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.
Luisa works as a couples therapist and has a loveless relationship with her husband Richard, but at the same time she is having an affair with Richard's boss Leopold. As everything slowly threatens to get out of hand, she wakes up one morning to find a second Luisa next to her, who looks just like her but, unlike the original, is somewhat naive and completely relaxed. Luisa christens her doppelganger Ann. At first, everything seems perfect, because while Ann lives out her needs and stays with Richard, Luisa can finally spend more time with Leopold. But as Richard slowly takes a liking to Ann, Luisa realizes that she is not happy with the new situation either. A serious conflict begins to brew between the two halves of her personality...
Andreas Baader starts out as a small-time criminal. In Berlin, he is recruited by a revolutionary cell. They plan to overthrow the state.
Johannes, a new assistant at the university, is asked to provide reports on an Algerian colleague - who is suspected of being a sleeper. He refuses, but the seed of doubt has been planted. A fragile friendship which is overshadowed by professional and emotional competition eventually leads to betrayal.
Jonas is in his mid-twenties, still lives with his parents and gets dumped by his girlfriend. He soon gets to know Lena, a tough young woman with ideals, and immediately falls in love with her. However, to prove he is worthy of her love, he has to pass an endurance test.
Ada Hänselmann presents her debut novel. However, the numerous guests are only interested in the 82-year-old legendary actor Nino Winter and his autobiography. The two meet again in the evening at the hotel bar. Ada involves Nino in a game - he is supposed to play a detective and shadow her. After a tour of the city, the games continue: Both are to answer any five of the other's questions honestly. Nino is skeptical, but eventually there are hundreds of questions, big and small, casual and existential, about life, love, fame, transience: what would Nino look like as a woman, what was nature thinking when it created the family, what does love sound like, what does death mean? Ada and Nino become allies of the night. They have to jump over their own shadows and a magical closeness develops between them. It is an encounter that neither of them will ever forget...
Heinrich Lutter is unemployed and lives with his two sons Mike and Günni. Both need his full attention: Mike has a criminal record and Günni has been disabled since birth. The only thing that keeps him going is his camper van - his symbol of freedom and a better life in Italy. But his dream on four wheels is confiscated by the authorities. Nevertheless, he refuses to be deterred and continues to hold on to his conviction that he can honestly obtain his rights and realize his visions.
A long-separated German mother and her half-Turkish daughter are reconciled in a splendidly serene dramatic comedy.
The lonely bank-employee Phillip follows a strict pattern of somewhat compulsive actions keeping his encounters with strangers to a minimum. When his home one day is robbed of all content and he later meets the enchanting blind cellist Lina, he finds, however, he needs to start improvising and taking chances.
Documentary film about a young actor from the GDR who lives in West Germany after moving there. It deals with his close relationship with his mother, his fears, and his sex life. Narcissistically open, radical in his dealings with himself and others, enthusiastic about his profession, rebelling against everything he considers cheap convention.
As a bodyguard at the BKA, Helen Schilling is responsible for the security of the controversial Minister of Economics and Environment Richard Bauer at a press event. When Bauer has a seizure in front of the journalists, it quickly becomes clear: the minister has been the victim of a targeted attack. In the course of the investigation, Helen becomes involved in a highly explosive plot, behind which a war for the dominance of future genetic research and its ethical limits is unfolding.
A young woman has the idea of setting up her boyfriend with a very wealthy but sickly lady to claim her inheritance.
A character study as well as a meditation on communication, creativity, and physical space, Take What You Can Carry is a picture of a young woman seen through the interiors she occupies and the company she keeps. A North American living abroad, Lilly aspires to shape an intimate and private place of her own while connecting to the world around her. When she receives a letter from home, it provides the conduit she needs to fuse her transient self with the person she's always known herself to be.
After directing a successful feature film, Charlotte experiences an anti-climax. Against the wishes of her producer she decides to make a documentary about poverty and social hardship in a bid to regenerate her artistic sensibilities.
In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.
Marie is an adolescent woman who lives in Prussia in 1813 with her mother, a countess. They live in a palace watching the path of history from a far point of view.
Berlin. Greta, 40, architect, mother of a 12-year-old son, recently unemployed. She does everything in her power to keep hanging on in there, torn between the pressure to conform and the spirit of contradiction.
Gwen has just discovered, that she's the final member of the secret time-traveling Circle of Twelve. Now she has to juggle with constant trips to the past, her relationships with Gideon and figuring out dark secrets surrounding the Circle.
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.
Famous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele — the 'Death Angel of Auschwitz', who killed more than 300.000 people — emerges from his hideout in Argentina to Germany as a 87-year-old man, and must stand for his crimes in court. The young solicitor Peter Rohm is assigned to defend him, but Rohm himself — an expert on Mengele and his crimes — feels unable to do so. When he decides to take on the case, he endangers not only his marriage but also his and his wife's lives.
Phoebe Phaidon works as a climatologist at an institute of cybernetics which is about to be shut down. So there has to be a solution in the form of a successful evaluation. The strategy consultants now work against the student movement in a virtual reality. Turmoils start.
Christoph begins his year of civil service at a nursing home as the personal caretaker for 28-year-old Sven. The seriously ill young man is suffering from muscular dystrophy and his nursing room has become his own little microcosm which he has been sovereignly controlling for years.