Franziska Walser
The life of Karsten, a mortician, isn’t going that well at the moment. Just in time for Christmas, his parents inform him during the festive dinner that they want to commit suicide together. In five days. Usually used to death, he tries everything to convince the dear mother Marion and the father Theodor, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, not to pursue their plan. But the conflict about the self-determined death opens up old wounds – and as Karsten’s own health deteriorates rapidly, it is no longer clear who needs to be saved.
For Johannes and Lydia Klare, their faith in God comes first. Together they lead a small community in Stuttgart, successfully. People listen to them, they are becoming more and more close to them. There are even plans to make the donor-funded community much bigger by the generous contributions of Volker. First of all, the couple have quite different, more urgent points to take care of. When one day they watch the homeless street-boy Simon drifting back and forth in drug-related crises, they take him in for a short while. Together they want to help him again on the right path. But it is not just the drugs that are causing conflicts. Simon's homosexuality also presents the two with great challenge, since it is not so easy to unite with their faith.
Inspired by true events, this is a story about what happens when two outsiders from opposite corners of the world are thrown together: Brazil and Germany. Marten Brueckling, a retired music teacher from Germany, has inherited an original sheet of music from Bachs son. Marten has to collect the sheet in person in the beautiful Baroque city of Ouro Preto in the heart of Brazil. But Brazil is not for beginners: Funny circumstances drives hm to teach music to the kids of a juvenile detention center. Bachs music and Brazilian instruments mix perfectly. One of the kids is Fernando, a lovable, abandoned boy, who lived on the streets. But Marten discovers that they have more in common as he thought.
Melanie and Walter seem to be happily married but then strange incidents begin to occur. Their house is broken into but nothing is missing. Someone is observing them and Walter is even pursued and harassed by a young man. The situation escalates when they find out that the daughter of their former housekeeper has died.
In the tranquil Styrian highlands, the waves rise when an Italian earthquake victim threatens to expose a dark family secret. Highly dramatic, enthralling and high-carat busy. Right down to the supporting roles, Austrian celebrities can be found in this modern Heimat film, which tells of the imponderables of love.
Once Sofie Möller left her idyllic hometown with the aim of making a career in the big city. Now she returns with her mother Agnes to attend the funeral of her grandmother and to revamp her empty house for sale. It does not take long for Sofie to be confronted with her past, which apart from the grandmotherly love consisted of many personal injuries. When she meets her former boyhood friend Tom Sommer again, Sofie has come to the time to rethink her own emotional life.
A young woman is found raped and bludgeoned to death. Her father can’t reconcile himself with her death, and even less with the fact that the murderer was never found. Half of his life he continues the search. Finally, after more than 20 years, as DNA-analysis becomes a factor in forensic medicine, new perspectives open.
German television movie about an alcoholic university professor (Robert Atzorn).
The former owner of a craftsman’s business, Wolfgang Kunert, who has been unemployed for a long time, is waiting at the job agency. When it is his turn after four hours of waiting and Heidi Ganz, the agent responsible for him, cannot offer him any work and points out his misconduct in general, he loses his nerves. He pulls out a gun and takes Mrs. Ganz hostage.
At 52, traveling salesman Wolfgang Zenker (Edgar Selge) is in old school territory: he peddles the company's classic clothing line to boutiques that cater to women over 35. When Wolfi loses his drivers license in his brand-new Mercedes but can't afford to lose the season's sales because his frustrated wife (Franziska Walser) desperately wants a new bathroom, their son's vacation plans take a back seat as Karsten (Florian Bartholomäi) is forced to making sales rounds with his father instead of celebrating his high school graduation in Spain. Also making the rounds in small town southern Germany is successful and attractive sales rival Steven Brookmüller (Roman Knizka), 33. As the men's paths cross, long-hidden secrets are revealed and things come to a hilarious head.
This film is about the difference between law and justice. A national socialist is accused of having stirred up some people against foreigners. A judge has to decide whether he has done so or if his statement comes under the constitutional given freedom of speech. This is compared with a trial in the third Reich. A young woman is being accused of having a relationship with a jew. The film confronts two views of law: the judgement is only based on the current law or the judgement may be influenced by socio-political events and sense of justice.
For fans of history, this glimpse of Munich society in the 1920s will be a much-treasured event. The story revolves around an art-gallery manager who puts on a show featuring the scandalous works of a woman artist who committed suicide. He is unjustly accused of having committed adultery with her, and for some reason the authorities decide to make an example of him. He is imprisoned at about the same time that Hitler and the nascent Nazi party attempt the infamous Beer Hall Putsch, and the gallery manager's girlfriend and a Swiss writer valiantly (and unsuccessfully) attempt to get better justice for him. Nobody in authority, it seems, has the courage to take up the challenge of righting this particular injustice.
One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions.
