Hans Christian Blech
The TV documentation reconstructs the incidents between May and November 1989 from the point of view of the Politburo of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). The incidents include the fraud of local elections, the opening of Hungary's borders towards Austria, the ensuing tide of East German refugees to Hungary and Czechoslovakia for transfer to West Germany, the pompous ceremonies at GDR's 40th anniversary, the inept transactions the Politburo took to salvage the situation, the resulting dismissal of their leader Erich Honecker, the international press conference in East Berlin on 9th November 1989, at which Politburo member Günther Schabowski erroneously announced the immediate opening of the 'Iron Curtain', which finally led to the collapse of socialism in the GDR and the other East Bloc countries.
1958. In the cell of the condemned, seven men await the signs of an approaching execution. All of them recall their pasts and envision their wish-dreams.
A lawyer who survives a plane crash takes the opportunity to take a new identity and begin a new life.
Set during the fading glory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the film tells of the rise and fall of Alfred Redl, an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to become head of the Secret Police only to become ensnared in political deception.
Hans Castorp, fresh from university and about to become a civil engineer, comes to the Sanatorium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim, an army officer, who is recovering there from tuberculosis. Intending to remain at the Berghof for three weeks, Hans is gradually contaminated by the morbid atmosphere pervading the place. Wishing very much to be considered a patient like the others, he achieves his ends and stays in the sanatorium for ...seven years. During this time, he has enough time to take part in the furious philosophical debates pitting against each other Settembrini, a secular humanist, and Naphta, a totalitarian Jesuit. And to fall in love with the beautiful but enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally discharged in 1914 - along with all the other patients - it is only to plunge into the horrors of World War I.
A small carnival is in dire financial straits. Their show is attracting fewer and fewer paying customers, as their "attractions" are ageing, out of shape and beset by internal feuds and bickering. One day a beautiful young woman shows up and suggests a way of attracting customers: put on a strip show, with her as the main attraction. Her act attracts customers in droves, but it turns out that the girl has her own agenda, and it isn't to help out the carnival.
The two enemies from war, Slovenian partisan Berk and German soldier Bitter, meet each other during holidays in Spain. Recalling the war through conversation, Berk remembers Anton, his fellow comrade he had spend the most time with.
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.
The three daughters of the Dessau merchant Sellmann move with their father to Prague in 1936, where he accepted a position as director of the Böhmische Landesbank. For the three different women begins a new life, which accompanies the film over a period of ten years.
A young Viennese policeman can not free himself from his mistress and is also extorted over his illegal arms business.
Based on the best-selling novel by Nobel-laureate Heinrich Böll, this drama is a passionate indictment of Catholicism. Hans Schnier (Helmut Griem) has earned his living as a clown, though he is in fact a very covert sort of social critic. After enduring a difficult childhood in Bonn during the Second World War, including his mother's fanatic Nazism, he is appalled to discover many of the people he knows and loves swept deeply into involvement in the Catholic Church.
Saint Tropez. Julie Wormser and her lover, writer and neighbour Jeff Marle, plan the murder of her wealthy husband Louis, an impotent who drinks a lot. She hits him, and leaves the rest of the task to Jeff. Julie finds herself alone the following day, and becomes therefore the prime suspect. Where is Louis' body? Where is Jeff? Is there any secret beyond a door? Nothing is what it seems in this highly acclaimed taut thriller.
A disturbed young woman is kept prisoner in a castle by her aunt for her money. The game-keeper, her guardian, tries to rape her but she escapes. In her flight she meets a man also running away, from two killers.
Richard is a private detective. He makes a good money from marital infidelity: the deceived husband and wife generously paid him for proof of their infidelity "halves"...
Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.
In heaven there is faith, and love. Only in hell there is justice. Everyone here gets the part that suits them best. Therefore, hell is the place for eternal pleasures.
Flying from his enemies in the Catholic Church, the free thinking philosopher, poet and scientist Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) has found some protection in Venice. But the Roman Inquisition, fearing his influence in Europe, wants to bring him on trial for 'heresy'.
In 17th-century Salem, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A because she is an adulteress, with a child out of wedlock. For seven years, she has refused to name the father. A vigorous older stranger arrives, recognized by Hester but unknown to others as her missing husband. He poses as Chillingworth, a doctor, watching Hester and searching out the identity of her lover. His eye soon rests on Dimmesdale, a young overwrought pastor. Enmity grows between the two men; Chillingworth applies psychological pressure, and the pastor begins to crack. A ship stops in Salem, and Hester sees it as a providential refuge for her daughter, herself, and her lover. But will Dimmesdale flee with her?
Psychological-existential study of a prisoner guarding a lighthouse in a secluded place. If he survives two years, he will be pardoned for the rest of his murder sentence . No one before him had been able to overcome the grieving solitude. One day a rat arrives by sea. Sea and island, man and rat, friendship and revenge.
In March of 1945, as the War in Europe is coming to a close, fighting erupts between German and American troops at the last remaining bridgehead across the Rhine.
Drama of an unmarried mother who regrets having had her child fostered and fights its foster parents to have it restored to her.
In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent it, Hitler orders an all-out offensive to re-take French territory and capture the major port city of Antwerp.
A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.
Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"
Gatti focuses on two men in a German concentration camp who have been cruelly penned inside an enclosure. One of the men, Karl (Herbert Wochinz), is a strong, bitter anti-Nazi German -- a target of the Gestapo. The SS wants information on a rumored organization of resistance fighters inside the prison and they know he has it. The other man, David (Jean Negroni) is a Jew. If one of the men dies within a certain time then the other will be released. He will not be killed. Otherwise, both will be executed. The resistance fighters in the prison try to help the two as best they can, while the pair inside the enclosure slowly come to know each other as though they were brothers.
The film is based on a true story, concerning a series of robberies on the highways of Germany. At the time of the actual events, there was a controversy over whether or not highway patrolmen should be given permission to use firearms against perpetrators.
The third part of Paul May′s "08/15" trilogy based on the novel by Hans Hellmut Kirst takes place shortly before the end of World War II: In the spring of 1945, the German troops are practically defeated, and the battalion of Kowalski, major general von Plönnies and Asch who had risen to the rank of lieutenant in the meantime is left to its own devices to a large extent. They hope to be able to wait for the end of the war without having to encounter any combat operations. At the same time, Asch tries to prevent high-level Nazi officers from disappearing unnoticed and from cashing in on the chaotic circumstances.
Laslo Benedek interrupted his thriving Hollywood career to return to Europe as director of the German Kinder, Mutter und ein General (Children, Mother and the General). The film is set in Berlin during the last days of WW II. Desperate for manpower, Hitler has ordered that all able-bodied teenaged boys --some as young as 15 -- be drafted into the army. Frau Asmussen (Hilde Krahl) is one of five mothers who learn to their horror that their boys have been slated to be cannon fodder on behalf of the Third Reich. Asmussen and the other mothers head directly to the front to plead with the German generals for the lives of their sons. Not directly an indictment of Germany's involvement in (or incitement of) the recent war, Kinder, Mutter und ein General stresses the futility and heartbreak of all wars everywhere.
Winter 1942: Like thousands of other German soldiers, Asch and Vierbein have ended up at the Eastern front. Although Vierbein finds a new friend in Kowalski, the squadron commander captain Witterer, a true army veteran, gives them a really hard time. Witterer’s pointless orders reflect the bad habits of many former superiors. And again, Vierbein has to bear the brunt.
Life in the barracks, drill, harassment, and private Asch′s pranks are the ingredients of Hans Hellmut Kirst′s successful novel "08/15" (the number of an Army regulation). Shortly before the outbreak of World War II: Private Asch and gunner Vierbein belong to the same unit but could not be more contrary. The instructors use every opportunity to bully the clumsy Vierbein with erratic corporal Platzek leading the way. The harassment starts with minor extra duties but soon the methods become more and more brutal. Finally, Asch comes to Vierbein′s help and takes on his superiors. Joachim Fuchsberger stars in his first major role.
Young Olga Ahrendt almost succeeded in attempting suicide. She had thrown herself in front of a tram out of desperation about her miserable life, a desperation she shared with many in the post-war period. Fortunately, Privy Councillor Sauerbruch is at the scene of the incident, ordering her to be admitted to his clinic after a brief examination. Sauerbruch works both as a university lecturer and as a surgeon, a famous doctor who not only helps his patients physically but also gives them spiritual comfort. After he has taken Olga Ahrendt to his hospital, he discovers during an examination that her suicide attempt is due to a serious physical illness. He intensively takes care of her without forgetting about his other patients, to whom he can give a new will to live, even if only through a small story. And he will also treat Olga Ahrendt successfully...
Mr. Rossi and Mr. Capelli, co-owners of a successful traveling circus, have a rivalry over the affections of the lovely Dolores. That's all settled after Rossi is mauled to death by a lion. Years later a series of accidents, attacks and mysterious deaths plague the circus.
While perusing a police photo, Hilde - an investigative reporter - recognizes a bracelet that she once owned while living in her native Romania. She seeks out the current owner of the bracelet, hoping that he can provide information concerning her long-lost father. Thus begins a curious chain of events...
WWII is entering its last phase: Germany is in ruins, but does not yield. The US army lacks crucial knowledge about the German units operating on the opposite side of the Rhine, and decides to send two German prisoners to gather information. The scheme is risky: the Gestapo retains a terribly efficient network to identify and capture spies and deserters. Moreover, it is not clear that "Tiger", who does not mind any dirty work as long as the price is right, and war-weary "Happy", who might be easily betrayed by his feelings, are dependable agents. After Tiger and another American agent are successfully infiltrated, Happy is parachuted in Bavaria. His duty: find out the whereabouts of a powerful German armored unit moving towards the western front.
The reporter Peter Zabel stumbles upon the sinking of the luxury yacht Orplid in Hamburg on August 14, 1949. The ship went down with a wedding party run by artists on a pleasure trip from Hamburg to Scotland . In spite of good weather and no technical problems. Out of personal curiosity, Zabel starts researching. Could the sinking of Orplid have political reasons? A German political thriller and film noir inspired by Carol Reed's "The Third Man".
A Jewish manufacturer is accused of murder in this post-war German examination of Weimar-era anti-semitism.
A young and an old man meet in a lonely, remote house. Who is who? What about the body that is on the first floor? Both distrust each other. A tough duel begins between them that ends fatally ...
