THE 15th German Film Fest is coming to town tomorrow with no fewer than 36 films to screen.

Sonja Griegoschewski is director of the Goethe-Institut Australia, which organises the festival, and describes 2016 as “a particularly inspiring year for women, both behind and in front of the camera with Maren Ade’s ‘Toni Erdmann’, Doris Dörrie’s, ‘Fukushima, Mon Amour’, Julia Jentsch in ‘24 Weeks’, and many more.”

It opens with “Goodbye Berlin”, the latest feature by director Fatih Akin, which takes audiences on a road trip through provincial Germany, but this year’s biggest local box-office hit is undoubtedly “The Most Beautiful Day”, which deals with two terminally ill patients who decide to go out with a bang on a road trip through Africa.

In the “Kids + Teens” section there will be “Emerald Green”, the final adaptation of the fantasy time-travel trilogy by Kerstin Gier’s novel featuring child star Maria Ehrich and Jannis Niewöhner.

“Heidi” is Alain Gsponer’s second adaption of Johanna Spyri’s classic novel of the same name, about an orphan’s simple life in the Swiss Alps.

All eyes, though, will seem to be on director Hans Steinbichler’s German version of “The Diary of Anne Frank”.

While these films are from the past most of the festival is actually concerned with the here and now.

“After Spring Comes Fall” follows the life of a young Kurdish refugee woman in Germany who is forced to work as an informer for the Syrian opposition, and Oscar winner Wim Wenders pulls in James Franco, Rachel McAdams and Charlotte Gainsbourg for a 3D epic about a writer who is tormented by the accidental death of a child.

Horses make uplifting appearances in “Hördur”, about a young Muslim girl who is sentenced to community service, where she meets a wild Icelandic stallion which sets her on a path to self-discovery. With a similar theme, Katja von Garnier’s, “Windstorm,” winner of the Outstanding Children or Youth Film Award at the German Film Awards introduces a young girl living in a small German town, who befriends an untamed stallion.

Among the several documentaries are “Fassbinder”, a depiction of one of the most prolific filmmakers of New German Cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, by designer-turned-filmmaker Annekatrin Hendel. There’s also “My Buddha is Punk”, which follows a young Burmese punk in Myanmar, who challenges many democratic reforms, religious and political dogma through music. And another is “Fukushima, Mon Amour” which is shot entirely in black-and-white, set in the middle of Fukushima’s Exclusion Zone by filmmaker Doris Dörrie.

The festival concludes as so many these days do, with a new restoration of a classic, in this case  “Varieté”, the 1925 silent drama directed and written by Ewald Andre Dupont. It’s about a trapeze artist, and guess what? He is played by Emil Jannings, who won the first-ever Oscar for acting back in 1929.

THE 15th German Film Fest Australia, at Palace Electric, NewActon, November 24-27, bookings to  palacecinemas.com.au