The German Film Institute - DIF e.V. is the oldest film studies institute in the Federal Republic of Germany; it was founded on April 13, 1949. The "German Institute for Film Studies", as it was initially called, was initially based in Biebrich Palace. Today it is located in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main.

Its task is to communicate German and international film history and film culture. The DIF archives play a special role in this. Here, materials are collected, conserved, restored, prepared for the public and preserved for future generations. Wiesbaden is home to the DIF with its film distribution, the picture archive and the goEast - Festival of Central and Eastern European Film.

The archive center, newly opened in Friedrich-Bergius-Straße in January 2009, holds more than 20,000 film copies, from the silent film era to the present day. The DIF's tasks include distribution (silent film classics, early sound films, international productions in 35mm cinema format and in digital film format for non-commercial events), archiving (professional film storage for filmmakers, producers, distributors, institutions and private individuals) and film deposit (including Hessian film funding), the preservation and restoration of important film works, research (film viewings and film research, publication of DVDs) and licensing (granting of distribution and exploitation rights for 3.500 theatrical films from the rights portfolio of the KINEOS Group, formerly KirchMedia GmbH).

The image archive holds around 2.3 million photos and slides of national and international film productions. In addition to photographs from the early years - including classics such as Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and Sergei M. Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" - the collection also includes images of current new releases such as Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" trilogy (2012-2014) and Til Schweiger's "Honig im Kopf" (2014). Close contacts with distributors and publishers ensure that the stock is constantly being expanded. The latest German and foreign productions are often added to the collections before their theatrical release. Photos of feature films shown in Germany after 1945 are available almost in their entirety.

Alongside the Deutsche Kinemathek, the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung and the DEFA-Stiftung, the Deutsches Filminstitut is currently involved in the digitization of German film heritage. As in 2014, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media is providing a total of €1 million for this in 2015, with the DIF receiving €250,000. Films from the distribution program can be seen in Wiesbaden at the Caligari FilmBühne and in Frankfurt at the Deutsches Filmmuseum cinema.