The Last Days of Tacheles is a docudrama set in Berlin during the final chapter of one of the city’s most iconic independent art communities. For more than two decades, the Tacheles Art House stood as a symbol of creative freedom, underground culture, and resistance to the forces reshaping the city. After the building was cleared in 2012, a group of artists continued to occupy the backyard, living and working between uncertainty, protest, and the need to keep making art.
The film follows these artists as they confront eviction, gentrification, and the disappearance of a world that had become inseparable from the identity of post-Wall Berlin. Their search for a new home leads them from the remains of Tacheles to unexpected places, including a former Cold War espionage station and a remote town in Turkey. Between acts of rebellion, moments of absurdity, and fragile hopes for renewal, the story becomes a portrait of a community fighting against the end of its own history.
Filmed over the course of a year, The Last Days of Tacheles captures the daily life, conflicts, dreams, and contradictions of the artists who remained. It is both a record of a disappearing place and a reflection on art as a form of survival, rebellion, and memory. Directed by Stefano Casertano, the film preserves the final traces of a Berlin that may no longer exist, but whose spirit continues to resonate.
