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.
Doro is young, beautiful and a trained opera singer that gets by with occasional jobs. Her neighbour, a former criminal detective, is dying and she cares for him in his last moments. His dying wish is to see his son Michael. Doro fulfills the old man's wish and they meet for the first time since twenty years.
Sauerland, autumn 1995: In the middle of the forest on the Wilzenberg, a walker finds the body of high school graduate Sonja Risse. However, the fact that the killer left a music box with the lullaby "Hush Little Baby" at the crime scene does not lead to a clear solving. 25 years later, the investigative journalist Stefanie Schneider, known as "Mütze", made a surprising discovery in Cologne. In a disused multi-storey car park, she films an undressed corpse of a man with a music box running next to it! When her colleague Jan Römer, who reported on the spectacular Sonja case as a young journalist in 1995, recognizes the melody from back then, he immediately believes there is a connection. He goes to Wilzenberg with his ambitious colleague to interview Sonja's mother Maria, her former teacher Waldheim and her best friends. The more the journalists compile, the clearer the contradictions and gaps that the investigators should have noticed at the time.
Throughout her life Marga has shown little feeling for her daughter Sofia. But now she reveals fear, wounds and a deep longing for her long-deceased husband Juris. She becomes increasingly lost in her forgetfulness and suddenly demands, like a child, gentleness. It’s an uncomfortable situation for Sofia who must now take care of her mother. Sofia’s growing realization that Marga’s past also affects her own gives Sofia impetus to make a sudden journey with her mother to Riga. This is where Marga grew up and where she married Juris. But the more Sofia learns about her mothers, the less clear it becomes who she herself is.
Hanna and Simon are in a 20 year marriage with an unexciting relationship. By chance, they both meet and start separate affairs with Adam. Adam has no idea that his two lovers are married, until they are all found out when Hanna becomes pregnant, with the natural doubts stemming from their situation.
In this vivid historical drama set in 1980s East Germany, two dockworkers and best friends who dream of escaping the repressive regime are forced to choose their loyalties when the state police promise them safe passage out of the country — if they inform on their co-workers and union leader.
GDR, January 1990. After his ouster and the fall of the wall, dictator Erich Honecker and his wife Margot find themselves virtually homeless. Only Protestant pastor Uwe Holmer and his family, who, like many others, have suffered under his tyrannical regime, offer them refuge.
Katrine is excited to be moving into her own dorm room at university, leaving her over-protected father and the memory of her breakdown behind her. Enjoying her new found freedom things soon turn ugly though as she falls foul of the local ‘in’ crowd, who start to bully her. Katrine discovers that this group were responsible for the death of the previous occupant of the room, who is now out for revenge and becomes trapped in the middle of this nightmare. Inspired by (but in no way a copy of) Candyman and Ringu, Room 205 is an effective chiller that oozes tension as it builds to its shocking climax.
The promise of a better life is pivotal in ten-year-old Fee’s decision to travel from her home in Romania to Germany. But she falls victim to child traffickers and is forced to work as a prostitute in a Berlin sex club. She is freed, however, after a police raid. When commissioner Wegemann takes up this serious case of sexual abuse, there’s a shocking discovery: a respected judge is a customer of the crime ring – and the state attorney helping her is a good friend of the judge. Are the police capable of protecting the young girl? Who can be trusted in this quagmire of lies and corruption? This crime drama addresses serious flaws in our society and their weakest victims: children.
Antonia is a single mother who works as a hotel maid in Berlin. A normal hot summer day takes a dramatic turn when she crosses paths with a particular guest of the hotel, famous blind portrait painter Julius Pass.
In the fall of 1945, nineteen year-old Mark Niebuhr, is accused of murder and is jailed as a prisoner of war in Warsaw, Poland. He maintains his claim of innocence throughout long periods of solitary confinement. When Mark is placed among a group of Polish criminals, he becomes the target of their aggression. Later, Mark experiences true hell in a communal cell with fanatical German war criminals. Turning Point is based on actual events from Hermann Kant's novel of the same name.
The puppet player Sebastian Fußberg moves through the country at the end of the fifties. Despite his age, an unwavering dreamer and idealist. But also a torn person who cannot detach himself from the shadows of his past.
Attractive uncompromising politician Mona Dengler is investigating the tobacco industry. Tomboyish bodyguard and single mother Johanna Sieber is assigned to protect her. This endangers Johanna's son. Mona unexpectedly falls for her.
A young woman whose testimony was used to break up a Berlin gang of criminals years ago lives in a witness protection program with a new identity in an idyllic village
The German soldier Clemens Forel - determined to be reunited with his beloved family - makes a dramatic escape through bitter cold winters, desolate landscapes, and life threatening ventures from a Siberian labor camp after World War II. 8000 miles and three endless years of uncertainty later, he is finally about to reach his destination... An edge of your seat drama that celebrates the power of the human spirit and the force of will, while inspired and impowered by love.
Young construction worker Ralf Reider leaves his home village Katzsprung in the Rhön mountains during the "Berlin Initiative". In the capital, he wants to earn enough money in construction to build his own house for his wife and his child. But Ralf is an unconventional character who soon becomes an outsider because of his behaviour.
Defectors from Hitler's army join the French Foreign Legion and end up in Vietnam in the late '40s.
Claudia and Georg Rattey, a married couple, have everything what people in their mid-thirties might wish for: a car, a farmhouse for vacations on the weekends, and their son Oliver. But their contentedness does not turn into happiness but into an inner void: Claudia and Georg have nothing left to say to each other and just live alongside each other. One day, they discover a ten-year old burglar in their half-finished vacation home.
Alex Kerner's mother was in a coma while the Berlin wall fell. When she wakes up he must try to keep her from learning what happened (as she was an avid communist supporter) to avoid shocking her which could lead to another heart attack.
Feature adaptation of adaptation of Torsten Schulz's novel set in East Berlin in 1968.
A young man from East Germany travels to San Francisco to search for his father, who fled 12 years ago. Together with his best friend, he starts the journey from New York with no money and the only word they ever learned in english-lessons: "friendship".
Mother Lissy, father Gerd, son Tom and daughter Ellen: the members of the Lunies family are estranged. But confronted with death, they finally meet each other again.
Five friends in their early 60s see things differently. They are afraid of loneliness and want to give their lives a new twist. The quintet cheerfully, if a little naively, found a shared flat. A risky move, as the communards could hardly be more different in character.
Karos handball team is facing a big international competition. When it becomes public that her boyfriend is an active member of a far-right party, the team, the club, Karo's family and last but not least she is put to the test: Does Karo have to be marginalized in order to signal against exclusion in society?
Unfortunately, Fanny can only enjoy her unexpected wealth for a short time. The tax office asks her to pay a hefty inheritance tax. Because of the valuable property, she has to pay far more than she was bequeathed in cash. Debts again - and her "crazy" half-brother Elias on top of that? She would like to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
Based on a switched identity, in circumstances that are found in real life as well as fiction, this drama tells the story of two soldiers fighting together in World War I. Karl (Joachim Latsch) and Richard (Hans-Use Bauer) become close friends while serving time in a German POW camp. One day Karl manages a successful escape and goes to Richard's home where he seeks refuge posing as Richard. But Richard's wife Anna (Kathrin Waligura) has never given up hope that her husband is still alive -- a possibility that would shatter Karl's proposed new life. In fact, Richard did not die in the POW camp. This film shared the Grand Prix award at the 1985 Berlin Film Festival.
A young, naive and enthusiastic theater director named Kai comes to a grim provincial town to put on Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Although the lethargic theater company shows no interest in the play, his spirit remains undaunted.Meanwhile, it is fall 1989. The world is changing and somewhere, far away in the capital, a revolution is taking place and it seems that wishes might come true. Great hopes emerge in the little town and unexpected events overtake Kai's mutating production.
Alex Berger, a respected teacher, is shaken when a student he once slept with is found murdered by a lakeside in his small Brandenburg town, prompting police to order mass DNA testing. As detectives close in, Alex confesses the affair to his wife but insists he’s innocent of the murder, while the strain threatens to tear his family apart.
Set in the Summer of 1988 and based on real events, the film tells the story of East-German twins Isabel and Doreen, two aspiring oarswomen, whose lives are changed dramatically during a training camp at Lake Balaton in Hungary. There, the girls make the acquaintance of West-German friends Arne and Nico. The holiday flirt soon turns serious when Doreen and Arne fall in love. As the end of their stay approaches, Arne asks the inseparable sisters to flee to the West with him…
The life of Alexander von Humboldt up to his attempt to climb the Chimborazo in 1802.
Berlin in the 1920s is a vibrant metropolis. After the horrors of the First World War, people seek their fortune at parties, in glittering variety theaters and dance halls. So-called "ring clubs" dominate the world of crime. When Inspector Paul Lang finds his friend, public prosecutor Barnekow, dead in the crocodile pool of the Tiergarten, the mastermind seems clear, at least to him: the murder clearly bears the signature of Immanuel Tauss, the former head of the gangster ring "The Crocodiles". But Lang's biggest adversary, Tauss, is in prison. Together with his assistant Conrad Ruppert and his secretary, Lang sets about solving the case and encounters the unscrupulous up-and-comer Viktor Parkov and the fascinating vaudeville owner Irma Berger in Berlin's night world. Another corpse opens up a surprising twist, but Lang is already deeply entangled in his personal duel with Tauss - and himself.
Based on a semi-autobiographical story by Ogai Mori, about a Japanese medical student who goes to Berlin to study in the 1880s and falls in love with a German ballet dancer.
26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 in Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist’s son, who has been investigating the sordid birth of the British working class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx’s new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police’s repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.
To gain lands from the prince of Saxony, a group of orphans seeks Mozart, in order to obtain the very rare score of one of his compositions.
German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR regime.
Ten days in the life of socialist politician Clara Zetkin. In August 1932, she is summoned from Archangelskoje near Moskow to open the new legislative session because at seventy-five, she is the oldest representative in the German Reichstag. Although she is ill and almost blind, she see this as her chance to make her voice heard amid the growing Nazi influence in Germany.
Strongly acted, charmingly cheeky character comedy with a gentle culture clash note. After a boat accident, seaman Kurt (Hans-Uwe Bauer) needs short-term support in everyday life. A mammoth task, since no one can cope with the difficult patient. The emergency service conjures up its last ace up its sleeve: the resolute Roza from Poland's natural paradise, the wild and romantic Masuria.
Maria Nikolai was once a celebrated musician. 20 years ago she came to Hamburg with her husband, who has since died. But her neighborhood, which used to be a neighborly neighborhood, is gradually threatening to turn into a social hotspot: the streets are dirty, young people are killing time in front of the supermarket and alcohol is a constant companion for many. Foreigners have also been increasingly moving to the district for some time.
A lighthearted look at the opening of the border crossing of Bornholmer Straße in Berlin from the point of view of the confused border guards.
Pauline Schwebe is a police officer and single. She is touched when she discovers Leo Golombeck's handwritten wish list at a traffic light. In it, the seven-year-old invites a lonely soul to a Christmas party with his family. In return, he wouldn't mind if the lonely soul brought a few presents. Pauline visits Leo, who lives in modest circumstances with his sister Lotte and his dad Daniel. As Pauline's parents are constantly nagging her that she is still single, she quickly invites Daniel and his children to the family Christmas party and introduces him as her new boyfriend.
Three monks are making their way from Germany to a monastry in Italy, because they cannot afford the rent for their facility any longer.
May of 1945. Soviet soldiers conducting an operation to rescue the children in a small town in the territory of Germany.
When he reaches age 18, Peter is released from the children's home where he grew up, but this does not mean he is truly ready for adult life.
While drinking coffee at an outdoor café, Dupin sees a man drop to his death.
A journalist believes that her father's death from cancer was caused by radioactive radiation.
A railway line is to be laid through remote Lusatian farmland. Surveyors herald the “new era” with their work. The events also leave their mark on the people. Stylistically idiosyncratic first feature film by a director who comes from documentary film. The story is told as a parable about the relationship between humans and progress, with the actors making extremely clever use of their freedom.