André Hennicke
When 22-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder storms the stage of a small, progressive theatre in Munich 1967, and seizes the production without further ado, nobody suspects this brazen young rebel to become one of the most important post-war German filmmakers. Despite early setbacks, many of his films breakout at the most renowned films festivals and polarise audience, critics and filmmakers alike. His radical views and self-exploitation, as well as his longing for love, have made him one of the most fascinating film directors of this time.
In the dark middle ages young unruly Goldmund is sent to a monastery by his father to atone for the sins of his mother, who abandoned them. It is there that he meets Narcissus, a brilliant, scholarly novice, who is introverted and aloof. A unique and deep life-long friendship is born. Narcissus chooses to remain detached from the world in prayer and meditation. Goldmund, who is passionate, sensual and impulsive, runs away from the monastery to live a picaresque wanderer’s life, his amorous and artistic adventures leading him to discover the extremes of both ecstasy and pain. Several thrilling years pass, until one day these friends cross paths again...
Five old friends have to prove themselves one last time. 30 years after the hopeful young band Bochums Steine have separated after a disastrous live performance, fatally ill Rainer tries to re-activate his old cronies
The execution of 200 Greek resistance fighters by the German occupiers on May 1st, 1944 in Kaisariani, as reprisal for the Greek Resistance ambush against Nazis.
A missing person case involving a child in 1987 East Germany attracts the attention of an investigator rumored to possess supernatural powers.
An aggressive race of aliens took over Planet Earth and humanity's at its end, living in giant bunkers below ground. Young Military rookie S.U.M.1 (Iwan Rheon) is sent to the surface to save a group of unprotected survivors.
Germany in the not-too-distant future: The borders are closed, refugees are collected in camps and turned away or accepted. The mood is charged, a police detachment is responsible for keeping the crowd in check. Volt is one of the cops. He accidentally kills a French refugee. The violence spirals out of control. Volt starts up a relationship with the sister of the man he killed and winds up between the fronts.
Peter and Lisbeth are two young but unfortunate lovers living in a rigid rural community in the Black Forest. She comes from a wealthy family of glassblowers; he is a poor coal worker on the lower end of society. To become rich and respected, Peter makes a pact with a devil named Dutch Michael, who rips out his heart and replaces it with a stone. Robbed of all warmth and feeling, Peter becomes a cold-hearted go-getter who rapidly achieves his goals. Ruthlessly he strives for money and power.
After Lucy (17) finds out that she was conceived during a porn shoot she sets out to find her father and meets Udo, a has-been former porn star. Together this unlikely couple go on a journey during which both find more than they bargained for…
Continuity begins as a straight-forward story of an emotional homecoming and turns uncanny as the two protagonists – a middle aged couple living in a small town in Germany – repeatedly invite different young men into their home to perform an inscrutable ritual. This is a remake of Continuity (2012) by the same director, expanding on the original idea.
A young man struggles with the pressure of caring for his terminally ill father while trying to unlock a secret that his father seems determined to keep from him. The story takes another dramatic turn when Ron, Burghardt’s long-lost friend from his youth, re-appears — and a well-kept family secret is uncovered.
A psychedelic mushroom trip turns a successful lawyer into a wanted man.
A drama set during the failed coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Gelsomina’s family works according to some special rules. First of all, Gelsomina, at twelve years of age, is head of the family and her three younger sisters must obey her: sleep when she tells them to and work under her watchful eye. But the world, the outside, mustn’t know anything about their rules, and must be kept away from them. They must learn to disguise themselves.
Without having been invited, Schuhmann arrives at his son’s wedding. They haven’t seen each other in years, but still it seems that Stefan resembles his father more than he wants to…
Taking all that was great from the first instalment, the movie aims to be a wilder, leaner, faster-paced and even more entertaining anthology this time around, with a new crop of award-winning, visionary filmmakers from around the globe.
After 16 years in jail is Harms attracted by the big bucks: a raid on the central bank, 70 to 100 millions in cash. A former staff member can arrange access to the bank. However, the team needs to be careful - too many bills, too many problems. One third of the money should suffice but Harms underestimated the deadly power of greed. The project gets out of control...
Under the slogan of the arms race of the superpowers, which escalates in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and brings the world to the brink of nuclear war, two exemplary post-war male figures challenge an almost archaic feud: Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss and journalist Rudolf Augstein.
All of a sudden, 16-year-old Martha vanishes. Her father Lothar, who for years has had no contact with her or his ex-wife, sets off unwilling to find her. He soon realises other young people are also vanishing from the city inexplicably. Lothar follows their trail across the country. He meets the occasional young person but the trail goes cold. In the next city he encounters militia groups and a reinforced police presence. Children are forbidden to be on the streets unless accompanied by adults. The world has changed...
Two hundred years after the construction of the great cathedral, the medieval town of Kingsbridge is taken under siege by Queen Isabella. Caris, a visionary young woman, inspires her people to stand up for their rights and revolt against to the most powerful forces of her time, the Church and the Crown.
Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the driven Dr. Carl Jung takes the unbalanced yet beautiful Sabina Spielrein as his patient. Jung’s weapon is the method of his master, the renowned Sigmund Freud. Both men fall under Sabina’s spell.
Anna, an attractive woman of 40 years, lives with her husband Johann and his small daughter. Both have managed to succeed economically and lead a helpless life. Suddenly appears a dark character, associated with the underworld, who begins to blackmail Anna, threatening to reveal his past.
Katrine is excited to be moving into her own dorm room at university, leaving her over-protected father and the memory of her breakdown behind her. Enjoying her new found freedom things soon turn ugly though as she falls foul of the local ‘in’ crowd, who start to bully her. Katrine discovers that this group were responsible for the death of the previous occupant of the room, who is now out for revenge and becomes trapped in the middle of this nightmare. Inspired by (but in no way a copy of) Candyman and Ringu, Room 205 is an effective chiller that oozes tension as it builds to its shocking climax.
Down a seedy city street in her neighborhood, young Enola Penny is obsessed with what appears to be a long abandoned theatre. One night, she sees that the front door is slightly ajar and impulsively decides to sneak inside. But there in the dark, decrepit auditorium, a show unlike any other unfolds before her eyes. Its host is an eerie human puppet named Peg Poett who will introduce Penny to six tales of the bizarre: A couple traveling in a remote part of the French Pyrenees cross paths with a lustful witch; A paranoid lover faces the wrath of a partner who has been pushed to her limit; The Freudian dreams of an unfaithful husband blur the lines between fantasy and reality; The horrors of the real world are interpreted through the mind of a child; A woman addicted to other people's memories gets her fix through the vitreous fluid of her victims' eyeballs; And a perverse obsession with sweets turns sour for a couple in too deep.
Handsome Albanian villager Arben (the appealing Nik Xhelilaj, who looks set for a big international career) wants to marry Etleva, daughter of a neighboring clan, but her father has promised her to another man who is offering a 10,000 Euros bride price. But when it turns out Etleva is carrying Arben's child, the pressure is on for him to come up with the dowry before the baby is born -- and before her brothers take revenge for the dishonor he has brought their family. Fleeing to Berlin without papers, experience or knowledge of the language, Arben soon learns the ways of survival.
Dr. Sophie Schöner is to treat patients in a hospital in Berlin as a trial with traditional Chinese medicine. It quickly comes to a conflict with the local chief physician. The unequal balance of power provides professionally for plenty of controversy. The fact that the two are attractive does not make things easier.
A wide-ranging, energetic period piece tracing the rise of the Protestant Henry of Navarre as he goes from battlefield warrior to France's beloved King Henri IV. Director Jo Baier's epic is a classically entertaining adventure, albeit one with more than a little bloodshed and frequent bawdy sexual interludes. In late 16th-century France, Catholics and Protestant Huguenots were at war. Seemingly seeking peace, the French dowager queen, Catherine de Medici summons Henry to her court to have him marry her daughter, uniting the two warring factions. However, the Catholics slaughter the Protestant wedding guests in what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and Henry-now married-must use all his guile to both stay alive and maneuver for the throne. [Written by Palm Springs International Film Festival]
Jürgen Stoll is not only a Filou and life artist, but the darling of many women. When the marriage swindler is given the choice, prison in the GDR or a career as "Romeo" in the FRG, he decides to go to the West. Stoll now plays in the big game of secret agents until he realizes that the Stasi still has very different plans with him.
Jacob tries to hide the suicide of his father because he is afraid to have to live in an orphanage.
Kingdom of Hungary, 17th century. As she gets older, powerful Countess Erzsébet Báthory (1560-1614), blinded by the passion that she feels for a younger man, succumbs to the mad delusion that blood will keep her young and beautiful forever.
Following her parents' wishes, spirited seventeen-year-old Effi Briest marries Baron von Innstetten – a former admirer of her mother – who is twenty years Effi's senior. This marriage of prudence heralds the beginning of a humdrum life, far from home, for Effi. Innstetten devotes himself entirely to his political career, and the sleepy small town of Kessin has very little to offer in terms of variety. But then, one day, Innstetten's old regimental comrade, Major Crampas – a charming womanizer – arrives on the scene.
Luis pays a visit to his father in the mountains. He has not seen him for several years. When he arrives at the remote holiday home he is more than surprised to encounter his father’s new family – about whom his father made no mention. Torn between his desire to be with his father and his anger and frustration over his father’s new-found happiness, Luis tries to provoke his father and break down his reserve.
Thomas and Hanna, a deliriously happy couple in their late 30s, buy an old house in the country with plans to fix it up over the summer. Hanna is looking forward to their time together – so when Thomas invites his older brother, Friedrich, who is deeply depressed over the failure of both his business and his marriage, to join them, she is disappointed by the intrusion. Easygoing, charming, and talkative, Thomas seeks to counterbalance the cloudier mood with an impetuous frenzy of activity, but Hanna retreats into sullenness and retaliates by bringing in her nubile young godchild Augustine until things smooth themselves out. Augustine’s youthful sexiness has anything but a soothing impact on Thomas, however, whose adolescent impulses linger just below the surface.
A presumed virus outbreak during a flight from south Asia to Munich. Most of all, the scientific premise is utterly wrong. Retroviruses is shown as multiplying in erythrocytes, which lack a) DNA (necessary for retrovirus replication) and b) the enzymatic apparatus for multiplying any viral nucleic acids.
Mid-19th-century, Baltic Sea port city of Lubeck, Germany. Follows the fourth generation of the Buddenbrook mercantile family as Tony and Thomas reach the age of marriage. Fatefully impeded every step of the way, the Buddenbrooks struggle as economic hardship and personal defeats weigh down family relations.
East Germany, 1988: working as a state security service agent, Jürgen Kaiser is loyal to the party line, but worried about his son Marco, a punk. As he is arrested after a concert, Marco is forced to join the army, where he surprisingly identifies with socialism and believes he has to defend his country against the capitalist enemy. While Jürgen is astonished, his wife Hanna and Marco's girlfriend Anja, supporting the civil rights movement, don't like his new attitude...
GSG 9 is a German TV-series about the special unit GSG 9 der Bundespolizei of the German Federal Police. It premièred in the Spring of 2007. Its original title, GSG 9 - Ihr Einsatz ist ihr Leben, is a pun on the word Einsatz. Einsatz can be translated as "mission, stake, bet, dedication", depending on the context. Thus, it can be translated as, GSG 9 - Their Mission Is Their Life or GSG 9 - They Put Their Lives at Stake.
A love story wrapped in a mystery. Set in Europe before WWII, professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Nazis. While on the run, the professor meets a young woman who has her own experience with a lightning storm. Not only does Dominic find love again, but her new abilities hold the key to his research.
Investigates the life a young man who has decided to enter a Jesuit monastery in Venice, but is then overcome by agonizing doubts before his ordination.
Since 1980 German institutions send teens to the south of Portugal under experimental projects of social rehabilitation. That's how Katrin comes to Alentejo. She will establish a unique relationship with the surrounding environment, a situation exacerbated by the harshness of the landscape and the emptiness of a socially desertified region. Katrin, twith Julia and Pedro, will build a refuge in a no-man's-land...
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.
After nine years in psychiatric detention Theo, who has brutally assaulted and raped three women, is released. Living in a supervised community, he connects well with his social worker Sascha, finds a job at a print shop and even a girlfriend, Nettie, his principal's brittle and estranged daughter. But even though superficially everything seems to work out Theo's seething rage remains ready to erupt.
When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.
True story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to thrilling, dramatic life. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl's life.
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
Oskar Roehler's drama Der Alte Affe Angst (Angst) is about the dissolution of a couple. Robert (Andre Hennicke) and Marie (Marie Baumer) have little in common other than their sex life. Since Robert is going through a bout with impotency, they are having a very rocky time. Robert learns that his father, whom he is estranged from, has died. This disturbs Robert so much that he visits a prostitute, and is able to engage in sex with her. Marie discovers the infidelity, and the prostitute has a surprise of her own. Angst was screened at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.
Middle-aged lawyer Thomas assists Leyla, an attractive blonde, when she drops her things at the pool. After their paths keep crossing, he picks up the courage to ask her out for a date. Somewhat to his surprise she agrees, but arrives late, just as the restaurant is closing. They go back to his apartment for an impromptu pizza and, after a few drinks, she falls asleep on the couch. The next morning Thomas awakes to find Leyla and his laptop, which contains vital case files, missing... An expertly constructed thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock and Chabrol, writer/director Christian Petzold's Something To Remind Me keeps the viewer enthralled throughout. -- Keith Hennessey Brown, Eye for Film
The German soldier Clemens Forel - determined to be reunited with his beloved family - makes a dramatic escape through bitter cold winters, desolate landscapes, and life threatening ventures from a Siberian labor camp after World War II. 8000 miles and three endless years of uncertainty later, he is finally about to reach his destination...An edge of your seat drama that celebrates the power of the human spirit and the force of will, while inspired and impowered by love.
Love story spanning 60 years of the lives of Charlotte and Hugo. As a teenager before the war she is in love with him, but he marries her sister. They share some brief happy moments during the difficult post-war period, then they are separated for the longest time. They meet again as 80-year olds.
6 Friends, 1 Killer, No Mercy! Slow moving thriller that builds up towards a nerve wrecking end.
The blind psychologist Tom Leschek and the therapist Jessica van der Laan are after their first successful mission, a team that is again requested when a suicide wants to plunge from a skyscraper. The young woman was held captive for months in a basement prison by arms dealer Hübner as a slave. Tom tries to convince the desperate not to jump. When she flees again and shoots Hübner, she takes Tom hostage.
Two young men, Martin and Rudi, both suffering from terminal cancer, get to know each other in a hospital room. They drown their desperation in tequila and decide to take one last trip to the sea. Drunk and still in pajamas they steal the first fancy car they find, a 60's Mercedes convertible. The car happens to belong to a bunch of gangsters, which immediately start to chase it, since it contains more than the pistol Martin finds in the glove box.
After the death of her father, Maria travels to Berlin to visit her elder sister Helena, a dancer, who she hasn't seen for years. However, when she arrives in Berlin she finds out that Helena has quit dancing and now works as a croupier in an illegal gambling club. As the two sisters' relationship gradually becomes closer, Maria must draw Helena away from the underworld and help her overcome her dangerous addiction to gambling.
A group of young people draws straws to see who'll steal some cigarettes. With this theft, Sebastian starts a bizarre, symbolic odyssey through a sclerotic world, in search of himself and of truth and justice. When he tries withdrawing from one social paradigm, he finds himself caught in another.
Donusa is a small island in the Aegean, visited by the mainline ship once a week. One winter day a young German photographer, Stefan, arrives and soon feels strangely attracted to a local girl called Eleni. The stranger’s presence works as a catalyst shedding light on Donusa’s conventions.
East Berlin, 1989: 30-year-old photojournalist Georg follows a beautiful, mysterious dancer Miss Albena. Blinded by love, he dreams about her. His imagination and reality – a world in the midst of radical social change – get mixed up.
In a loose set of cabaret pieces, Steffen Mensching and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel - highly acclaimed East German poets, songwriters and clowns - satirize East German life in its final days and the arrival of new times after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The clowns are allowed to leave prison to sing for people outside. As they perform their pieces, however, the country sinks into rebellion, the prison is attacked and looted, and the people chase the clowns away. Latest from the Da-Da-R was the first film made by an artistic production group that had fought for independence within the structures of the state-owned DEFA film studio for years. "Da-Da-R" is a wordplay on the irreverent Dada art movement of the 1920s and the German acronym for East Germany- the DDR.
The year 1933: Successful actress Maria Rheine is in love with her Jewish colleague Mark Löwenthal. When the Nazis implement the racist Nuremberg Laws, their relationship is severely endangered. Defiant Maria decides to stay together with Mark and ends her promising career: She assumes a Jewish identity and continues to work under the name Manja Löwenthal. She and Mark perform at the Jewish Theatre in Berlin, until they become victims of an intrigue: Their colleague Judith, who has a crush on Mark, denounces them to the secret police.
Maja Wegner is in her late thirties and a single mother of a teenage daughter. To give her stale life a new direction, she decides to start all over again in the big city. She sells her house in the countryside, quits her job, and moves with her daughter to Berlin. There, she finds a job as a conductor for the railroad company. Although Maja soon finds new friends in her apartment building, the search for a new life partner does not come off so easily.
Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite. In contrast with other television crime series, in which killings are practically the primary focus, while Tatort handled homicide cases, the cases handled in the GDR TV's Polizeiruf were more often the more frequent, and less serious, crimes such as domestic violence, extortion, fraud, theft and juvenile delinquency, as well as alcoholism, child abuse and rape. Contrary to Tatort, which concentrated on the primary characters and their private lives, police procedure was the center of attention of Polizeiruf, especially in the earlier episodes. The scriptwriters attached particular importance to representation of the criminal and his state of mind, as well as the context of the crime. Many episodes aimed to teach and enlighten the audience about what does and what doesn't constitute appropriate behaviour and appropriate thought, rather than just to entertain. Polizeiruf was one of the few broadcasts by GDR media in which the real problems and difficulties of the supposedly more advanced socialist society could be displayed and discussed to some extent, albeit in a fictionalized and pedagogicalized environment.
