23.000 Leben - Movie & Iuventa - Documentary
"23 000 Leben" – a film about the story of Jugend Rettet and the Iuventa, the people we met at sea and helped survive the crossing, and the repression we faced for doing so.
23,000 Lives is available exclusively on Netflix.
Drected by Markus Goller and written by Oliver Ziegenbalg in collaboration with Michele Cinque, features a star-studded cast: Louis Hofmann, Mala Emde, Katharina Stark, Frederick Lau, Maria Dragus, Trevor Magaya, Kathy Etoa, Felice, Saibon Wang, Joone Dankou, Merlin von Garnier, Luisa-Céline Gaffron, and Omid Memar. Guest appearances include Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Franka Potente, Katja Riemann, Frank Plasberg, Herbert Knaup, and Eleonora Romandini.
A production by Neue Flimmer GmbH (Christopher Zwickler) and Sunnysideup Film GmbH (Oliver Ziegenbalg and Markus Goller) in collaboration with Lazy Film. Oscar winners Christian Goldbeck and Volker Bertelmann were brought on board for production design and music, respectively, and Frankie DeMarco heads the camera department.
The documentary film Iuventa relates the events of a crucial year in the lives of a group of European young men and women all involved in different ways in the Jugend Rettet humanitarian project, starting from the first voyage of the Iuventa ship in the Mediterranean Sea to the heavy accusations that led to the seizure of the vessel more than a year later.
Lazy Film
A film by Michele Cinque
Editing: Piero Lassandro; Cinematography: Michele Cinque, Martina Cocco
Music: Hackedepicciotto; Sound Design and Mix: Giuseppe D’Amato, Giancarlo Rutigliano
Executive Producers: Christof Brüning, Michele Cinque, Ognjen Dizdarevic, René Frotscher
DISTRIBUTION
Since its launch in July 2018, Iuventa has been selected at more than 12 international film festivals, has been screened at the European Parliament and in several prestigious universities around the world. The film has become a political manifesto against the criminalization of solidarity at sea and the humanitarian movement that supports NGOs in search-and-rescue missions in the central Mediterranean. Because of the political role of the film in the European context, the production decided not to focus primarily on film festivals; instead, the main goal was to spread the film as widely as possible, focusing on its social impact through every possible distribution channel. Right after its premiere at the Biografilm Festival in 2018, the film was released theatrically in Germany with the partner FarbFilm Verleih and, a few months later, in Italy in collaboration with Zalab and Wanted Cinema. In one year, the film was screened 300 times and was seen by more than 500,000 people in Germany, and it had almost 100 screenings in Italy. It inspired the Netflix feature film 23.000 lives. Iuventa ia avilable on Netflix Europe since July 27th 2026.