The Halfmoon Files is a sonic invitation to listen to the forgotten stories of colonial prisoners of the First World War at Half Moon Camp. Their voices were recorded as part of an ambitious sound archive that aspired to represent all nations of the world. In an attempt to activate historical events by means of personal narration, the filmmaker revives the spirits of the prisoners by initiating an experimental cinematic journey.

Philip Scheffner has been working as a visual artist since 1985. His feature-length artistic documentaries The Halfmoon Files (2007), The Day of the Sparrow (2010), Revision (2012), And-Ek Ghes... (2016), and Havarie (2016) have been screened worldwide and won numerous awards. Since 2021 he is Professor of Documentary Practices at the KHM Cologne. His new film Europe premiered at the Berlinale in 2022. Scheffner is part of the Berlin production platform / collective pong (together with Merle Kröger, Alex Gerbaulet, Caroline Kirberg and Mareike Bernien).

Slavs and Tatars is an internationally renowned art collective devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture- performances.