A feature film about the life and death of the famous Bavarian actor Walter Sedlmayr, who was murdered in 1990 and who tried all his life to hide his homosexual tendencies from the public. The life story is told from the perspective of his professional environment and - sometimes in a documentary style - his fellow actors report on him. His sexual preferences in the BDSM area are also discussed.
The tragic story of French naïve painter Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis (1864-1942), a humble servant who becomes a gifted self-taught painter. Discovered by prominent critic and collector William Uhde, she came to prominence between the wars grouped with other naïve painters like Henri Rouseau only to descend into madness and obscurity with the onset of the Great Depression and World War II.
Swiss dancer Diane and rising German actor Heinz Bennent build a tight-knit family on modest means. Their children - Anne, Burgtheater’s “princess,” and David, famed for The Tin Drum - thrive under their parents’ support and critique. Bound by love and talent, this quartet shares an unbreakable bond.
Lulu models for a young painter who tries to seduce her. When her husband enters the room he dies from a heart attack. Lulu marries the painter, who commits suicide when he finds out that she has been having a long standing affair with Dr Schon and whose son gives her a job. Lulu kills Dr Schon and goes to London to live with his son. Eventually, she becomes a prostitute and dies a victim of Jack the Ripper.
In 1930s Berlin, Dr. Jakob Fabian, who works by day in advertising for a cigarette company and by night wanders the streets of the city, falls in love with an actress. As her career begins to blossom, prospects for his future begin to wane.
Consul Werle holds a reception in honour of the homecoming of his son Gregers. At the reception, Gregers meets his childhood friend, Hjalmar Ekdal, who is married to Gina, a former maid of the Werle family. Hjalmar is unaware that Werle had an affair with Gina and that their 14-year-old daughter Hedwig is not his child. Gregers moves in with the Ekdals with the intention of allowing unsuspecting Hjalmar and his family to share in the "happiness of truth". Hedwig is entirely devoted to a wild duck, which lives on a pond outside their house. When Hjalmar learns the truth about his daughter, he wants to leave his family. Gregers advises Hedwig to kill the wild duck so that her father, impressed by this sacrifice, will return home. On the following day, Hedwig's birthday, she doesn't shoot the duck, but shoots herself instead.
At the top of the mountain stands the beautiful Sternsteinhof farm. Leni, a girl from a poor background, admires this farm and wants to become a farmer's wife there one day to escape her poor circumstances. Toni, the rich owner's son, comes at just the right time. When he gives her a written promise of marriage, Toni's father intervenes. He wants his son to marry a wealthy farmer's daughter and sends him to the army for the next few years. Muckerl, a simple wood carver, seizes his chance and courts Leni's favor...
In Belle Époque Paris, a 19th-century Parisian aristocrat falls in love with a lower-class prostitute who seduces him but never loves him.
Stefan Schröder is a trainee teacher for Latin and German. He has just moved into an apartment in an old, desolate house in the Berlin suburbs when he receives a letter from the school authorities: they have doubts about his loyalty to the constitution! From now on, Stefan feels persecuted, constantly watched and monitored in his apartment. Added to this is the fact that the actual, mysterious main tenant is away for an unforeseeable period of time and keeps one room locked. The suspicion that someone is going in and out of his apartment and that the people surrounding him are not who they claim to be becomes ever stronger. Stefan frantically searches for a motive.
Ann, a ten-year-old girl, becomes the sole heir of millions from her grandmother. Ann's parents, who are short of money and have lost all hope of a bright future try to manipulate Ann's imagination in such a way that she loses her mind.
A man who accused a catholic bishop of abusing him when he was a child dies in the Austrian city Salzburg. Everyone except his widow and the eccentrical detective Simon Brenner keeps silent and believes that the man killed himself.
The story of Napoleon Bonaparte's grandniece, the famous Princess Marie, her friendship and her work with Sigmund Freud.
A modern fairy tale about how distrust in the collective society divides a family and how Jill many years later learns about what there is left to trust.
A teenage girl helps an escaped fugitive flee Germany into France, after extracting a promise that he will help her commit suicide.
A young actress in Cold War Berlin struggles to decide whether or not to accept a new role, working with an old leftist director in a deserted theatrehouse. Caught between her painful childhood - loss of the mother - and the confusing and instable present political and social situation, she engages with prostitutes, penniless playwrights and postmen of the split Berlin city.
A young man gets caught between two women and finally loses both of them because he is unable to make up his mind. A love triangle that tries to conjure up hidden emotional states.
71 scenes revolving around multiple Viennese residents who are by chance involved with a senseless gun slaughter on Christmas Eve.
Geneva, 1980s. Three friends in search of themselves. Bruno, an architect, is married to a woman he cannot simply love. Philippe, a more refined journalist, refuses to accept the reality of separating from his girlfriend Sonia. Bruno, the youngest of the three, collects one-night stands...
In 1933 in Berlin. Anna is only nine years old when her life changes from the ground up. To escape the Nazis, her father Arthur Kemper, a well-known Jewish journalist, has to flee to Zurich. His family, Anna, her twelve-year-old brother Max and her mother Dorothea, follow him shortly thereafter. Anna has to leave everything behind, including her beloved pink rabbit, and to face a new life full of challenges and privations abroad.
The plot revolves around Bernard – a schoolfriend of Olivier's who is preparing for his bac – discovering he is a bastard and taking this as a welcome pretext for running away from home. He spends a night in Olivier's bed (where Olivier describes a recent visit to a prostitute and how he did not find the experience very enjoyable). After Bernard steals the suitcase belonging to Edouard, Olivier's uncle, and the ensuing complications, he is made Edouard's secretary. Olivier is jealous and ends up in the hands of the cynical and downright diabolical Comte de Passavant, who travels with him to the Mediterranean.
An oily careerist for whom becoming the highest earner is not enough: now he also wants a title of nobility.
Captain Furrer asks Thomas Borchert for help in hunting down a serial killer.