Az irodalomtudományok doktora, Jakob Fabian napközben reklámszövegeket ír, éjszakáit pedig kétes hírű intézményekben tölti barátja, Stephan Labude társaságában. Míg Labude egész lényével beleveti magát a szenvedélyes ideológiai viták és a testiség világába, Fabian mindvégig józan és távolságtartó marad. Egy nap megismerkedik a gyönyörű fiatal lánnyal, Corneliával, akinek a megjelenése megrengeti a férfi alapvető cinizmusát: az eddig ismeretlen érzelmek kizökkentik ironikus fatalizmusából.
Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?
For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.
An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.
Cem Kaya’s dense documentary essay celebrates 60 years of Turkish music in Germany. An alternative post-war history that is at the same time a musical Who’s Who – from Yüksel Özkasap to Derdiyoklar and Muhabbet.
A második világháború alatt a szülők egy vidéki rokonukhoz küldik kisfiukat, valahová Kelet-Európába. A nagynéni azonban váratlanul meghal, ezért a gyermek kénytelen teljesen egyedül és magára hagyva útnak indulni a vad és ellenséges világba, ahol csak a helyi szabályok, előítéletek és hiedelmek érvényesülnek. Útközben szörnyűségek sorozatát éli át, az emberi rosszindulatnak és gonoszságnak láthatóan nincs határa. Szó szerint a fizikai túlélésért vívott harcát a háború után egy másfajta harc váltja fel... A Festett madár egy mélyen drámai történet, amely egyik oldalon a szörnyűségek és kegyetlenségek, a másik oldalon az ártatlanság és szeretet közvetlen kapcsolatát elemzi.
A terjedelmes archív anyagok és az őt ismerőkkel készített interjúk alapján ez egy halmozottan kívülálló helyzetben levő személy története, aki ennek ellenére a szabad világ tényleges vezetője lett, amelyet most először mesélnek el a nemzetközi közönségnek.
In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.
Emma Freese is desperate when her husband Alfred falls ill at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel. How is the family supposed to get by without their wages? The war has scarred this generation, but now things are supposed to be looking up. The workers want their fair share and are fighting for an income that also gives them room to live. In October 1956, 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein walk off the job to fight for justice and their dignity. This strike is still regarded as the toughest and longest in Germany. Employers and politicians stand in the strikers' way.
On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.
Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)
Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.
On June 17, 1953, there was an outrageous action between the Elbe and the Oder: the people in the GDR refused obedience to their political leadership. The story takes place in Bitterfeld and tells the story of a family involved in the political events around 17 June.
It was a foundational myth of the GDR that it was anti-fascist and free of Nazis. But was that really the case? The film takes a critical look on the actual way the brown heritage was dealt with in the GDR.
Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era - but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They should be excluded from the national community. More than 50,000 queer people have been proven to have been persecuted. The documentary highlights three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror: Elli Smula was persecuted as a lesbian, Liddy Bacroff was harassed by the authorities as a "transvestite" and Rudolf Brazda was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp because of his homosexuality. In order to tell their stories, the actor Jannik Schümann and the activists Julia Monro and Kerstin Thost go looking for clues in archives and talk to historians. You will learn how some people managed to live out their identity and assert themselves as queer people during the Nazi era despite the most adverse circumstances.
After numerous military operations, Major Müller can't find a way back into civilian life. Following his urge to communicate, the Major is looking for listeners and encouragement. He doesn't find either. Instead, the repeated monological memory of his own heroic deeds determines his present – with all the consequences. This 30-minute short film is based on the statements made by the mercenary Siegfried Müller in the documentary “The Laughing Man” (Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann, DEFA studio for newsreels and documentaries, 1966), as well as records from the German colonial period in Africa. An intensive contribution to the necessary public debate about the consequences of military operations.
It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.
Documentary about Kurt Landauer, the long-time Jewish president of FC Bayern München, who led the club to its first German championship, was persecuted and forced out of office by the Nazis, and rebuilt the club after the war.
An aspiring young politician named Willy Brandt wants to become German Chancellor, but the current Chancellor Konrad Adenauer wants to prevent this at all costs and by any means necessary. Adenauer has the secret service and old alliances with a Nazi past on his side and has Brandt's election campaign spied on and torpedoed by informants in the party executive. He pulls out all the tricks to outdo the charismatic Brandt. The Federal Chancellor does not stop at damaging his reputation and defaming him - all in order to maintain his power and defeat the supposed communist "enemy".
The film talks about the rise and fall of the two most influential protagonists in GDR-politics. In succession, over long stretches even together, Ulbricht and Honecker determined the course of the GDR, of course without ever getting out of being a satellite state to the big brother in Moscow. The film looks for the caesura and crucial points in the power game between Ulbricht and Honecker.