An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.
15-year-old Mareike dreams of making a career as a model. Her family, with whom she lives in a village in the Electoral Palatinate, don't really take these goals seriously. Especially as Mareike's appearance does not necessarily correspond to the classic fashion ideal. Nevertheless, the slightly chubby young woman doesn't let it get her down. She persistently pursues her goal. Until one day her hair falls out: The doctors diagnose an autoimmune disorder that is almost impossible to cure. Mareike's world collapses.
In a German town, teacher Irene leads an inconspicuous, boring, lonely life. One day, a man rings at her door and slips in. It's an armed convict from the prison next door, escaped with a leg wound. He now makes her a prisoner in her own home. Almost without a word, as if she secretly enjoys the excitement or just mesmerized, she obeys Vassily, every single command, even sexual services, submissively or after a symbolic struggle. Somehow that seems to change, but can force initiate love?
Heinz Strunk, plagued by crater-like skin rashes, lives with his sick mother in Hamburg-Harburg in the 1980s. As a saxophonist, he tours the North German lowlands with the dance combo "Tiffanys". In this bizarre universe of Korn, Klaus & Klaus and Koteletts, bandleader Gurki teaches him how to deliver cheerful, upbeat music. To escape the vicious circle of shooting festivals and village weddings, Heinz wants to start a solo career and become a hit producer...
The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.
17-year-old Guido suffers since his early childhood from neurodermatitis. After being taken to the hospital due to a heavy attack, he starts to question his personal and familiar environment and discovers that his parents’ relationship – which he assumed to be happy and sound – is built on lies. Unable to deal with this disappointment, he flees from it and moves in with his older brother and his roommates...
Benjamin, a 16-year-old with lousy grades, switches to a boarding school in order to eventually reach grammar school. Adjusting to his new environment is difficult as he has to struggle with being a teen... specially when he falls in love to the school's dream girl, Malen.
The Marriage of Figaro is a continuation of the plot of The Barber of Seville several years later, and recounts a single "day of madness" in the palace of the Count Almaviva near Seville, Spain. Rosina is now the Countess; Dr. Bartolo is seeking revenge against Figaro for thwarting his plans to marry Rosina himself; and Count Almaviva has degenerated from the romantic youth of Barber into a scheming, bullying, skirt-chasing baritone. This follows the Count trying to obtain favours from Susanna, Figaro's bride to be, under the nose of the Countess.
While a married man waits in his lover's posh stairwell to pick her up for a date, his manifested guilty conscience, a dark shadow, plays its games with him.
When Hans Hass seeks a secretary for his Viennese office in the summer of 1947, Lotte Baierl applies for the job. She has just graduated from high school and is a big fan of Hass. Lotte is learning how to handle diving equipment and underwater cameras, as she wants to participate in the next expedition. Hass, who is initially against the participation of a woman, changes his mind. The TV movie tells the story of the two diving pioneers.
On a summer evening the circuit of the village policeman Krause suddenly went crazy. His doctor immediately prescribed a cure on the Baltic Sea for him. And so Krause and his sisters set off in the legendary "Dübener Ei". In the sanatorium he meets his roommate Rudi - an encounter with far-reaching consequences.
A wide-ranging, energetic period piece tracing the rise of the Protestant Henry of Navarre as he goes from battlefield warrior to France's beloved King Henri IV. Director Jo Baier's epic is a classically entertaining adventure, albeit one with more than a little bloodshed and frequent bawdy sexual interludes. In late 16th-century France, Catholics and Protestant Huguenots were at war. Seemingly seeking peace, the French dowager queen, Catherine de Medici summons Henry to her court to have him marry her daughter, uniting the two warring factions. However, the Catholics slaughter the Protestant wedding guests in what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and Henry-now married-must use all his guile to both stay alive and maneuver for the throne. [Written by Palm Springs International Film Festival]
Axel and Karla are an ill-matched couple in a borderline situation. The two meet in the hospital. Axel is keeping watch at his son′s bedside and Karla is waiting for some sign of life from her sister. None of the doctors can tell them whether the young couple will come out of their comas after their serious accident. As the weeks of uncertainty, fear and tedium pass by, a peculiar relationship develops between Axel and Karla, sustaining both of them.
Chef Ralf Dienert from Berlin buys an old inn in Spessart after the death of his wife. When he arrives there he will have to deal with the thieving ghosts Karl, Mops and Clovis.
Mozart’s allegorical fairy tale has charmed audiences and inspired artists, for more than 200 years. A few weeks before this telecast, the Met unveiled a new production of the opera featuring the colorful designs of acclaimed artist David Hockney. His bold colors and vivid images enchanted audiences and seemed to inspire the striking cast, led by James Levine’s affectionate conducting. Francisco Araiza is the young prince Tamino, who finds himself in a strange land, forced to undergo mysterious tests so he can rescue, then marry, the woman he loves, Pamina, played by Kathleen Battle. Kurt Moll is the compassionate Sarastro and Luciana Serra is the Queen of the Night.
Police chief Horst Krause is retired. Together with his sister Elsa, he takes care of the inn in Schönhorst. But none of that makes him happy.
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?
Banklady tells the true story of Gisela Werler, a law-abiding factory worker from Hamburg, who falls in love with a thief and becomes a media darling as Germany’s first and most notorious female bank robber. Cunning, sexy, and exciting, Gisela and her beloved Hermann pull off one daring heist after another. Banklady follows this outlaw who captured Germany’s imagination, boldly defying gender expectations and living a decades-long Bonnie and Clyde romance.
10 year-old Paul is an average but timid boy, subject to the typical fears of most kids his age. His overprotective mother Mona, believing Paul to be disturbed, sends him off to a psychotherapist.
Anna has a dreary job as a cashier at the airport snack bar. Christmas is anything but a celebration of love for her, as she has no family or friends. Only an elderly customer tries to cheer Anna up. In vain: she has planned to commit suicide on New Year's Eve. But on Christmas Eve she meets bus driver Eddie by chance. While he instills a new zest for life in her, his own life suddenly collapses on him...
Horst Krause still can't believe that his sister Meta moved to Cologne because of love. When a stranger surprisingly asks for a room, some excitement returns. Albert has been abandoned by his wife and does not know how to proceed. But why does the sailor end up in Schönhorst of all places? Strange hints awaken buried memories - could it be that the liaison that Krause had with a circus artist in the summer of 1961 was not without consequences?
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.
A tragicomedy about the trials and tribulations of life: three lonely hearts find each other, drift apart and experience the happiness of the moment together
November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came down. A 10-year-old girl and her friends attempt to use their teleportation device to beam her uncle back to East Germany but instead, as they witness on TV, end up beaming everyone in their town into West Germany! They have to race against time to undo the experiment before the nasty border guards open fire...
Police chief Krause celebrates Christmas every year with his two sisters. However, this year everything will be different.
Twelve princesses sleep in twelve beds in the same room; every night their doors are securely locked, but in the morning their shoes are found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night. The king, in mourning, promises his kingdom and a daughter to any man who can discover the princesses'secret within three days and three nights, but those who fail within the set time limit will be put to death.
Director Rufus Lindner is shooting his first film: " Die Vatikankiller". With audience favorite Kai Rabe in the leading role, success is guaranteed. But suddenly chaos descends on the film team: A starlet is murdered, the bitchy leading man goes increasingly crazy, a drunken policeman causes a lot of trouble, and the sex-obsessed producer Egon Lütter doesn't make things any easier.
Tom does not have it easy. At the student theater, his friend Jan and his beloved Annelie play the leading roles; the inconspicuous Tom, on the other hand, makes the prop. When he realizes that he must finally take his life, and especially love, into his own hands, he turns to his janitor, Mr Müller. What Tom does not know: Müller was once a psychologist of the Stasi! In the so-called "Romeo" program, he prepared male agents to address women in Germany and make them available as a source.
Live from Glyndebourne 1994. The first production to be filmed Live in Glyndebourne´s new opera house May 1994. The Marriage of Figaro is a continuation of the plot of The Barber of Seville several years later, and recounts a single “day of madness” in the palace of the Count Almaviva near Seville, Spain. Rosina is now the Countess; Dr. Bartolo is seeking revenge against Figaro for thwarting his plans to marry Rosina himself; and Count Almaviva has degenerated from the romantic youth of Barber into a scheming, bullying, skirt-chasing baritone. This follows the Count trying to obtain favours from Susanna, Figaro’s bride to be, under the nose of the Countess.
A man struggles with memories of his violent childhood.
Das radikal Böse is a German-Austrian documentary that attempted to explore psychological processes and individual decision latitude "normal young men" in the German Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, which in 1941 during the Second World War as part of the Holocaust two million Jewish civilians shot dead in Eastern Europe.
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.
Emma Mayer works as a presenter for a radio station. In her show 'Emma after midnight', she listens to the concerns of callers. She discovers that Katharina Holl, who is about to go on trial for involuntary manslaughter during the construction of an indoor swimming pool, is suicidal. Since the accident, she has been called Mrs. Hell by the press and while she, as the main defendant, has to shoulder all the blame, accomplices such as Lord Mayor Klaus Quade and the owner of the construction company, Mark Wahrendorf, remain on the outside. Emma has little time to deal with Katharina's problem and convince her that there is a point in continuing to live.
Berlin. A lonely construction worker falls in love with an East European prostitute. She asks him to marry her - but they have different ideas about the reason for this marriage.
The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow is a film which sets out to bring the viewer closer, not to the details of Schubert's life, but to the spirit of what he was trying to express with what he called his creative gift and with which he tried "to brighten the world". The film begins with the funeral of Beethoven, at which Schubert was a torch-bearer, His story is told almost entirely in music written in the twenty months that remained to him after that date, together with quotations from Schubert's letters, diaries and the words that he chose to set in some of his songs. Includes personal introductions by Christopher Nupen and Jacqueline du Pré and features the legendary 1969 performance of The Trout with Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Jacqueline du Pré, Pinchas Zukerman and Zubin Mehta.
Helen is a nonconformist teenage girl who maintains a conflictual relationship with her parents. Hanging out most of her time with her friend Corinna, with whom she breaks one social taboo after another, she uses sex as a way to rebel and break the conventional bourgeois ethic. After an intimate shaving accident, Helen ends up in the hospital where it doesn’t take long before she makes waves. But there she finds Robin, a male nurse who will sweep her off her feet...
Maria is a wife and mother in the beautiful, but very remote Connemara region of Ireland. When an old friend from Germany arrives in the place, her life is thrown into turmoil.
The body of John Staffler, a well-known, successful lawyer, lies in front of the police officers. In his mouth: a red thong that definitely doesn't belong to his wife. At least that's what the former Hamburg criminalist Viola Delbrück and the Upper Lusatian loner Burkhard Schulz agree on. And also in the fact that the place where the body was found is not the crime scene. The investigation leads them to a country estate where Staffler apparently housed his lover. The trail continues to lead them to a young Polish-German couple, whose escape becomes more and more desperate the closer the two inspectors get to them.
A month has passed since "Butsch", the loner from Oberlausitz, and Viola Delbrück, the detective from Hamburg, stopped a young criminal couple. Despite this success, the mood between the detectives is worse than ever. But right now they are in demand as a team, because a serial offender seems to be on the loose in Görlitz, targeting young, attractive female joggers. However, Viola Delbrück's biggest problem is not "Butsch", but her husband, who is trying to settle into his wife's new life - also professionally. But "Butsch" senses danger and trusts his own instincts.
The story of Hanna, a woman who will not take life’s setbacks and knock-downs sitting down. Instead, she takes them in her stride, picks herself up and marches onward. This is a woman who continually draws new courage from her inexhaustible will to live. Whatever losses and uncertainties come her way, she remains true to herself.
A doctor in early 19th-century Germany becomes infatuated with the sister of a man he unintentionally killed and bargains with the Devil incarnate to conjure their union in exchange for his soul.
Hotte, a Berlin-based pimp with only modest turnovers, suddenly becomes a big player in the prostitution business. He has three girls on the streets: Rosa is in love with Hotte and is working hard for him. Jenny, the new girl, is an unconventional prostitute but nevertheless much sought-after by her clients. And the third girl, Yvonne, also brings in a large turn-out. So, Hotte’s proceeds are more than sufficient to buy expensive accessoires and to boost his reputation with the other pimps. But when Yvonne quits her job and Jenny starts to work for another pimp, Hotte’s rise comes to a sudden end
Krause and Elsa are stunned: their sister Meta wants to get married. She chose the Cologne taxi driver Rudi Weisglut, whom she met two years earlier during Krause's cure on the Baltic Sea.
Ecki is a sweet, closeted gay man who works in his family’s bakery and plays goalie in his small town’s soccer team. When he both loses the big game, and is caught flirting with another player, his homophobic teammates throw him out. He vows to return one day with an all-gay team that will grind the heteros into the dust, so he sets off to find his “dream team.” With the help of his nurse sister, Ecki scours local gay bars and eventually assembles a hilariously motley but endearing crew of misfits that includes a leather-daddy threesome, a femme Turk with Beckham fantasies, a secret straight guy in love with the sister, and a seriously cute nurse eager for some private play-time with the goalie. Ecki now has two problems – turning this bunch into a team, and facing his own fears regarding his first romance.
Eleven-year-old Linh shows great grace under pressure. When her mother, who’s raising her kids on her own, has to return unexpectedly to Vietnam, Linh looks after her little sister Tien and the family restaurant on her own. Of course, no one is supposed to find out, not the school, not the neighbours, and definitely not child protective services. But Linh’s biggest problem has red hair, a telescope and a sly grin: Pauline. The daredevil from across the street has the whole neighbourhood under surveillance and can’t imagine anything cooler than a life without parents. When Pauline blackmails the Vietnamese sisters into starting a gang with her, the three girls set off on a daring adventure.
Four young Jews survive the Third Reich in the middle of Berlin by living so recklessly that they become "invisible."
At the end of winter, there is a game of bowls in the north. The islanders are proud of their bowling ball, which Thies' grandfather found 60 years ago. Only Katharina believes the archaeologist Jens Jeschen, who wants to examine the sphere in a laboratory on the mainland and suspects a Viking grave and treasure on the island, that it is a medieval celestial globe.
Author Steffen Teuffel moved from Berlin to sleepy, 'dying' Brandenburg (ex-GDR) small-town Krummenwalde with his wife Beate, who runs the local beverage firm, and their kids: smart son Kai opted out of college and happily works in the only pub; his shallow sister Lisa lets a classmate obsess over losing her virginity to farm boys; kid sister Sophie attracts kids' attention by waving a gold coin she found diving into the town lake, until Lutheran vicar Juchem, who needs to pay for a new church roof, snaps it up and enlists Steffen's research skills plus knowledge of French to help him and bossy mayor Gerd Jänicke, who wants to revitalize the town, research the local archives concerning a legend about a Napoleonic regimental treasure being lost in that very lake the golden Napoléon came from and split it three ways.
Heidi M. is in her late forties and has a small store in the pulsating center of Berlin. She goes out in the evenings with her friend Jacqui, but when she is unexpectedly confronted with romantic love, old wounds are opened.
When novelist Andrea Dewenter dies in a car accident, the lives of her husband Christian, grown-up son Lars, and adolescent daughter Elaine go off the rails. For all three, the few days between Andrea's sudden death and her funeral turn into an emotional roller coaster that eventually shows them the virtue of being a family.
After the death of her husband, the well-off widow Juliane Willbrand sinks into a great void. Her efforts to return to her old job as a librarian after twenty years prove futile until prison warden Schober gives her a chance. The challenge as head of the prison library gives Juliane energy and new courage to face life. She falls in love with the artistically talented prisoner Albert Tieck, who was sentenced to seven years behind bars after an arson in which his wife died. When Albert apparently uses a prison leave to escape, Juliane's world falls apart - until she discovers Albert's secret.
After he loses his job, his father, and his girlfriend, Jan's life is a shambles. Then suddenly he meets freakish street musician Vera, and a bittersweet romance unfolds...
German TV adaptation of Grimm‘s fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin“.
Berlin Kreuzberg: Veit Bischoff keeps his head above water with a dry-cleaning business and reluctantly looks after his mentally disturbed mother on the side. His dreary everyday life is only brightened up a little by his flirtation with the cashier from the betting shop opposite. In an environment where violence, drugs and crooked deals are the order of the day, Veit dreams of emigrating to Australia.
Up to now, Nickel (9) and his single dad Thomas have been managing very well together. Then Nickel goes on a school excursion and brings the little piglet Rudy back with him in his rucksack. Once he´s home, he makes a terrifying discovery: dad has a girlfriend! Worse yet, she´s moved in with him and brought her daughter Felicitas (12) along! Nickel makes a deal with Thomas: if those two stay, then so can Rudy. When life becomes unbearable for Nickel, he flees with Rudy to ‘Porkland’, followed by Feli and pursued by two dumb crooks. It’s the beginning of an adventure that ends in the swamps of the Oder Valley, where Rudi saves the lives of the two children and finds a new home.
Deputy director Sonja Winter is fighting against the closure of "her" zoo, where she lives with her daughter Hanna. However, city councillor Antonia Grewe is determined to push through her plan. Her right-hand man is, of all people, the architect Mark Fechter, whose eight-year-old son Tom is Hanna's friend. When Hanna learns that her old friend "Schulze" is to be put to sleep as part of the lockdown, she and Tom decide to kidnap the penguin...
Sports idol Baumann, advocate of strict controls, tested positive in 1999. Baumann is outraged
A young black man is verbally harassed by an older woman on a streetcar, while the other passengers remain silent. He finally exacts his revenge.
The devil tricks a little boy off his laughter in exchange for assured wins in all his bets. It depicts his journey after the deal with the devil, how he loses his soul bit by bit with each win.
American German teacher Andrea Flanegan and computer game developer Kai Westerburg become entangled in the mystery of a stolen computer chip and the computer murders that Westerburg's boss Herbert Wilhelm Peters is apparently carrying out with its help. The search for Peters turns into a wild chase in a society that considers computer murders unthinkable and also becomes an existential threat for Westerburg and Flanegan...
Til, Sinan and Bramstedt rave about a music career and their dream woman, the pretty Lisa from school. But it's hard to get to, because she's preparing with her friends from the DLRG group for a lifeguard mission on Sylt. But when Bramstedt knocked out the Beach Boys with alcohol, Lisa had no choice but to take the three boys to Sylt. But everything fails on the North Sea island.
In Germany, an old man attacks another old man and is arrested. The attacker refuses to speak. A female lawyer is appointed to him. She discovers that the attacker has numbers tattooed on his arm and the attacked man was a German officer.
Film is about the undercover assignment of a BKA officer as the bodyguard of a drug baron. His job is to gather information to put a stop to the cartel. But unfortunately everything goes wrong, "The Bodyguard" is exposed and eliminated in Turkey. He survives, returns and wants to complete his mission despite betrayal within his own ranks.
The crook Vincent loves Mona, the daughter of a policeman. When Mona's father finds out what Vincent does for a living, he puts him behind bars. After Vincent is released from prison after a year, he meets up with the pimp Siggi for a poker game and gambles away DM 60,000. Unfortunately, he has used his girlfriend Mona, whom he has posed as a prostitute, as collateral. Siggi now wants to get either 60,000 DM or Mona within three days. Vincent now tries on the one hand not to let Mona find out about her fate, and on the other to get the money as quickly as possible...
Veteran film director Matty Bonkers, a Hollywood legend, arrives in Berlin for an honorary retrospective tribute. While introducing his film Mockery, he receives a phone call from his producer lying in intensive care at a hospital. Blau needs a favor for old times' sake. Could Matty finish a porn movie before his legs get broken by Tokyo Tony? Matty reluctantly agrees. On the set he meets movie star and ex-cello-player Inga - and the experience is bizarre spirited uplifting a comédie humaine.
Fate has taken its toll on the aging cabaret singer Ruth and the young but terminally ill Jonas. Yet despite their great age difference and their entirely opposite experiences in life, they form an intense bond and give each other a reason and purpose to live.
A classic production from the Bayreuth Festival is made available here for the first time on DVD! Staged and directed by Richard Wagner’s grandson Wolfgang Wagner at the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1999, this production of Wagner’s only comic opera features an all-star cast and the Bayreuther Festspiele chorus and orchestra under the direction of Daniel Barenboim.
A notorious criminal is committed to a psychiatric ward pending a determination of his sanity. With the help of a young woman, one of his theft victims who has fallen in love with him, he manages to escape. He wants to build a middle-class future with her, but she tries to persuade him to pull off one last big heist.