Germany 09: 13 Short Films About the State of the Nation

Two misfit males, one man-child, one boy, find each other, building a small cabin in the woods to create a new life. Their daily struggle for survival creates a strong bond between them until the hut is destroyed and one of the boys carted off. The former psychiatric patient is told that his friend was just a figment of his imagination, but this provokes him to fight back and prove the boy's existence.

Two university students gain insight into life and love as they get to know each other during a road trip across Europe.

Three activists cobble together a kidnapping plot after they encounter a businessman in his home.

Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.

Lukas, a young schizophrenic man, has to deal with a new town, a new relationship, and the paranoia in his head.

Alan Clay, a struggling American businessman, travels to Saudi Arabia to sell a new technology to the King, only to be challenged by endless Middle Eastern bureaucracy, a perpetually absent monarch, and a suspicious growth on his back.

A set of six nested stories spanning time between the 19th century and a distant post-apocalyptic future. Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Based on the award winning novel by David Mitchell. Directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis.

A collection of short films by 16 European directors.

The film is a collection of one-minute short films created by 60 filmmakers from around the world on the theme of the death of cinema.

Abila (14) lives in one of the most miserable slums in Africa. His girlfriend Shiku belongs to a different tribe, as the result of which he is not really allowed to fraternize with her. And then one drunken night his father gambles away his own soul.

A love story has come to its end. When a man steps into the room where his beloved one lives, she tells him to go and that she doesn't want to see him anymore. He realizes that this is going to be their last meeting - the epilogue. Afterwards he remembers the tragic ending of their relationship in a different way from what really happened.

Hanna and Simon are in a 20 year marriage with an unexiting 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.

An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.

40-year Maria is living in a monotonous and deadlocked marriage with her husband. In addition, she has to take care of her ill despotic father. One day, she falls in love with her sensitive neighbour Dieter. But her attempt to leave her gloomy everyday life behind leads straight into tragedy.

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

An affectionate and refreshing East/West-Germany comedy about a boy whose mother was in a coma while the Berlin wall fell and 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.

When Micha's mother leaves his irascible father, he tries to prevent their divorce by any means he can think of, but his attempts to hold the family together lead to a catastrophe...

The impassive gaze of a taciturn adolescent loner named Andi, sole witness to the drowning of a young girl in an overgrown, abandoned local canal.

All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.

Young journalist Sebastian Zöllner is writing an article on artist Manuel Kaminski. Zöllner hopes that Kaminski dies soon, so that he can cash in on his article.

After he loses his job, his father, and his girlfriend, Jan's life is a shambles. Then suddenly he meets freakish street musician Vera, and a bittersweet romance unfolds...

Villagers in Turkey's Black Sea village of Camburnu struggle with the government's decision to turn their community into a garbage dump.

Nejat seems disapproving about his widower father Ali's choice of prostitute Yeter for a live-in girlfriend. But he grows fond of her when he discovers she sends money home to Turkey for her daughter's university studies. Yeter's sudden death distances father and son. Nejat travels to Istanbul to search for Yeter's daughter Ayten. Political activist Ayten has fled the Turkish police and is already in Germany. She is befriended by a young woman, Lotte, who invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, a gesture not particularly pleasing to her conservative mother Susanne. When Ayten is arrested and her asylum plea is denied, she is deported and imprisoned in Turkey. Lotte travels to Turkey,where she gets caught up in the seemingly hopeless situation of freeing Ayten.

Can Daniel follow the sun from Hamburg to the Bosporus by Friday to meet his love?

In 1915 a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them.

Akin plays a loser who pretends that he has good dope and finds that he has to deliver in real to a gangster.

New York, I Love You delves into the intimate lives of New Yorkers as they grapple with, delight in and search for love. Journey from the Diamond District in the heart of Manhattan, through Chinatown and the Upper East Side, towards the Village, into Tribeca, and Brooklyn as lovers of all ages try to find romance in the Big Apple.

Award-winning director Fatih Akin takes us on a journey through Istanbul, the city that bridges Europe and Asia, and challenges familiar notions of east and west. He looks at the vibrant musical scene which includes traditional Turkish music plus rock and hip-hop.

The movie portrays the story of an Italian family emigrated in Germany in the 1970s. Romano (Gigi Savoia), the father, decides to open a pizzeria which, by mutual decision with the wife Rosa (Antonella Attili), will call Solino, leaving his sons Gigi and Giancarlo to work there. A hostile relationship comes to life between the father and his sons, which will end up in the escape of the boys from family.

Sensing their relationship is crumbling, Christian avoids celebrating Christmas with his girlfriend Julia and heads for Paris.

An anthology feature of 10 stories of romance set in the German capital.

After a quarrel Henry leaves the apartment. New fellow-lodger of Robby and Kalle becomes Paul. The three guys couldn't be more different, but nevertheless all of them have the same problem: women. When the mysterious Malu appears, each of them wonders if she may be their dream-woman.

Mimi has her hands full. Her son Felix is hyperactive, her ex-husband Johnny is a mess, her father is a chronic gambler. Then Felix signs her up for a Swiss casting show, because Mimi wanted to be a musician originally. So Mimi decides to head for Switzerland, since it could pay all their debts. But then the whole family wants to come...

Julia and Romeo are two disenchanted lovers who want to break up but are unwilling to suffer the pain. After a nasty fight, Romeo storms off and unsuccessfully vents his frustration with a black prostitute. While visiting the ramshackle brothel, he sees a strange man, who may be a government official, handing over a huge wad of money. Later, he and Julia reunite and go to an upscale golden anniversary party. There a handsome American flirts with Julia. After yet another row, Romeo and Julia retire to the balcony for a love scene. Unfortunately, their making up is interrupted by a sudden power outage. When the lights go back on, Romeo finds the knifed corpse of the party's hostess at his feet. Naturally, he's accused of the crime, but before the other partygoers can get him, he and Julia flee into the Berlin summer night. Their strange series ensuing adventures comprise the rest of the film.

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF 2 in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland. The first episode was broadcast on November 29, 1970. The opening sequence for the series has remained the same throughout the decades, which remains highly unusual for any such long-running TV series up to date. Each of the regional TV channels which together form ARD, plus ORF and SF, produces its own episodes, starring its own police inspector, some of which, like the discontinued Schimanski, have become cultural icons. The show appears on DasErste and ORF 2 on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. and currently about 30 episodes are made per year. As of March 2013, 865 episodes in total have been produced. Tatort is currently being broadcast in the United States on the MHz Worldview channel under the name Scene of the Crime.

Compilation film.

Silva fulfills herself a dream: from Poland she flies to USA. With only a few hundred dollars she arrives in New York, incapable of the language. Not long until the charming swindler Avi steals all her money - but she doesn't give up: She hunts him down, follows him around, demanding her money back.

Marco and Melanie, a young married couple, are living a life of passion, chaos, and all the little frustrations of everyday existence. Their love for each other seems like a beacon on heavy seas. But career pressure, burned toast, and dirty laundry are eroding all tenderness, and they never seem to find enough time for their six-year-old son, Benny, either. Their world is about to fall apart when Melanie moves out, taking Benny with her. She files for divorce, and Marco makes a decision that is not only going to change his own life. He suddenly discovers his own unique way of being a father … I’m the Father is a modern portrait of a generation which appears to fail its own ambitions: After all, how do you combine a job, children, love and all the other challenges of everyday life – without giving yourself up in the process? And then what happens when positions become entrenched and a divorce seems inevitable?

A look at five pioneers of electronic music for whom work is their raison d'etre.

Documentary short by Romuald Karmakar.

Film by Karmakar.

Documentary about attack dogs and their owners in Hamburg by Romuald Karmakar.

Short documentary about a memorial ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Berlin 2014.

A young couple in the big city. She is full of energy for life; she wants to have fun and be happy. But husband sits all day on the couch, reading. But the young woman does not give up; she wants more out of life. She encourages him, she provokes him

Documentary by Romuald Karmakar.

Documentary short by Romuald Karmakar.

Romuald Karmakar directs the actor Manfred Zapatka in performing the three-and-a-half hour speech originally declaimed before ninety-two SS generals by Heinrich Himmler on the 4th of October, 1943 in the Golden Hall of the Posen Palace.

A fateful day pushes an aimless college dropout (Tom Schilling) to stop wasting his time and finally engage with life.

It is Lara's sixtieth birthday and it is surely no coincidence that her son Viktor is giving the most important piano concert of his career – since it was her who mapped out and forced Victor's musical career in the first place. Yet the day does not go as expected and Lara has to discover that Viktor is using the concert to finally free himself from her grip.

The bourgeois couple Esther and Michael have got themselves caught up in a seemingly ironic game of power, provocation and sexuality. Esther is already on the brink of madness when a young artist arrives. Requiem for something which is very small is a psychological horror-drama, with a cultural-political morale, and musical interludes.

Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.

This entertaining 1970s drama from director Alberto Bojorquez illustrates the typical conflicts that arise in relationships involving middle-class couples. The cast includes Alma Muriel, Patricia Reyes Spindola, Jose Carlos Ruiz and Gonzalo Vega.

Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.

A few weeks after palliative nurse Hans spends New year's eve completely with new acquaintance Simone, she finds herself pregnant, unplanned. At another surprise meeting, handsome Hannes surprises her by reacting to the news by offering her to move into his fine home. While Hannes devotes himself further to terminal hospital patients, Simone lazily renovates the house, but somehow gets jealous of the neighbors and compromises everything.

A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.

An anarchist young woman breaks the tacit contract with civilization and fearlessly decides on a life without hypocrisy or an obligatory safety net.

A movie about the differences between girls and boys.

She thought that this would not happen to her anymore. He did not even know that there was such a thing. A woman and a thief - an impossible love story.

Anyone can hold a mini-DV camera. Anyone can get 99 euros in credit. And everyone has already written a five-minute story in school. So everyone is actually prepared to make a 99euro-film. but "99euro-films" is more. It is the proof that German films can also be wild, new, modern, funny, political and entertaining. And all that in 80 minutes. 12 young German filmmakers come together, inspire exciting young actors and go: have an idea and simply film it. Just do it and be independent.

Dominik Graf relocates the story of the same name by Henry James from the 19th century to the year 2001.

A crime movie directed by Dominik Graf.

A rebellious young woman is thrown out by her wealthy, but marbly parents and gets into a nightmare of poverty, prostitution and sickness.

A coming-of-age story set in Germany in the 1960s. Siggi becomes involved in a love triangle when he falls for Luise, but the tightening political climate forces him to make a fateful decision.

Two bank robbers hold the clerks hostage and demand 3 million German marks as ransom. What the police do not realize is that the true criminal mastermind watches them from outside the bank, anticipating every move.

Jojo (Peter Lohmeyer) was counting on his inheritance from a rich uncle to pay off his gambling debts, but the old man played a dirty trick on him, giving him custody of an oversized dog, and leaving the real cash in the hands of one of his neices. His comfortable fantasy of future solvency has been sorely tried; to restore it, he begins to try wooing his cousin Kathrin (the woman with the loot). However, as things progress, he finds himself actually falling for her, which is perhaps the only really decent thing that he's done in his adult life. When he and a gambling buddy take Kathrin (Anica Dobra) on a jaunt to the south of France, things get pretty dicey when a corrupt cop comes onto the scene. In this romantic thriller, only one will survive.

Amidst the impersonal hubbub of Paris' Orly Airport, strangers meet, secrets are revealed, and sudden intimacies develop in this beautifully observed mosaic of lives in transit.

Mimmi is a very lonely girl not knowing what to do with her life. On the search for friends and boy-friends she strays lonely in different cities. Also Paris seems to be a place where nobody is interested in her..

Prompted by a seminar given by acclaimed German filmmaker Peter Nestler, Prague, March '92 combines 16mm footage shot over the course of a week in the title city with excerpts from Bohumil Hrabal's essay "The Magic Flute," which considers the 20th anniversary demonstrations in Prague to commemorate the death of Jan Palach, who immolated himself in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion.

Sophie, a young photographer, exchanges her apartment with a student from Marseille. It is February and Marseille seems harsh and closed in the bright sun. Sophie dives into the city, she is alone, she takes photographs. In an auto-repair garage, she asks a young mechanic, Pierre, if he can get her a car. Two days later they meet again and spend the evening in a bar, captivated by the lightness of not knowing anything about each other. Sophie is happy. When she returns to Berlin, she is immediately immersed again in her former life. Her love for Ivan, the husband of her best friend Hanna, remains undeclared and the relationship between Hanna and Ivan seems to dominate. Sophie remains on the outside, yearns to leave, and decides to travel to Marseille for a second time.

Nadine is obsessed by a memory linked to a haunting tune she can no longer sing, until she hears someone else singing and everything falls back into place again. A melancholic observation of two young couples having difficulties trusting one another. They are full of skepticism and searching for a purpose in life.

Thirteen European directors explore the theme of Sarajevo; what this city has represented in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo stands for today in Europe. These eminent filmmakers of different generations and origins offer exceptional singular styles and visions.

A family spends three summer days in a beautiful lake mansion close to Berlin. Together with her new lover, Irene visits her brother Alex, who still inhabits the house with Irene's writer son Konstantin. Konstantin's girl-friend pops in, too, and all of them drift away from each other more and more. Based on Chekhov’s The Seagull

A story told in the off about the growing discomfort towards the new roommate Valentin. The camera pans through the empty room, over the shadows on the wall and the wallpaper, the yellow scarf and the postcard from Italy with the sunflowers

Short interaction in a bar.

Theres and Kenneth are both young when they first meet whilst on holiday. They fall in love but are unable to prevent themselves from losing each other. Thirty years later, in another country, another couple: Ariane leaves her husband David because she no longer loves him. The paths they both take lead them to Kenneth and Theres.

After her release from prison Alex, who has lost her faith in love, tries to reclaim her psychic balance through a retreat into loneliness. A man and a child interrupt her plan and force her to reengage. Alex dares to emerge from her shell and learns again how thin the ice is and how fragile happiness is, small though it may be.

No overview found.

What happens when an ambitious but unsuccessful actress in the middle of her life coaches a young, not a bit ambitious and equally unsuccessful pastor?

Twelve-year-old Diana encounters a strange find in the forest in the early morning. A young woman lies motionless in the moss, her legs scratched. But she wakes up. Diana doesn't ask, she takes care of her. The 23-year-old Pia is still foggy. She doesn't know anything about last night, so she instinctively goes into the hands of her childish rescuer, grateful that she does not have to explain to her counterpart. The two give each other the greatest gift, time and attention and fill up the mental empty spaces.

Peter (39) has slipped into the role of the houseman over the years, because his wife Elisabeth (42) is traveling a lot for work and he takes care of the children Robby (15) and Laura (8). Peter learns that Elisabeth wants to go to Africa with her family. Due to the death of his mother Hedi, the soul situation Peters gets more and more out of balance. When he also learns that Elisabeth has already given her boss half a promise to go to Africa for two years, Peter feels ignored and ignored. It begins a blessing of blame, in which he gets into an emotional dead end.

A tragic comedy about an 18-year old girl growing up near the new Berlin airport's construction site

A long-term observation of the forgotten former “Gestapo grounds” in Berlin 1986-2013.

The story of former Bayern Munich president Kurt Landauer, a Bavarian jew ousted by the National Socialists and brought to the concentration camp of Dachau, where he survived to come back and start to rebuild his old club after World War II.

Despite advancing age, rural businessman Franz has remained fit and energetic, but serious mental illness and financial problems mean that this hitherto ordinary man one day finds himself on a journey to Nairobi to get his money back, and perhaps his human dignity as well.

Lene Thurner is standing on a train platform in Munich. She has to decide: back to Berlin where she lives, or toward the south, where at the foot of the Alps her family lives on the lonely farm “Hierankl”.

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.

No overview found.

Farmer’s wife and mother of three Hanni worries about her youngest, Magdalena, who’s smaller and more sensitive than her siblings. She gets stomach flu and can’t see well. The doctors prescribe nothing but panaceas, and don’t take her case seriously. While Hanni searches for a doctor who will take Magdalena’s symptoms seriously, her husband and sons feel neglected. Ultimately, Hanni will have to take on the government, and confront her childhood memories of grim courtrooms and dark halls. A family drama of forceful intensity, a courtroom thriller based on a true story.

A local hunter takes seven teenage dropouts to an isolated mountain farm in the German alps where they are met by a social worker and her assistant. It is their job to help them fit back into society. But the wild environment makes them even more estranged and agitated. They take advantage of the weaknesses of the social workers and the program turns into an open fight for regognition, identity and love...

A man and a woman at an art exhibition share a fleeting moment of attraction, which neither can act upon. Days later, a chance second meeting leads to an innocent coffee and the two strangers – both married - toy with their unexplainable fascination for each other. Svenja is curious and finds herself in a hotel room with Roland, but she does not consummate an affair. A powerful executive at the large bank where Svenja's husband works, Roland is used to getting what he wants. He manipulates the transfer of her husband to Indonesia to replace a recently murdered bank manager. Unaware of Roland’s actions, Svenja now ceases to resist...

Fabian Groys, a renowned journalist for a political news magazine, enjoys great freedom, since the stories he uncovers make for good sales. When he loses a hot story about the German army, the editor saddles him with a young female intern. Fabian hates teamwork and sticks the intern with what seems a classic tabloid story about the suicide of a man who had himself torn to shreds by a lion at the zoo. But thanks to the intern’s dogged determination, signs emerge that the story Fabian was working on and the gory zoo story are actually interlinked. Is it pure coincidence? And if it isn’t, how can Fabian fight a nebulous enemy?

Armin Steeb is adrift: just finished with school, living with his middle-class parents, clueless about finding work. He tries connecting with a girl, he engages in risky sex with strangers in public toilets, he goes to job interviews. He also sends an anonymous letter to a local Munich newspaper, claiming responsibility for a fatal road accident. He fitfully pursues notoriety as he goes through life nearly without affect. What will it take to get Armin to smile?

This is the story of Sylvia, who looses her stepchildren on a shopping trip in Poland. For fear of loosing her husband's love, too, she is unable to tell him what has happened and returns home, pretending anything is fine. When realising the missing of his children, the father starts a desperate retrieval. He is ready to give up anything in order to find them. Sylvia supports him in any way; she tries to comfort him and takes care of his hope's vulnerable flame. For the first time he really needs her. While the children are trying their best to get home, the police fails in detecting their whereabouts. When a very vague trace leads to Poland, the parents hit the road to find their children on their own.