Elfriede Irrall
Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty…
When Johanna's blind grandmother Ruth tells her the secret about their Jewish past, the “sleeping dogs” of the family history awake.
A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopper (e.g. "Office at Night", "Western Motel", "Usherette", "A Woman in the Sun") into a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history. Each station in Shirley’s professional and private life from the 1930s to 1960s is precisely dated: It is always August 28/29 of the year in question, as the locations vary from Paris to New York to Cape Cod.
The story of an old married couple. As she dies his imagination calls her back to life and they have a wonderful time together like they didn’t have for many years....
Fat German star restaurant chef Gregor shows romantic interest in waitress Eden Drebb. She's happily married to hunky Xaver Drebb, but feels romantically neglected. Gregor's deserts seduce her, first trough her brat daughter Leonie, to spend time with him and his fabulous dishes. That soon becomes a rather platonic affair, and domestic troubles. Xaver decides to exact revenge on Gregor, with tragic results.
In a bomb explosion in a parking garage, the architect's wife Anna is buried together with the writer Robert. The two seriously injured people are scarcely recovered from the rubble. When Anna falls in love with the charming Robert during a subsequent stay in a rehab clinic, she has to make a heavy heart decision between him and her family. "The love of my life" is a sensitive love melodrama with Aglaia Szyszkowitz, Hannes Jaenicke and Jan Gregor Kremp.
A portrait of a single day in the late summer of 1956, toward the end of Bertolt Brecht's life, as he prepares to leave his lakeside home, surrounded by the women who form his extended family.
Nina Hoss stars in this adaptation of a novel by Klaus Mann as Marion von Kammer, a singer who leaves Germany for Zurich as the Nazis rise to power. However, she finds life in Switzerland dull and suffocating, so she journeys to Paris, where she works at a pirate radio station broadcasting anti-fascist messages. She becomes friendly with a group of fellow Germans living in the city of lights, including nightclub owner Mother Schwalbe; Professor Abel, the unofficial leader of the group; Martin Korella, a dissatisfied young author; and Kikjou, Martin's lover.
The "Our Gang" type adventures of German working class kids from a Berlin apartment building (number 67) during the early 1930s. With Nazism's rise, however, their tight-knit group unravels. One leader, Paul, becomes a Nazi.
This two-part drama examines the fate of Haneke’s own generation which came of age after World War II. The first part depicts the generational gap between 1950s teenagers and their parents while the second shows this same group of characters twenty years later as they have grown up to be dysfunctional and suicidal adults. Regarded as the most significant of Haneke’s early works, Lemmings contains incipient treatments of many of the themes he would later elaborate on in his theatrical features.
When actress Elfriede Irrall wants to make a film about her mother Erika Trojan in 1977, she is skeptical at first, but then ready to talk. Erika Trojan speaks surprisingly openly of her life in Vienna, of National Socialism, of family constraints and the desire for liberation, of love and sexuality. The explosiveness and timeliness of the result are without comparison.
Horst Wolland is a welder in Berlin who tries to move up the career ladder to better provide for his family. He is on the verge of being promoted when the working conditions worsen, triggering a strike. Wolland stays out of it, but he also refuses to tell his manager who the strike leader is, so he is not promoted. Wolland understands what solidarity means and tries to organize another strike.
A son longs to escape from his stifling home, where his genteel mother worries about the future prospects of his lame, shy sister.
The Thorwald family is well-off and contented when a tragedy strikes: the father is killed in an accident. Miss Thorwald takes over the raising of her children, four girls and two boys with the youngest already fifteen years old. She manages to keep them together in spite of the fact that their economic situation deteriorates after World War I. Never one to look too critically upon her brood, the woman undergoes a moving and gradual transformation as the adult activities of her children bring home the fact that none of them are what she had once imagined.
A series of knife murders have an odd feature about them; the victims find that their luggage has been packed for them just before their deaths. Scotland Yard investigates, and discover that the murders are linked to an addictive drug called Mescadrine.
