Desaster

Based on the research for his non-fiction book "Der Baader-Meinhoff-Komplex", "Spiegel" journalist Stefan Aust wrote the screen play to Reinhard Hauff’s controversial feature film that re-narrates the startling trial against the RAF terrorists Baader, Meinhoff, Ensslin, and Raspe. The trial that started in May 1975 in the Stammheim maximum-security prison extended over 192 days and ended with a lifetime sentence for all defendants.

In this suspense story, the main character, Johann Neudorff (Gotz George), immigrated to Argentina from Germany after World War Two, and has become a successful businessman there. He is unconcerned with the nature of the government there, which at the time of this film (1978) is a military dictatorship. His comfortable existence is disrupted when he discovers that his beloved daughter Laura (Emilia Mazer) has become the lover of a political activist (Miguel Angel Sola) who is on the military's hit list. When his daughter is kidnapped, Johann attempts to use his government connections to free both her and her lover. However, his son Alfredo (Alex Benn) undermines his efforts, and Johann himself is incarcerated in a military prison, but not before he discovers that his daughter and her lover are both dead, killed by the regime.

We follow 15-year-old Paule‘s hard life on his parents' farm. Under his controlling father – who is fighting to save the homestead – he and his brother are forced to work very hard. When his brother leaves, the shy and obedient Paule meets the city girl Elfi – and with her a reason to rebel against the despotic and coarse father.

An East German man finds a way to cross the border between East and West Berlin. But when he succeeds in bringing his wife out as well, things are not quite as expected.

One night when seeking his estranged wife, Hoffmann goes to the youth center where she works. The police are there rounding up radicals who frequent the center - Hoffmann runs into the building and ends up being shot in the head. He awakens with brain trauma, partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The police accuse him of stabbing an officer; the radicals herald him as an innocent victim of police brutality. During his slow recovery at the hospital, Hoffmann must piece together his life and struggle to remember the events of that night.

Inspired by the real life events of Mathias Kneißl, a marginal man, son of poor farmers from Bavaria, in the late XIX Century. Mathias stole from the riches to give to the poor, becoming a hero for the rural people, and a popular social rebel. He was chased by the police until his unfortunate sentence.

Film version of the musical by the same name: Sunnie, a girl from the province, comes to Berlin to meet rock star Johnnie who had given her his address after a concert. On the subway to Kreuzberg, Sunnie becomes acquainted with a couple of strange people, among them "asphalt cowboy" Bambi. Bambi tells Sunnie that Johnnie’s address in Kreuzberg does not exist. Together, Sunnie and Bambi try to find the rock star in bustling metropolitan Berlin.