Paradise unfolds over 4 separate 16mm films, all set in a fictional Berlin bar named Paradise. Filmed on location over three years at Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff's actual establishment, TV Bar, in Berlin, the lines between fiction and documentary blur as the lived reality of the bar guided the scripted version. This ongoing series casts bar regulars, employees, actors, and neighbours and envisions a dystopian political landscape of the very near future (2023), while still creating space for hope and collective action. The staff of the fictional bar Paradise are forced to both bartend and read from teleprompters to customers, following their mysteriously absent boss’s desire to use the bar as a community news channel. At first, the bar-as-newsroom seems like a noble idea, but as the narrative unfolds, the absent boss loses his grip on reality, and the employees attempt to wrest control of the texts they read. As the authority of the teleprompter is questioned, new spaces of poetic, humorous and political resonances are produced, providing room for collective agency. Paradise was shot over the entire duration that TV Bar was open, tying their dual fates together. At that time, episodes were played on screens in surrounding bars and cafes or community spaces, delineating the existing network of economic and social realities that the film and the project more broadly, sought to address.