I immediately googled whether there might be an anniversary coming up. But puff cake! The KitKatClub, the mythical fetish techno club in Berlin, celebrated its – actually hardly worth mentioning – 32nd birthday last March. Nevertheless, there are now two competing documentaries – and they are also produced by the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, which have not previously been suspected of being particularly sex-positive. At the end of September 2026, the documentary “One Night At KitKat” will be broadcast – on ARD Kultur (!), of all places. The Iranian director couple Mohsen Najafimehri and Diba Darbari received exclusive access to one of the legendary KitKat kink parties on Saturday evening. This is shown in color, although in the end the light and shadow of the club culture are of course shown simply because of the educational mission.
“KitKatClub – Kinks Of Berlin” by Philipp Fussenegger opens three weeks earlier – and even in the cinema. Co-produced by ZDF Kleines Fernsehenspiel, the documentary will also be shown on TV at some point – and since the cinema distributor has already confirmed to us that there will be no adapted cut for television broadcast, we can probably count ourselves lucky that the Austrian “Teaches Of Peaches” director shot in high-contrast black and white. Because otherwise it would certainly have resulted in one or two heart attacks among the average 65-year-old ZDF audience if KitKat founder Simon Thaur had the actress in his latest fetish porn urinate in the faces of two old men in the park (original sound: “Pissmaul”). Not to mention the detailed explanations of the “FickstutenMarkt” that takes place regularly at KitKat.
The preparation sometimes takes almost as long as the later visit to the club.
But the inexperienced audience probably won’t get there by then, because “Kinks Of Berlin” already fades in its opening titles with such a hardcore strobe effect that, in addition to epileptics, anyone who just happened to get stuck in the program will immediately switch on. Fussenegger then – consciously – only sparingly fulfills this transgressive promise; after all, even fetish ravers are faced with the choice of what kind of sandwich topping they want to start the day with when they get up. “Kinks Of Berlin” is not a look behind the infamous club institution and does not present any talking head experts, but rather accompanies a number of very different people who will go to the KitKat in the evening but are afraid of the – extensive! – First of all, you have to deal with everyday things like visits to the employment office.
Fussenegger meets his protagonists – from the aspiring drag artist Tim alias Raven Van Krueger to the dog play duo Oli & Foxy to the sex positivity pioneer Simon Thaur and his partner/slave Mali – pleasantly open and not at all scandalous, even with the more unusual kinks. Because during the shoot, a lot of attention had to be paid to the privacy of those not directly involved in the film, the spontaneous shots from the dance floor look more like a typical music video clip with a fetish theme due to the monochromatic images – you’ve never seen it before, but actually you’ve seen it hundreds of times. There are more concrete moments in the adjacent smaller rooms, where the filming could be more private (and more explicit).
Just happy! In the film, the dog-play duo Oli & Foxy seem as if they have their relationship best under control of all, despite (or because of?) the begging for treats and mass fuck mare orgies.
“KitKatClub – Kinks Of Berlin” has therefore, and this is a real rarity, especially for a documentary, received an age rating of 18 and over (the ARD competition got away with a rating of 16 and over). The film is surprisingly educationally valuable, after all it follows the typical drug film dramaturgy: first the total high and then the (almost) inevitable crash. After the loss of shame, feelings of freedom and chosen families, the last third is primarily about drug crashes, excessive alcohol, house bans, sexual assaults and gaps in the KitKat awareness process, which have long since been closed in other comparable, albeit less famous, locations. That’s undoubtedly part of it, but it also seems pretty predictable for a documentary on this topic.
Conclusion: The KitKatClub door is one of the strictest in the country – and (cell phone) cameras are absolutely forbidden behind it. “Kinks Of Berlin” provides rare insights into this world-famous institution, but then focuses more on the guests, who are often not only looking for a lively techno party and shame-free fetish sex, but are also looking for some support from their club family. Despite the fact that access hasn’t necessarily been granted so far, it’s not all that new, but at least we’re all urgently waiting for the spin-off about the dog-play duo Oli & Foxy, because the two of them really steal the show here!