Twelve Munich arthouse theaters are once again joining forces for a joint summer festival. This year’s focus at City Kino is an homage to the cinema of the 1990s, which opened the door to new worlds.

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The 1990s were the decade in which postmodern ideas from philosophy and science flowed into the cultural mainstream. This gave rise to works of art that began to question certainties about our reality that had once been taken for granted. 

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Film proved to be the ideal medium for exploring these questions and creating images that have remained in our minds to this day: Don’t we actually live in a Matrix? Isn’t the world around us merely the product of our imagination—a construct that we ourselves constantly recreate based on our sensory perceptions? 

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From today's perspective, given the capabilities of CGI and AI, some of these films seem a bit dated visually and aesthetically – but most of them are true masterpieces of craftsmanship.