The REWE Green Farming Markt, a unique supermarket, opened in Berlin in May: whilst customers fill their shopping baskets downstairs, fresh salad is growing upstairs. Harvesting is now underway in Germany’s largest rooftop greenhouse, and the first mixed salad packs are making their way through the checkouts.

An extraordinary attraction for dogs and their owners took place recently at the newly opened Zoo Royal specialist store: At the free dog-diving event, the dogs in attendance jumped into a nine-metre-long pool nearly 200 times – some bravely in a wide arc, others cautiously down the ramp, depending on their temperament. Animal welfare was always the top priority: each dog decided for itself how far it wanted to go. 

REWE and ZooRoyal are further expanding their presence in the brick-and-mortar pet retail sector and are bringing the concept to North Rhine-Westphalia for the first time. A new ZooRoyal pet shop is set to open on 16 July at 10 In den Diken, Düsseldorf. Until now, ZooRoyal had only been represented by four outlets in northern Germany.

Germany is lacking a sense of community. At the same time, there is a growing expectation that companies should take responsibility for social cohesion. This is shown by a recent, representative study carried out by the REWE Group, which is being published to mark International Co-operatives Day on 4 July.

German cinema is making a splash this autumn with fictional stories based on real-life events. In “Vaterland”, Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski has Thomas Mann travel through post-war Germany in 1949 with his daughter Erika, a role in which Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller bring the perfect expression to this dark comedy. In Pauline Roenneberg’s family-oriented psychological comedy “Kalter Hund”, deadly chasms open up on the occasion of the patriarch’s 100th birthday. And with Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the nefarious Babylon comes to an end in the fifth series of “Berlin Babylon”. But first, there is one final series of murders to solve, available from 10 September on the ARD Mediathek.

No place in the world is better at shielding young people from their parents’ influence than a holiday camp. No wonder, then, that it has given rise to a whole host of myths and legends, true and fictional stories, a whole host of films – and even its own film sub-genres, ranging from the creepy to the romantic. Two decidedly original takes on the theme are hitting the big screen this summer. In the darkly colourful comedy *Sunny Dancer*, 18-year-old Ivy makes up for lost youth at a ‘chemo camp’. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”, featuring a star-studded cast, develops into a satirical horror film-within-a-film. And on Netflix, comedian Ricky Gervais roams through animated alleyways in six episodes as a fat tomcat with his “Alley Cats”.

The crux of film music is that, at best, you don’t even notice it. Two wonderful films showing in cinemas this July make it a central element of the plot. First, there is the romantic thriller-comedy *The Piano Tuner*, which centres on a piano concerto composed especially for the film. Then there’s Pedro Almodóvar’s regular composer, Alberto Iglesias, who weaves his harmonies around a classic by the Mexican singer Chavela, turning *A Bitter Feast* into an aural delight. Orchestrated drama also awaits viewers in the 10-part remake of the psychological thriller “Cape of Fear”, starring Amy Adams and Javier Bardem, on Apple TV.