In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.
A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.
In occupied Berlin, a US Army Captain is torn between an ex-Nazi cafe singer and the US Congresswoman investigating her.
Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.
In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.
In post-war Germany, liberation by the Allies does not mean freedom for everyone. Hans Hoffmann is repeatedly imprisoned under Paragraph 175, which criminalizes homosexuality. Nevertheless, over the decades, he continues his quest for freedom and love, even if he finds it in the most unusual places.
Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made, and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.
A biography of Hildegard Knef, one of Germany's biggest post-war stars.
A young American serviceman stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his future after falling in love with a German woman.
A Nazi's fiancee helps an escaped U.S. soldier, then meets him in postwar Berlin.
Long before he played the corpulent Goldfinger, German actor Gert Froebe was a scarecrow-skinny comedian. In Berliner Ballade, Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow. Director R. A. Stemmle doesn't have to strive for pathos: he merely places his gangly star amidst the ruins of a bombed-out Berlin, and the point is made for him. Filmed in 1948, Berliner Ballade was later released in the U.S. as The Berliner.
Jeff Elliot is an American GI investigating a black market gang in Munich.
An American ex-WW II POW returns to Germany 30 years after the war. He teams up with the former commander of his prison camp. Together they spring a Nazi war criminal from jail. He's the only one left who knows where a secret wartime cache of gold is hidden.
In this film essay, critic Peter Buchka explores the German cinema of the 1920s, ranging from the disquieting images of Fritz Lang's Metropolis to the castrating sexuality of Marlene Dietrich in Die Blaue Engel. The program provides an introduction to Weimar cinema, with Buchka's essay narrated over the images from film clips of 1920s era German films.
An American army officer working for British intelligence comes to post-war Berlin to solve a murder. His investigation is compromised when he falls for a nightclub singer, not realising she is an agent of the criminal mastermind he is on the trail of.
This James A. FitzPatrick Traveltalks short visits the West German cities of Hamburg, Bremen, Munich, and Heidelberg. Included are scenes of World War II destruction that lingered at the time.
Munich, 1968: a period of liberation, student revolts, state repression. Amidst the restlessness, chemistry student Robbie meets the Irish cello player Nancy. They feel compelled to pursue a passion in spite of their careers. But does romantic love have a place in such convoluted, contesting times?
Post-war Germany in 1946 while people are struggling to make ends meet, the film follows Hermann, a war veteran who finds employment at a train station. As he falls in love with an agricultural worker and starts comitting thefts, his fragile psyche seems to fall more and more out of balance.