Flanders, a famous female author, travels in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall into the German capital. She is deeply depressed by the events because she saw the communist state as a very good thing that has now ended. In the joy of these days she finds no one to understand her, so she has to travel back to Munich. After meeting several people, known and unknown, it seems as if there will be no way to go.
Radical West German terrorist Rita Vogt abandons the revolution and settles in East Germany with a new identity provided by the secret service. She lives in constant fear of having her cover blown, which unavoidably happens after the reunification.
When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?
At some point in the not-so-distant future, an unnamed European city has evolved into a bizarre dystopian metropolis, whose residents inhabit towering utopian high-rises and work, collectively, in a single compound.
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
Raised by her father, an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing has been geared to making her the perfect assassin. Sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys across Europe, eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence.
A set of six nested stories spanning time between the 19th century and a distant post-apocalyptic future. Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Based on the award winning novel by David Mitchell. Directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis.
Hélène and Marianne are two girls with love on their minds. Together, they decide to play a short-lived game of deception. A guy called Agostino Stone charms the two but then disappears into thin air, but not without first leaving his mark…
In the last house just behind the western borders of Russia, between Paris/Texas and Korleput/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Cindy Sherman, Dogma 95 and Duma 2000, Frank Castorf directs his virst video production "Dämonen" ("Demons") as a sort of post-Soviet-panslavistic panopticon in his own dramaturgy based on Dostojewski's "Demons" and Camus' "The Posessed". All that in set designer Bert Neumann's industrial-designed bungalow (with swimming pool) built onto forbidding landscape.
A Chechen Muslim illegally immigrates to Hamburg and becomes a person of interest for a covert government team tracking the movements of potential terrorists.
Lona Vogt is a target investigator and, together with her friend and colleague Simon Katzer, has been on the trail of the murderer Manuel Bove for some time. Then the body of a young woman is found in the Wadden Sea near Husum.
The last years of Heinrich George's life are reconstructed with documentary footage and play scenes. His son Götz, named after Heinrich's favorite role of the peasant war hero from Goethe's play "Götz von Berlichingen", plays scenes from his father's life and allows his enormous creative power to shine through. Nothing is left out, nothing glossed over in this story of a man with many facets. Götz George, one of Germany's best-known actors, is at the center of this homage, which is also a reappraisal of the contradictions in his father's life. As the only follower from the acting profession, Heinrich George had to pay with his life. He was not officially rehabilitated until 1998.
A bar full of people talking about Volker Spengler. HIGHFALUTIN is an attempt to create such a utopia, a simple "what if."
Wunderkind, scandalous author, traitor to the fatherland, fury of the theater, feminist, fashion-lover, communist, pessimist, language terrorist, rebel, enfant terrible, nest fouler, brilliant, vulnerable artist, Nobel laureate. This film about Elfriede Jelinek, who in 2004 became the first Austrian author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, focuses on her artistic approach to language. The montage of archive material with voiceovers and interviews, some of them recently recorded, is told from Jelinek’s point of view.
Policewoman Tilda is in the dark, and her only connection to the outside world is her cell phone. She contacts her stepson, gravedigger Max Broll, and tells him that she has been buried in a box. According to Tilda, the perpetrator is Leopold Wagner, the "child maker," whom she put behind bars years ago. However, since Wagner is still in prison, this can't be true.
A young woman's desperate search for her abducted boyfriend draws her into the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a sect nobody ever escaped from.
A young woman who is obsessed with Buster Keaton stays in the sanatorium where the actor was once a patient.
A great mosaic, a labyrinth of scenes, dialogue splinters, interviews, portraits of people surrounding Hamlet and wanting to be part of his story.
It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.
Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society, frequently called upon to wield a pistol as a surrogate in duels at dawn. But when Yakovlev meets the naïve young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto undetected emotions. What transpires uncovers a series of revelations about his past and his present self.
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.
TV post-war drama about a gruesome chapter of the Nazi era. Nadja Uhl reveals "wild" euthanasia in psychiatry. Oldenburg, 1948: For Margaret Oelkers (Uhl) and her two little sons, the pension is not enough as a war-wittwe behind and in front. But the authorities are working hard, not even because of their lack of credentials on the employment of their killed in the war. After an energetic appearance at the office, she is briefly put into the psychiatry of the Wehnen nursing home as a trainee. The consequences are bitter: one attests to their schizophrenia, takes away the children and brings them to the sister in the country. For a year, Margarete was kept in the hospital against her will, and forced to do so with electric shocks. After her release, she was placed under the guardianship of her neighbor Erich Windhorst (Martin Wuttke), a man with an SS past...
Young detective Ria Larsen is faced with the question of how serial killer Wernicke, who is imprisoned in a psychiatric ward, instructs brutal murders on the Husum coast. The bodies in the dunes point to a copy killer. During the investigation, Ria suddenly finds herself in a race against time and in a dangerous mind game with a ritual killer who has already destroyed the life of her predecessor.
An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.
Stefan Gabriel is an active father always looking at life positively. While he tries to give back to society, his daughters Jessica (12) and Sabrina (15) struggle with their own problems. Jessica is often mistaken for a boy and has to deal with her many ticks. She would happily swap places with Sabrina, who, despite her illness, appears to have her life completely under control. But the more Sabrina’s health worsens, the worse Jessica’s ticks become. The girls need a plan and fast. They come across a special ritual in an old book, which could be their rescue. But the girls first have to find a boy to sleep with Sabrina. They don’t have much time left and Jessica puts all she has got into implementing the life-saving plan, no matter how crazy it may be.
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 1992-2017. The end of the GDR gave rise to new artistic freedoms in reunited Berlin. Shortly after the fall of the Wall, rebel director Frank Castorf was appointed artistic director of the Volksbühne. His way of working altered the public’s perception of this theater. The chronological history of the Castorf era between 1992 and 2017 is told here in excerpts from the productions and in a series of conversations conducted on the long sofa in the theater's foyer.
Unites grotesque elements, tempo, quiet dream sequences, the thrill of a detective story, but above all, he manages to capture the temperature of an actor ensemble that throws itself into the world of Dostoyevsky with immense pleasure and passion.
These young women are an odd couple. Julie is quick-witted and stubborn. She celebrates idleness and even voluntarily checks into a psychiatric clinic. Nurse Agnes, on the other hand, is always eager to do the right thing and to meet everyone's expectations of her, which is not always easy. When the two of them accidentally meet one day, odds are they won't get along. But they quickly feel attracted to one another, despite their enormous differences.
Autistic Florian works as an assistant to facility manager Henk in a luxury hotel and is secretly in love with chambermaid Valerie. When it comes to communication, however, the smart guy has his problems, which is why he usually finds it difficult to deal with other people. Meanwhile, Valerie, who unlike Florian is extremely chaotic, pays little attention to her admirer and has other problems to deal with anyway: she is trying to regain custody of her daughter, but is in danger of losing her job as a result. Florian is immediately on hand to help her and is also actively supported by his boss. But can he really win Valerie's heart this way?
Head of the famous pencil corporation tries to make his 16 year old granddaughter ready to take his place.
A man comes home to meet his mother and sister after many years away. He finds his mother living with a new boyfriend, and his sister to be grown-up. He begins to settle down in this new place by building a new home for himself on the delta. But when his sister moves in with him and the two begin a romance, there are tragic consequences.
Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.
"Kainer dies here today" tells an exciting and bizarre way about the last days of a man who seeks the loneliness to die, but first has to face the absurdity of life.
Literary adaptation: a handsome youth of humble origins rises in society through his connections made as an elevator attendant in a luxury hotel.
Feature documentary about Christoph Schlingensief's political party/art project "Chance 2000".
Using rich archive material, this documentary looks back at Christoph Schlingensief and his cross-border art project for the 1998 Bundestag elections.