Babelsberg Film Studios

Babelsberg Film Studios is the oldest large-scale film studio complex in the world, founded in 1912 and still in continuous production. Over 110 years of film history happened here: the golden age of German silent cinema, the UFA talkies, Nazi propaganda films, DEFA's remarkably subversive East German productions, and post-reunification blockbusters including parts of The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Reader, and Inglourious Basterds.

Studio tours run in season (spring through autumn), covering the backlot sets, film history exhibits, and technical demonstrations. The tours are aimed at families and include some theme-park elements, but the genuine film heritage at the site — the original studio buildings, the stages where Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings worked — gives it a depth that purely commercial attractions lack. The studios are in Babelsberg, directly adjacent to the park of the same name, about 20 minutes by tram from Potsdam city centre.

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A story
Fritz Lang's Metropolis was shot at Babelsberg in 1927 — the most expensive silent film ever made, employing 36,000 extras and nearly bankrupting the UFA studio. Later, when the Nazi Propaganda Ministry took control of UFA, Babelsberg became the engine of German cinema as ideology. After the war, the East German DEFA studio operated here — the studio that made some of the finest films to come out of any Communist country. All of this happened in the same buildings, on the same stages.

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