Berlin club closures investigated in new documentary: Watch

A new documentary investigates the run of club closures in Berlin.

The 30-minute documentary Ausgetanzt? Berliner Clubs unter Druck (Danced out? Berlin Clubs under Pressure), directed by Friederike Schlumbom and Alix François Meier, is now available to stream via ARD Mediathek after premiering on RBB on 30th December, Resident Advisor reports. It examines the world-renowned and UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status club scene, still experiencing a significant amount of precarity and closures — “clubsterben”, or “club death” — for the venues that make the culture possible. 

Queer club SchwuZ is a focus of the documentary after the 50-year-old hub was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2024 after significant financial struggles and losses.

It also spends time covering Renate’s rollercoaster in the last couple years, having initially announced a permanent closure in 2025 when its lease was up, then suffering a fire in summer 2025 and then promising to remain open in 2026 after a temporary closure.

In 2024, Watergate closed its doors for good after 22 years. “We’re facing enormous financial pressure, which ultimately led us to the decision not to extend the club’s lease”, co-founder Ulrich Wombacher told RA at the time. 

For more on the potential protections and limitations of Berlin club culture’s UNESCO recognition, revisit Martin Guttride-Hewitt’s in-depth feature from 2021.

In 2020, SchwuZ’s artistic director LCavaliero Mann spoke to Paul Hanford about the Covid-19 club closures’s effect on the queer community. 

Watch the German-language documentary Ausgetanzt? Berliner Clubs unter Druck in full here.