations, and an Honorary Oscar, Diane Warren is one of the most prolific songwriters of all time, behind iconic songs such as "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" (Armagedon), "Because You Loved Me" (Up Close and Personal), and "How Do I Live" (Con Air) featured in over 150 films. Director Bess Kargman traces her journey, with first-hand commentary from Cher, Lady Gaga, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Hudson, and many more.
DetailDJ Ahmet
A 15-year-old Yuruk boy from a remote Macedonian village escapes into music amidst family pressure and forbidden love for a promised girl. With his silent brother and a German girl named Aya, he starts secret raves on a field. To stop her wedding, they fight tradition, one beat at a time.
DetailEnsemble Modern - Why We Play
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.
DetailEuropean Talent Competition
As part of the European Talent Competition, the WDR FILMSCORE AWARD and the EUROPEAN TALENT AWARD SOUND DESIGN are presented. For this competition, young composers and sound designers were invited to create the music and sound design for the short film "FAKE NEWS" (Dir: David Seul). The finalist teams are presented to the jury and the audience.
DetailEverybody Digs Bill Evans
June 1961: pianist Bill Evans records two landmark jazz albums in a single day at New York's Village Vanguard. Days later, his musical soulmate and bassist Scott LaFaro dies in a car crash. Devastated, Evans stops playing entirely. This is the story of what happened next, a portrait of grief, addiction, and the long road back to the piano.
DetailKitKatClub - Kinks of Berlin
Inside one of the world's most iconic clubs, this documentary follows very different people through their Berlin nights: a drag artist chasing his breakthrough, friends discovering new sexualities, a BDSM couple, a dog-play duo, a man fighting addiction, and club founder Simon—a relic of the club's founding generation. Unfiltered and poetic, a film about freedom, identity, and unlearning shame.
DetailMusic is a frame - Manos Tsangaris
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.
DetailPauline Black: A 2 Tone Story
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.
DetailPeer Raben Music Award screening
In 2026, SoundTrack_Cologne 23 presents once more, the PEER RABEN MUSIC AWARD for the best music in a short film and cordially invites film composers* and filmmakers* to submit their short films with their original compositions.
DetailSEE THE SOUND 2026 Cinema Pass
The full pass: Attend all films of the SEE THE SOUND 2026 programme with the Cinema Pass and save.
DetailSilent Film Concert
French cellist and composer Cécile Lacharme will perform at the COMEDIA Theater in Cologne on 16 July 2026, presenting her original composition for the restored German silent film HANSEATEN. Created in collaboration with the Deutsche Kinemathek, the performance will be recorded live and synchronised with the restored film, bringing a century-old work back to life through a contemporary musical voice.
DetailSound of Air
Two artists, one working with image and one with sound, meet in a shared process of experimentation and spontaneity. Crossing into each other's practices, they find a space where sound and image challenge, disrupt, and transform one another, until a new expression gradually emerges from the tension between the visible and the audible.
DetailSun Ra: Do The Impossible
Poet, philosopher, Egyptologist, bandleader—jazz visionary Sun Ra defied all classification. With his Sun Ra Arkestra, he stretched the boundaries of free jazz, weaving Afrofuturist thinking and interstellar metaphors into a cosmic mission. Director Christine Turner assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait through archival footage, Arkestra testimonies, and scholar insights.
DetailTalk with Chris Young
Composer Christopher Young, named the "Greatest Horror Film Composer of All Time" by BBC Music Magazine and celebrated across more than 160 feature films spanning horror, drama, and large-scale action, will be honoured with the Career Achievement Award at SoundTrack_Cologne 23. On Thursday, 16 July, he will take part in an in-depth onstage conversation about his acclaimed career, followed by a special award ceremony on Friday, 17 July, featuring the Neues Rheinisches Kammerorchester performing a selection of his most iconic scores.
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