In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
After each new crime, the department store blackmailer Scrooge comes up with a more sophisticated method of handing over money. The Soko is often hot on his heels, checking thousands of traces and countless clues, but he always manages to escape. While the officers led by Chief Inspector Paule Pietsch reap scorn and ridicule, Scrooge becomes a cult gangster in the public eye. But Soko boss Pietsch is certain: even the phantom Scrooge will make a mistake.
The committed inspector Jonas Birke, just new to the Frankfurt homicide squad, only has this one night left. The next day, his superior Lehm wants to present to the press the perpetrator who murdered the former police officer Rainer Mettich in a hotel room. One night - actually enough time to prove the crime to the convicted criminal Wolfram Ernst. But Birke has doubts: Mettich was about to testify about corruption to the police. His statement would have cost the careers of many bigwigs from business and the police. The well-known businessman Ludwig Wellingsen and his beautiful wife Isabel also seem to be involved in the matter.
Following her parents' wishes, spirited seventeen-year-old Effi Briest marries Baron von Innstetten – a former admirer of her mother – who is twenty years Effi's senior. This marriage of prudence heralds the beginning of a humdrum life, far from home, for Effi. Innstetten devotes himself entirely to his political career, and the sleepy small town of Kessin has very little to offer in terms of variety. But then, one day, Innstetten's old regimental comrade, Major Crampas – a charming womanizer – arrives on the scene.
King Rudolf of Habsburg dies in July 1291, leaving the valleys around Lake Lucerne in a power vacuum. The new despotic bailiff named Gissler proves to be a tyrant. Humiliated and robbed, Tell finds himself caught up in politics, which he had wanted to avoid. The planned uprising by the local nobility is off the table after they are bought off by Gissler. This prompts Tell to act on his own authority. In December 1291, the saga ends in bloodshed.
Documentary about the 2004 movie 'Der Untergang' aka. 'Downfall'
Tristan is into fashion design while his parents take care of the rest. Sunny is a drag queen and a money boy, living life on the explosive side. When they meet, things go boom all of a sudden - and when they fall in love with each other, they embark on a road trip beyond their wildest imagination.
On operated by Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck the German Empire is finally founded in 1871 on the floors of Versailles castle, ancestral seat of the French monarchy.
Berlin, 1989. Sascha is a young East German border guard and Franzi is a lively young West German woman who's just moved into a flat next to Sascha's watchtower at the Berlin Wall. It takes only a slight mishap and a selfless act of chivalry and the two fall in love. But soon the Stasi believes they are witnessing the start of a revolt. This is the time of mass protests and East Germans taking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague after all. Franzi and Sascha have to find their ways to stand up for their love and strive for the impossible; to bring down the wall.
During the day Paul works in a Berlin pet shop and in the evening he works on his career as a comedian. Things are going really badly until he cracks jokes about his best buddy Hotte and his girlfriend Susi. The audience goes wild with excitement! But Hotte and Susi are p* off. Paul has to decide: friendship or career?
They kiss and they fight, they love and they kill each other: Hagen Trinker and the others, bums and junkies, men and women. They live in Munich, under the bridge, in the shell of a building. Sometimes an armchair is their home, sometimes a newspaper is their mattress. But mostly they are on the move anyway, on the street, in shopping arcades, at the train station - without a destination and without illusions. Then Julia joins them, 15 years old, who has run away from home - a princess, as one of the clique says. Hagen falls in love with her. A fairy tale begins, and the next moment it is already over. But now Hagen is ready to fight once more: he simply has to find Judith again...
Two policemen are stationed on Amrum, a North Sea island on the West coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’ – an elder, and one who is several decades his junior. Life is easy, just that the junior can’t find a wife, because no young woman seems to be interested in the peaceful life on the island. All of a sudden, a wounded lady who turns out to be one of two bodyguard for a threatened witness who lives in hiding on Amrum, bursts into the police station and seeks help from the two officers. I missed some bits of the plot, but somehow, the second one of the bodyguards hiding the witness on the island has been killed already, and the second one, seeking help from the local police, was wounded in the incidence, and then she apparently succumbs, too.
Martin is the ambitious one in the family. He is poised to start on his doctorate, when he is diagnosed with testicular cancer and all his future plans begin to unravel. The removal of one testicle reduces the most immediate threat, but the cancer has already spread and Martin's doctor argues for an operation that would save him, but could also castrate him.
The mountain spirit Rübezahl falls in love with the young maid Rosa. Blind with love, he does not notice that the Baroness of Harrant wants to plunder his gold treasures in order to build a sawmill in the Giant Mountains.
In 1938 Hans Zeisig, an apolitical comedian, impersonator and cabaret actor, flees with a Russian passport (instead of American, which he would have preferred) from Nazi-Berlin, and finds himself in the legendary Hotel Lux, the 'lost paradise' of the Comintern, in Moscow. Everyone believes that Zeisig is a man named Hansen, Hitler's personal astrologer. But Zeisig quickly realizes that he's gone from the frying pan into the fire. In the Hotel Lux he meets his friends Frida and later Meyer again, still passionate communists. For the three idealists an adventure between love and death begins to run his course.
An English teacher brings soccer to a German school in the 19th Century.
When Isa provokes the Nazis with a satirical song at her graduation party, she is denied her degree despite passing her exams. She has to give up her plan to become a teacher and, against her mother Petra's wishes, manages to perform in a political cabaret. She enjoys stage success as a singer with an accordion and falls in love with the pianist Laurenz. During the Second World War, Isa's family gets caught up in the wheels of political power and is torn apart - until, after much turbulence, the Vermehrens regain their old cohesion and accompany Isa together as she enters a convent in Bonn.
In the near future: the EU has collapsed, stock market prices have collapsed, energy costs have exploded; many thousands lose the roof over their heads and literally end up on the street. Alexander Scholl and Sophie Kaiser act as police officers investigating DNB, which has contributed to the precarious situation in Germany. Their CEO Rainer van Kampen is able to avert charges despite the overwhelming burden of proof. There is only one way out for Alexander: he joins forces with a group of outlaws: they commit robberies, hack into accounts and publicly pillory financial fraudsters. They distribute their loot to people on the street. Alex" is quickly celebrated by the people and the media as "Robin Hood". But for his former colleague Sophie, with whom Alex is secretly in love, Robin Hood is a nasty criminal. The situation escalates, as not only the police and Sophie are hot on Alexander's heels, but also those behind the DNB...
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.
Max can hardly believe his luck: In a retirement home, he has finally found a gang that will let him join! Admittedly, it's the oldest and most wrinkly gang in the world - but that doesn't matter. He's found the best friends a 10-year-old could wish for in the elderly Vera, Horst and Kilian. Especially when, like Max, you're bullied in your new class and need help. But the gang's attempt to improve his school situation backfires. Horst, a former Bundesliga soccer coach, challenges Max's over-ambitious gym teacher Stöhle to a soccer duel: the school team including Laura and Ole against a selection of old geezers plus Max! And then the castle is haunted and a new case begins...
Silesia, 1844. After her husband dies in a brutally suppressed weavers’ uprising, Mila emigrates to America. En route to Texas, she rescues Countess Cecilie Hohenberg from her violent husband. Captured by Comanche warrior Buffalo Hump, the women must navigate captivity, while Mila forges unexpected bonds amid the struggle for freedom.
Matthias, son of popular rural Lutheran pastor Oskar Brendel and his wife Karin, about to graduate without honors unlike his emigrated big brother, is a pubertal rebel and hopelessly in love with local Maren Grothe. After he picks a fight at the village fair with her flirt and storms off, Maren s found comatose under the watchtower. Missing, Matthias is the only suspect, making the clerical family generally mistrusted. Karin finds her son, whose innocence she believes, apprenticing carpentry on the island where his buddy loves with his father Volkmann. Matthias explains he ran having seen his father Oskar refused ending an affair with Maren, who jumped as suicide attempt. The Brendels consider the due consequences.
The nine-year-old Nikolas has been missing for days. The criminal psychologist Claudia Meinert notices contradictions in her conversation with the parents of the missing child. In particular Nikolas' mother appears to be hiding something. When a video of the missing Nikolas surfaces, showing him tied up in a cellar, the trail leads to his school. The 13-year-old Leon and Mathilda strike the psychologist as conspicuous and provocative. Shortly afterwards, Meinert encounters the children with Nikolas' parents at the local swimming pool and her suspicions are confirmed: the parents are entangled in an insidious father-mother-child game with the possible suspects Leon and Mathilda. Now it is up to the psychologist to resolve the dark mystery of Nikolas' disappearance and save the child.
Berlin 36 is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in the 1936 Summer Olympics. She was replaced by the Nazi regime by an athlete later discovered to be a man. The film is based on a true story and was released in Germany on September 10, 2009. Reporters at Der Spiegel challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not learn Dora Ratjen was male until 1938.
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.
A docudrama about Germany's former chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose 16-year tenure during the 80s and 90s included the reunification of the country after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The story of the final seven months in the life of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
The life of Professor Eva Senn, a successful science journalist and award-winning non-fiction author, quickly falls apart at the seams. First she is left by her husband Kurt after 30 years of marriage. Shortly afterwards, she loses her driver's license for drink driving. As if that wasn't enough, she hits student Lea Freudner while trying to reverse her friend Marie's badly parked car to make way for the bus. The accident has dramatic consequences: The young woman is paraplegic and Eva is to blame. For Eva, the path back to a normal life is almost impossible. Remorse and helplessness become constant companions. Then Eva meets the lawyer Peer Gutenberg, who lost his wife two years ago. He not only provides Eva with legal advice, but also tries to cheer her up. But Gutenberg always remains a little opaque and seems to know more than he lets on. Is he playing a double game?
In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house whose first publication is, paradoxically to many, a controversial past work of Bernward's ostracized father, an infamous Nazi author. Bernward defends his father's writing ability, even if he is haunted by his father's suspicious past.
Ex-Secret Service agent Harry Kowa now works as a bodyguard. Protecting his boss from an assassination attempt, he kills one of the attackers, who turns out to be a government agent. Now it's open season on Kowa.
A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.
When German police viciously quell a protest against the shah of Iran, popular journalist Ulrike Meinhof rebels against her dishonest marriage, walks away from her children and joins radical anarchist Andreas Baader. Together with Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, they form the violent Red Faction Army, and together perpetrate a slew of terrorist attacks as a way of disrupting the fabric of what they see as an increasingly fascist state.
Jan Landers made it: Grown up in East Berlin, he quickly made his career after the turnaround: from the weatherman of a local station to the newsreader in Hamburg.
Only at the age of 19 does Paul learn from his mother that his father Klaus Merbold did not die in India, but rather lives in the same city. Paul wants to be recognized as his father's son and meets him. Klaus Merbold, however, is not very pleased. Paul tries to win over his wife and daughter Susa, who know nothing about him. But the situation escalates as Susa falls in love with her half-brother.
2010 documentary film on the Armenian Genocide by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It is based on eyewitness reports by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time, Armenian survivors and other contemporary witnesses which are recited by modern German actors.
Violent youth gangs and a police force way out of its depth. When a police operation goes awry and two policemen die, the powder keg threatens to ignite as the SWAT team knows only one goal: revenge - irrespective of the law.
Janne Flecker returns to her hometown of Cuxhaven because her brother Erik was found murdered in the mud. There, Janne's picture of her family is crumbling, known shipyard owners.
True story about how famous German businessman and archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann located the ruins of the mythical ancient city of Troy in Turkey in 1868.
A man who has lost his wife and daughter finds a baby in a garbage. He decides to save her.
The couple Hanna and Georg are overjoyed when Hanna finally gets pregnant, but things take a turn for the worst when Georg's father demands that abortion be performed because of a hereditary defect in his family.
Penniless Peter Munk toils day after day as a charcoal burner in the Black Forest. In order to finally achieve the wealth he longs for and thus get closer to his previously unattainable crush Lisbeth, he turns to two mysterious forest spirits with his wishes. While the cranky little glass man can't really help him, the sinister Dutchman-Michel promises him an end to his financial worries. However, he demands Peter's heart in return and puts a cold stone in his chest instead. Although he can now afford everything and finally take Lisbeth as his wife, Peter no longer has any compassion, which soon has devastating consequences not only for himself but also for his fellow human beings.
Joseph Komalschek was sentenced to 30 years in prison for cruelly murdering a young mother and her newborn baby. He never confessed his crimes and the bodies could not be found. After being released from prison, he returns to his hometown. People there treat him with distrust and disdain.
After an argument with her parents, Sophie gets involved in an affair with her neighbor Max. When her mother meets Max during a reconciliation visit, the lives of everyone involved take a dramatic turn...
After overseeing major projects as a construction manager for many years and having traveled all over the world, Peter is taking early retirement. First of all, he has big plans for the new phase of his life: he can finally make up for a missed togetherness with his wife Charlotte, a successful scientist who will soon follow him into retirement, and write his long-awaited novel. The reality, however, soon turns out to be far less romantic: Charlotte has little time for her husband because of her job, and Peter can't even get past the first sentence in his novel.
In order to track down the Russian mafia, Joachim Tresko goes undercover in the Berlin art scene. Meanwhile, his wife Katrin seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. She had been researching the trafficking milieu for her newspaper. Tresko is thus involved in two seemingly different cases.
Chaos in the Chancellery: Prime Minister Katharina Wendt loses her memory during a spontaneous trip with husband Helmuth and wakes up every morning since then with the knowledge of 1989. The therapy aims to activate her emotional center. No easy task with such a sober woman! Chancellery Minister Dieter Kahnitz must get her fit again until the end of the summer break, otherwise the euro will fail and then Europe will fail! But the minister would not mind being chancellor himself. Will the Chancellor succeed in remembering in time?
The retired GDR spies have just buried their old mentor in Cuba as they set out to save the last real bastion of socialism. But they didn't expect their biggest opponent so far: full board and Cuba Libre.
Sports idol Baumann, advocate of strict controls, tested positive in 1999. Baumann is outraged
When Anja is finally ready to start a new life, her husband Thomas is released from a psychiatric ward. He had set fire to the house years ago and threatened his family. Just as Anja enters into a new relationship, she learns that Thomas is healthy. She is now supposed to help him find his way back to normal life. Somewhat taken by surprise, she agrees to do so - on the condition that Thomas doesn't "mess things up". At first, everything seems to go well: Thomas is very nice and reserved, and is able to win over the children and even Anja again with his charm.
Four very retired, ex-GDR spies, or "Kundschafter des Friedens" as they were officially named, led by the once legendary Jochen Falk, are called on by the German government. Their mission is to rescue the interim president of the divided Republic of Katschekistan, who has been kidnapped by separatists, along with Berlin's official man on the ground, Franz Kern. To keep Jochen and his maybe no longer so crack team under control, all of whom are determined to prove they were treated unfairly by history, they are put under the command of the young and enthusiastic BND agent Paula Kern.
Success is a question of confidence, particularly in times of crisis. Life would be unbearable if there weren’t beautiful things to brighten it up a little, including pretty faces. Frank Knöpfel constantly flirts with life with his beguiling bright blue eyes. He buys a complete stranger an expensive coat in a designer boutique just because he feels like it. He disguises himself as a businessman from Oslo, a Mafia boss, a stock exchange specialist and an estate agent, whatever it takes to bring in the cash. He is the type of person who enjoys looking in the mirror, and delights in what he sees there. A flirtation with a customer in a boutique leads to Frank’s undoing.
For Pastor Judith Ehrmann, her job as an emergency counselor is more than just part of her job: giving people assistance is a vocation for them. But when a classmate of her son dies in a car accident, that's unusual. Judith begins to doubt: herself, her job - but also her family. For all at once everything seems to indicate that her own husband and son were involved in the accident and now want to cover this up. The emotionally intense drama of award-winning director Aelrun Goette raises fundamental themes without giving easy answers.
Filmmaker Fritz Lang seeks inspiration for his first sound film by immersing himself in the case of serial killer Peter Kürten.
A great mosaic, a labyrinth of scenes, dialogue splinters, interviews, portraits of people surrounding Hamlet and wanting to be part of his story.
In Ethiopia, Frank Michalka has found a new home and left his criminal past behind. But happiness does not last long and the former offender must go back to Germany. Once there, he immediately falls back into old patterns and robbed a bank.
When an illicit arms deal goes bad, North Korean spy Pyo Jong-seong finds himself targeted not just by the South Koreans but also his own bosses.
On a seniors ride a bourgeois widow meets a proletarian man. Out of despair they marry right away without getting to know each other. Moving in with her, he brings a cat, which is a thorn in her eye and a synonym for the rough relationship.
Max Bretschneider pretends to be a communist in order to conduct the last interview with Erich Honecker.
What could be lovelier than Women's Lake - a magical summer setting near Berlin? Rosa, perhaps. She's the slightly melancholy guardian of the lake, spending her days in a boat, trapping fish and watching for poachers. Or her lover, the polished and prosperous Kirsten, with her perfect cottage on the shore of Frauensee. How does their relationship work, and what effect will the two young lesbians in the canoe have on it all? Thoughtful, complex and beautiful.
The retired Chief superintendent Jakob Franck who often had to inform relatives as a "death messenger", now hopes to lead a life beyond the dead.
The name of car manufacturer Carl F. W. Borgward is still synonymous with the West German Wirtschaftswunder. For hundreds of thousands the "Isabella" from Borgward is the first car after the war while Borgward secures thousands of jobs in Bremen. But in 1961, the company of the passionate constructor goes surprisingly broke.
When Adolf Hitler reawakens at the site of his former bunker in present-day Berlin, he is mistaken for a comedian and quickly becomes a media phenomenon.
Martin Behrens is a Middle East expert for the German intelligence agency BND. He obtains information leading to a U.S. drone strike on a wanted terrorist in Zahiristan. A few days later, there's a terrorist attack on a restaurant – the video claiming responsibility calls it payback for the drone strike. Freelance journalist Aurice, with whom Martin was having an affair, is among the victims – she was investigating corruption at the heart of the BND. Martin soon has to realize that in a world where big corporations profit from arms deals as well as from homeland security contracts, good and evil are sometimes hard to tell apart.
Anna teaches violin at a music school, her husband is an instrument-maker. They have a 10-year-old son, Jonas. At school, Anna champions young Alexander, in whom she alone sees great talent. She devotes much energy and attention preparing him for the next stage exam to prove she was right. Soon Anna devotes more time to him than to Jonas, bringing the two boys into rivalry. At the same time her marriage is collapsing, she withdraws increasingly from her own family and starts an affair with her colleague Christian, who is encouraging her to join a quartet. When she fails during their joint concert, the pressure mounts. With Alexander now her vehicle, she drives him ever onwards and upwards. Come the day of the exam, events take a tragic turn...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the author of Werther, the romantic novel that was transformed into a play during Goethe's lifetime and which initiated the whole German romantic movement. The book's story tells of young love and suicide. In this East German film, based on a book by Thomas Mann, Lotte (Lilli Palmer) was the woman who served as the model for the heroine in the novel Werther. She comes to Goethe's hometown for a visit, and her experiences there eerily re-create episodes from the book. Goethe comes across as a pompous old bore, and his friends as pandering sycophants, in this very proper communist party-sponsored, anti-heroic movie.
Nine-year-old Max moves to Geroldseck Castle, together with his mother, who takes up a position as a geriatric nurse there. Apparently a shrewd thief is up to mischief here. His mother is suspected, she is threatened with dismissal. Therefore, together with the three residents of the old people's home at table no. 7, Max does everything possible to convict the real perpetrator.
A three-chapter 720-minute cinematic exploration inspired by historical explorers like Adelbert von Chamisso. The film intertwines past and present travel experiences, using readings and visual materials to explore themes of cultural knowledge loss and change, drawing parallels to Chamisso’s “Wondrous Story” of Schlemihl and his shadow.
One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 1930s, Wilhelm Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. In the bombed-out Berlin of the immediate post-war period, the Allies slowly bring law and order to bear on an occupied Germany. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing.
The armouring soldier and writer Werner Bertin is ordered to the Western Front to France during the First World War. The use before Verdun - with all the horrors of war in the period 1916/1917 - brings a fundamental change of consciousness for the academic from Berlin. The intellectual devoted to bravery by fate develops into a disappointed but rebellious being. He sees more and more the injustices of warlike conflicts and their social causes.
Charlotte Kler has enjoyed a privileged life alongside her husband, star conductor Walter Kler, but has also jetted restlessly around the world with him. She is delighted that this is now to come to an end and the family will be reunited in Munich. But things turn out differently than she thinks: her husband secretly makes plans to take a job in New York, her daughter reproaches her and her granddaughter is not interested in her. Not a good start for Charlotte. But a chance acquaintance with a former lifeguard brings her back to what really matters in life.
How do you become a Frankfurter?