In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.
Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.
After trying to smuggle a package into prison for his father Willi, Harry and his girlfriend Marlies also end up in jail. While Harry is billeted with Daddy, Marlies is housed just one floor up in the cell of the ageing prostitute Jutta. With Christmas just around the corner, the four of them join forces and plan to break through to their cells to celebrate a lavish party with a can of homemade schnapps.
In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on the lovers (Paulina and Stanislaus), on a jealous and conniving neighbor, and on Mayer, the local SS commander who wants to find a way out of inevitable consequences.
In this sun soaked adventure for the entire family, a group of five orphaned children form their own makeshift family while attempting to operate outside the rules of society. Though they must sometimes steal to survive, their loyalty to one another means that they will always have a brother or sister to count on.
Brothers Franz and Erich Sass grew up poor. Together with his brother Franz, Erich specializes in cracking safes. Erich spends the money with his hands full. In the meantime, the police have also become aware of the brothers. Pursued by Detective Fabich, they get deeper and deeper into criminal circles. A man called Adolf demands that the Sass brothers work for him. He blackmails them and has their father beaten to death. The brothers then agree to work together. However, Adolf plans to have them killed after the coup. The two brothers manage to escape; they are also able to flee from the police, who catch them while they are still breaking into the bank.
Rex Gildo’s songs and musicals made him very popular. His best-known song was “Fiesta Mexicana” from 1972. Rosa von Praunheim tells the story of his life in the context of the gay pride movement, the normative pressures of the Schlager music industry, and the profound changes currently underway.
Comedian Harmonists tells the story of a famous, German male sextet, five vocals and piano, the "Comedian Harmonists", from the day they meet first in 1927 to the day in 1934, when they become banned by the upcoming Nazis, because three of them are Jewish.
Being one of the most significant, contemporary painters, Albert Oehlen’s approach is complete refusal of the common art circus. In its own way the Film reflects this very stance. Likewise, it questions the purpose of obsolete thinking patterns created by white straight male artists of a certain age that have dominated the art world for centuries.
Inspired by real-life Elsa Andersson, this mostly fictional movie tells the story of her upbringing as a farmer's daughter, in the early 1900s, who dreams of getting away from the farm and becoming an aviatrix.
Emanuel Goldfarb, a Jewish journalist respond to an invitation by a professor to tell his pupils about his life as a Jew living in Germany.
A story set in a small village in Sudetenland between 1937 and 1945. "Habermann" is based on true events.
The ruthless mafioso El Huron spreads fear and terror throughout Mexico. He and his henchmen know no mercy. When Chucky, a low-level member of the organization, reveals that a media and mafia conspiracy is being plotted against his cartel, he threatens to break down under the pressure. El Huron is then forced to reactivate the aging underground killer Ñero.
Max and Moritz are two young brothers living an adventurous life of petty crime in Hamburg, Germany. After the two boys steal a car and get into an accident, with the adolescent daughter of a Hamburg Senator sitting in the passenger seat, the two scoundrels are packed up and sent to a boot camp. This military-style camp is run by Axel and Henry, two former East German soldiers who still strongly believe in Communism but are secretly gay lovers. Max and Moritz steal another car...a red Ferrari owned by small-town pimp Murder-Hanne. The nationalistic sadist teaches the boys a painful lesson, but Max and Moritz wouldn’t be Max and Moritz if they let this weekend-fascist get them down... and when they acquire the key to their military school’s ordinance depot, things start to change.
A legendary band story began in Münster, Westphalia, in 1973: Udo Lindenberg and the Panikorchester played their first concert and released the successful album "Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria". What follows is history. The documentary shows the turbulent path from the pub Onkel Pö to the big stadiums of the republic.
Simon Sachs, a terminally ill ten year old boy, claims to have been a serial killer in his previous life and apparently he can prove it. He leads a lawyer, Robert Stern, to the locations of the bodies, who were killed long before Simon was born. Stern takes on the most compelling and mysterious case of his life.
Ramona lives her lonely life in Berlin working in a lipstick factory. One day she accidentally runs into Andrzei, a Polish mechanic illegally selling cigarettes in Germany during the weekend. One thing leads to another, and soon she finds herself pregnant. Then her life starts falling apart, when Andrzei tells her he already has a wife back in Poland and her baby dies shortly after its premature birth.
The life story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew, who as a physician established the field of sexology, and fought militantly against German anti-sodomy laws in the late 19th century. The script reveals main characters in Hirschfeld's life including impossible love interest Baron von Teschenberg, and Hirschfeld's aids- young Karl Giese and guardian angel, the transvestite Dorchen, as they establish the First Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin in 1920, and follows their struggles to keep it open, up to the rise of the Third Reich in the mid 1930s.
Prussian general's son Friedrich, Freiherr (German baron) von der Trenck, is an unruly student whose countless affairs make him enemies, but he wins every duel. Frederic II the Great recruits him for his personal bodyguard. During his cadet training under the cruel stickler Graf (count) von Jaschinsky Friedrich falls in love with the king's headstrong oldest sister Amalia. She, however, refuses to be married off the the Swedish king's heir. When Prussia makes war on Austria over Silesia, Trenck's loyalty is dubious on account of an Austrian family branch. Janischky eagerly convinces the king there is more.
CHAOSTAGE is the first real german Punk movie. part fictional, part documentary it tells the story of some young punks...
In this biopic, Marlene Dietrich leaves Berlin for Hollywood, where she establishes herself as an international star through various film roles.
A man from Ostfriesland travels to Hamburg and sets course for America on a steamship to conquer this New World as well. What he leaves behind is a swath of devastation, a breach of confusion, a Milky Way full of music, a dead end full of mad jokes and perhaps a touch too much wordplay at the expense of others. But what is worst of all: he has also made a film about it!
The discovery of an unknown virus in a young man leads to frantic activity on the part of the state apparatus. Fearing an epidemic, they want to send the man to a quarantine camp. A magistrate judge, to whom the case is presented, resists political pressure and refuses to admit him. In doing so, he puts himself in danger.
The naive 18 year old Dobrila leaves her little Serbian village to travel to Hamburg, Germany, where her boyfriend lives. The trip is not easy. Finally in Hamburg she has to realize her boyfriend is not very interested in a relationship. She doesn't tell him she's pregnant and starts on her way home to Serbia, which turns out to be even more exhausting.
Follows the lives of students and their teachers based on the director's childhood memories. The events of the film take places in the actual boarding school called "Gymnasium Canisianum", founded in 1946 by a German catholic priest.
After a policeman is shot dead, the Hanover CID receives an anonymous tip-off that the perpetrator is also a policeman. Detective Stefan Bregert is brought in as an undercover investigator and it looks as if some of his colleagues are hiding more than they are admitting...
The day after his abduction, a nine-year-old boy is found seemingly unharmed, but he has suffered severe trauma as a result of his time in the hands of his abductor. He distances himself from his mother and refuses to give any information about the perpetrator.
The Rhine is the center of the European soul, the continent's largest and most important river. Over thousands of years, it has formed unique cultural landscapes on its way from the high Alps to the North Sea, in which peoples and nature have shaped each other. On its way from the Gotthard massif to the sea, it connects six countries: Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Germany, France and the Netherlands. For centuries, the Rhine separated the Germans from France, but for almost 70 years it has connected these two countries. But Luxembourg, Belgium and Italy are also within its sphere of influence. Film follows the course of the river exclusively from a bird's eye view and presents a fascinating panorama from the center of Europe that develops its full power on the big screen. From above, our homeland is no longer the same: the glittering floodplains of the Rhine are reminiscent of the Caribbean, the meadows in the alluvial plains look like the Serengeti.
1640. A man attempts to flee from England, torn apart by religious unrest, to France. He is the philosopher and irreverent cynic Thomas Hobbes. But before he can reach the ship that will save him, civil war breaks out. The chaos inspires him to develop new philosophical theories. While writing his futuristic epic, he is assisted by a nobleman who accompanies him on his escape disguised as a servant. The futuristic epic that Hobbes invents is set in the present day. The main characters are a married couple who run a grocery store and try to compete with a supermarket.
The wild West Berlin of the 1980s became the creative melting pot of pop subcultures: music, art and chaos. Before the Iron Curtain fell, anything and everything seemed possible.
Berlin Alexanderplatz; within 24 hours, various stories rotate between the heights and depths of the square, between the television tower and the subway shafts, between larger and smaller fates, that slowly but surely become entangled.
Firefighters Stefan and Johannes and psychologist Marta Weber, Stefan's girlfriend, are targeted by the psychopathic arsonist Kovacz. Johannes is killed by an insidious firebomb in an attack on Marta's apartment. Apparently the arsonist also dies in the flames, but his body is never found. Stefan fears that the madman is still alive...
Germany, 1967. Ruby & Martin, a young couple, are rehearsing their uprising. The price is high: expulsion from school, parental violence, and ultimately institutionalization. But they are ready to take on the cause of love.
In the little town of Herzsprung - whose name harks back to an ancient legend of broken hearts - almost nothing has changed since German unification, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, becomes one of the unemployed and lives on welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with a dark-skinned, roving adventurer and the whole village starts talking about it.
A family spends their vacation in the basement so that their neighbors don't notice that they can't afford to go on vacation.
This documentary tells the story of an unusual victim of the Nazi holocaust -- Kurt Gerron, a German film actor and cabaret star. During World War II, Gerron went from being a leading light of the German entertainment community (he made over 70 films and sang "Mack the Knife" in the first performance of The Three-Penny Opera) to a prisoner directing a propaganda film for the Nazis about a makeshift club at Theresienstadt, which was described as a "concentration camp for celebrities." Gerron was eventually executed at Auschwitz. Director Ilona Ziok combines archival footage of Gerron with interviews of peers and survivors who describe how Gerron tragically believed his gifts as an entertainer would save his life -- and how he enthusiastically kept performing right up to his death.
A radio presenter and a telephone operator, both mourning the loss of their unhappy love affair, meet anonymously in an Internet chat room after a fated car accident, where emails bring them closer to each other.
Undine rescues a prince from drowning, and leaves him unconscious on shore, where he can be found, but she has already fallen in love with him. Unable to enjoy life below the waves, the mermaid makes a deal with the Sea Witch to become human. The mermaid must also give her voice as payment. And her humanity is only conditional: if she can make the prince fall in love with her and marry her, she can gain a share in his soul and be truly human, but if he marries another, she will die at the next sunrise. It turns out that the witch only made her believe she would die if the prince married another as a Secret Test of Character: by refusing to kill the prince even to save her own life, she proves that she already has a soul. So she remains human, gets her voice back, and sets out to explore the world.
Charly was a clown before he lost his talent for making people laugh. When Charly loses his last engagement, he decides to take his own life. He jumps off a bridge under which Karla, a notorious merrymaker, is disposing of her latest victim. His suicide attempt fails, so Charly blackmails Karla: either she kills him or he betrays her to the police. Karla is a lust murderer, she only kills who she loves - and Karla simply can't feel anything for the world-weary clown. When all attempts to kill her fail miserably, Charly has a plan: laughter is the best aphrodisiac. Charly wants to make Karla laugh, make her fall madly in love with him and then finally be able to kill him.
The young son of a sports journalist helps his out-of-town father out of a jam by getting into the hotel room of a famous boxer and conducting a sensational star interview with him.
Before there were home video formats and the internet, the “Bahnhofskinos” (“Train station cinemas”) in West Germany regularly showed trash and erotica movies. Various filmmakers and especially contemporary witnesses recount in the documentary “Cinema Perverso – the wonderful and broken world of Bahnhofskino” their experiences and impressions.
Protected from the intrigues of con-men by the overwhelming blanket of the former regime in East Germany, at first it seems that Ada Fenske, the elderly widow living on a farm near a soon-to-be abandoned Russian island military base is fair game. The (West) German military intelligence services want to acquire her farm. At first, their agent attempts to buy the property openly, but her refusal to sell motivates him to try far shadier techniques. He comes up with a relative she never knew about who is entitled to a share in the property and tries to blackmail the township's mayor to get his cooperation. However, the hard-working and honest old lady has an ally in the person of her more sophisticated border, a woman who works in the mayor's office and has been to the West. She takes great delight in foiling the underhanded agent.
They once played together in a band called Chix and were inseparable. Today, each of them has their own problems.
Emma Mayer is a psychologist and advises people in crisis situations. She works at a radio station in Mannheim and does her best to provide callers with help and support. When a hostage-taker calls her during a broadcast, her expertise and improvisation are called for, as the caller forces her to move out of the studio and confront him directly. When she arrives at the petrol station, Emma gets involved in a question-and-answer game: For every correct answer, a hostage is allowed to leave; for every wrong answer, a hostage loses their life.
Generosity, weakness for expensive pleasures and ruin is a combination that does not bode well. Johann Friedrich von Allmen was a man with a taste for women and the expensive pleasures of life. Unfortunately, his luck has run out, but now a new opportunity presents itself.
New Year's Eve, shortly after five. Ten travelers have missed the last ferry to Copenhagen and are lured aboard the small steamer "Esperanza" by the stewardess. At first, guests like Anna, Franz and Natascha are treated to delicacies and classical dance music. When the captain gets lost in the fog, the passengers admit to their life's lies.
A man from Ostfriesland travels to Hamburg and sets course for America on a steamship to conquer this New World as well. What he leaves behind is a swath of devastation, a breach of confusion, a Milky Way full of music, a dead end full of mad jokes and perhaps a touch too much wordplay at the expense of others. But what is worst of all: he has also made a film about it!
His name is the symbol of the traitor: Judas, the disciple of Jesus who delivered him to the cross. But is he really seen correctly or is our entire interpretation, our entire view of Judas not based on a mistake? Ben Becker becomes Judas and defends himself - with a text by Walter Jens, he puts the story into perspective and makes us think again about the supposedly clear-cut case of Judas. He stands in Berlin Cathedral, accompanied by the organ of cathedral organist Andreas Sieling, and makes it clear that he, Judas, cannot be a traitor because there was no betrayal. After all, what did he reveal that everyone didn't know anyway? That Jesus claimed to be the Son of God? After all, he didn't hide it himself. Where was he? Thousands knew that anyway...
Nick has lost everything. A brutal robbery has destroyed his life and his dreams. Financially, he is facing ruin with just a few hundred marks in his bank account. It's Advent time, and out of nowhere his fortunes change. Nick is lucky in a lottery, his account suddenly contains a lot of money, and he meets the mysterious and life-hungry Eve. It's almost like a fairy tale. Nick blossoms, feels strong and seems to be on the winning side. But his supposed happiness dissolves into nothing overnight. Eve's demanding lovemaking and drugs drive Nick to commit a terrible act. He flees in a panic. When he regains consciousness, he leads the police to the scene of the crime. But Eve has disappeared and nothing points to her. Nick follows the few traces Eve has left behind and immerses himself in a mysterious world of seduction and deception....
Franz, editor-in-chief of a large publishing house and no stranger to sadness himself, learns shortly before his wife Simone's death that she has been cheating on him. Stunned by this infidelity, he doggedly sets out in search of his rival. At Simone's funeral, a pimp turns up with two bodyguards and lays a wreath with the dedication 'With love - your tiger'. Franz wants to get to know this rival better and even follows him to his stately home in Andalusia.
German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR regime.