Heinz-Werner Kraehkamp

Sawdust Tales

Sawdust Tales is a whimsical and timeless parable on survival in hard times and the force of a first love against all odds. In a timeless no-mans land scarred by social decay and imminent war, a circus troupe awaits the arrival of the mysterious Rupert who is to deliver them from danger into a better world. The old and wise tightrope master keeps a watchful, loving eye on his young apprentice who, to his concern, could be drafted into the army at any moment. To make matters worse, the boy falls in love with a mermaid...

After Midnight

The Political drama shows the denunciation and persecution of the 19-year-old Sanne in the Nazi state. After she falls in love with her cousin, Sanne is betrayed by her jealous aunt to the Gestapo.

Advertising Rules!

Edward Kaminsky, an aging ad man, wants a golden parachute from his agency; he must first land the Opel auto contract. Rosa, a youth with wealthy parents, wants to establish herself as an artist. The clumsy and enthusiastic Viktor, not quite honest, wants work. When he wanders into Kaminsky's meeting with Opel and says something about irony, the Opel director wants him in on the campaign. Then he steals an idea from Rosa that the Opel director loves. Before Rosa discovers he's expropriated her idea, Rosa and Viktor become lovers. Father-son feelings materialize between Kaminsky and Viktor. Can the impulsive Viktor hold it together before Rosa learns the truth and flies away?

Everything's a Lie

Erich Kasulke and Rudolf Portmann are comedian stars of the former GDR. When the Wall falls, so does their success. Portmann becomes a successful businessman, while Kasulke tries to continue working on the comedy circuit - without success. When his wife also cheats on him, he decides to start a new life in Berlin. There he quickly meets his old friend Portmann, who has built up a huge company. He offers him a job. But Erich puts the entire company in danger...

Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh

Asylum seeker Dudie lives in a shabby hostel for asylum seekers. Dudie is plagued by bad luck: His girlfriend lets herself be bought as a wife, a couple of beefy men want to get their hands on him and it looks like he won't be getting a job any time soon. One evening, when he is hanging out with a couple of Africans from the home, one of the men gives him an address in Berlin where he can get help. Dudi sets off for Berlin and meets Cuffi Bugudubugu. Cuffi offers him a place to live and gets him a job on a building site. His boss treats him unfairly and his co-workers despise him. But Dudi doesn't let this get him down and all sorts of crazy things happen to him: First he marries a German woman for money, then he slaughters a sheep on the building site and soon gets a job in a kebab shop...

Heinrich der Säger

When rail lines are cut and workers laid off, Kurt Grantke sabotages the Commercial Railway to protect his town. Despite no injuries or evidence, the line to Storchenroda closes. Caught by Commissar Stahl, Kurt is freed by friends and, with his new wife, joins fellow railway workers in emigrating to South America.

Der achte Tag

A medical doctor who is regarded as a specialist in retort research has been found dead. Science journalist Vera Pukall investigates the alleged suicide and uncovers the ruthless activities of a large pharmaceutical company. She receives help from Dr. Svoboda, of all people, the group's main stockholder.

Happy Video

German short film

5 Rooms, Kitchen, Bathroom

A comedy directed by Rolf Silber.

Kill Your Darling

Young people disappear in Berlin's subway shafts, near the "Kill Your Darling" disco.

Selbstgespräche

With a smile and beautiful words, you can create trust, build sympathy and sell your counterpart everything within four minutes. Welcome to the call center, the collection point for lifelong dreams in financial straits. If you're young and need money, you've come to the right place under the headset in the small telephone box. Sascha Wegemann has the best prerequisites when he enters the open-plan office of a Cologne call center for the first time. He has a way with words, the 30-year-old is sure of that. After all, he has what it takes to become the biggest presenter on German television, even if he has so far only worked as a crowd-pleaser for a chart show. Reality catches up with Sascha when his girlfriend Astrid becomes pregnant. What is more important, career or family, dream or responsibility? Sascha can't make up his mind.

Gomez: Heads or Tails

Dominik, a 16-year-old student, lives with a troubled family and finds himself alone. In order to impress a girl, he gets involved in a shady deal where things go wrong. Then a true friendship comes to save him from the disaster.

Der Trip - Die nackte Gitarre 0,5

Schlager fan Dieter still lives with his parents and doesn't really fancy anything: neither women nor regular work. His parents, ideological old hippies, want to restrict Dieter's freedom as little as possible, but they still want to make the love-struck Candy appealing to him. Annoyed by the constant demands, Dieter leaves the house and finds himself in a nightclub. There he meets Petra, who is about to get married to Hilmar, the heir to millions. Petra wants to enjoy one last love affair with Dieter before the wedding. After a passionate kiss, they are both thrown back to 1972. Dieter, who regains consciousness in a shared flat in Berlin, finds out that Petra is in Munich, whereupon he sets off to find her. His journey holds many a bizarre adventure, such as a meeting with his young hippie parents.

Fraulein

A German woman and a former French prisoner of war live in 1950s Germany. Instead of playing a role in rebuilding her country, the heroine remains preoccupied with her personal affairs.

Rising to the Bait

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.

Regular Guys

Christoph, cop and self-confident macho, has trouble with his fiance. After a long night he wakes up in the arms of Edgar, a good-looking, gay auto-mechanic. His live gets more and more troublesome after his girl friend throws him out of their apartment and as last resort he moves to Edgars place. Working together with a new, good-looking, very self-confident, female collegue, but living with a good-looking gay guy makes him pretty uncertain about his sexuality and his role as a cop. Written by Konstantin Articus

Die grüne Wolke

A strange green cloud has turned almost the entire human race into stone. The only survivors are eight children, their intrepid teacher Birnenstiel and his friend, a jolly millionaire, who by chance all happen to be in an airship above the green cloud at the time. Against this background Birnenstiel tells a bizarre adventure story in which he and the children are heroes. With loving and pointed irony he confronts his protagonists with deep-frozen beauty queens, gene-manipulated tomatoes, extraterrestrial maniacs, aggressive goldfish and last but not least the rampant mechanics of an abandoned civilisation which claims its victims one by one. When the narrator goes too far, the children take the story into their own hands...

Obsession

Two men become entangled in a torrid love affair with the same woman. Pierre is Miriam's longtime lover. John is desperately searching for clues about his past when he and Miriam have a fateful encounter in a Berlin train station. The allure of forbidden love becomes irresistible, and an intense love triangle is ignited. Who will Miriam choose? Who will walk away? For two men who desperately adore the same woman and for the woman who loves them equally...there is no easy way out.

Nah am Wasser

It is the time of the 1994 World Cup. Günther Schmidt has no friends. Dull he pursues his profession, drinks his beer in the evening in the pub. The feeling of success he only experiences on the weekend when he wins in the model boat competition. The trophies then decorate his small, always dark ground floor apartment in Berlin-Neukölln. His membership with the Republicans shows him as a racist skewer, and he sinks ever deeper into inertia and dullness. When one day Franziska comes to the pub where he is watching a World Cup broadcast, it seems to have come to an end with his loneliness. Günther Schmidt, awakened by the superiority of feelings, wants to prove itself - wants to prove to her - that he is someone...

Zischke

Left alone by his mother for a few days, a Berlin schoolboy tries to escape the city and visit his father in Italy. While preparing for his trip, he encounters illegal immigrants, a teenage prostitute, and the immigration police, and becomes involved in a scandal involving fake passports.

Regular Guys

Christoph, cop and self-confident macho, has trouble with his fiance. After a long night he wakes up in the arms of Edgar, a good-looking, gay auto-mechanic. His live gets more and more troublesome after his girl friend throws him out of their apartment and as last resort he moves to Edgars place. Working together with a new, good-looking, very self-confident, female collegue, but living with a good-looking gay guy makes him pretty uncertain about his sexuality and his role as a cop. Written by Konstantin Articus

The Sternstein Manor

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...

Pommi Stern

A young singer wants to make it big.