Josef Bierbichler
Angela Merkel's decision in autumn 2015 to open the borders for refugees split the country - some praised the moral stance, others criticized the surrender of sovereignty. Yet what would appear to be well-planned activity is in reality a policy of muddling along, chance, trial and error. The Driven Ones is a chronicle of the refugee crisis which shows that the political actors are being driven along, crushed between self-imposed constraints and events that have spun out of control.
Hedi is the new neighbor of Iva, who raises her daughter Sofia by herself. The two women start a relationship and Iva is desperately in love with Hedi. Suddenly Iva's father appears. Hedi feels strongly attracted to him. It seems that only one world exists for Hedi. Her own.
A respected small-town physician has brutally killed his wife, thus ending a four-year martyrdom from which he could not escape by any other means...
When 17-year-old Ben visits his father Heinrich in Marrakech, it is the start of an adventurous journey through a foreign country with a picturesque charm and a rough beauty where everything appears possible — including the chance that father and son will lose each other for good, or find one another again.
Brand, an author, who falls in love with Angela, his terminally ill wife's nurse and blunders into a dangerous spiral of passion and jealousy. A vindictive husband, an insistent chief inspector, a farsighted priest and a proud wife entrap Brand in a maelstrom of persecution, destruction and obliteration which can only end in life or death. It's a quest for redemption, the force which drives us all.
Set in a sleepy Austrian mountain village, ex-detective Simon Brenner has grown weary of his job repossessing cars and embarks on an extended getaway to the countryside. But before long he becomes embroiled in the convoluted world of the locals of a supposedly quiet town.
Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years just before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. The abused and suppressed children of the villagers seem to be at the heart of this mystery.
Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.
Accepting a prize, architect Georg Winter explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every completed building against the rightness of his original idea. Soon Georg himself is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life. An intense drama in which the four members of the family travel to a mountain village to bury Georg's mother. They get stranded in bad weather. This unexpected isolation throws new light on the past and present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children.
A renowned artist must uncover a young dancer's secrets in order to truly capture her likeness for a commissioned work.
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.
Michael Mühlhausen, crafty manager of a big food company, dreams of being promoted. While he plans the contested takeover of a main competitor, he doesn't notice the estrangement from his wife Charlotte and his daughter Hannah. Meanwhile, dubious things happen behind Mühlhausen's back, which he doesn't see through until the company's leading chemist is murdered and he becomes the prime suspect...
The film is based on the figure of the police inspector Simon Polt of the Austrian author Alfred Komarek.
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”.
Feature documentary about Christoph Schlingensief's political party/art project "Chance 2000".
A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.
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.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl is to blame in Germany and has to go away without violence. The homeless Hick takes up the idea and demonstrates the abolition of Kohl.
In this surrealist film director Picasso can awaken from the dead. He steals a paintings painted by himself of a couple of wealthy psychiatrists. When Picasso meets Takla Bash, a patient of the psychiatrists, Picasso falls in love. Although it is his own daughter, he remembers an incredible love affair, in which a film with a blue cow plays a role. In the majority of the paintings shown in the film are works of Herbert Achternbusch.
Young blonde translator Rebecca lives with her boyfriend ski instructor Marco in a mountain villa owned by her friend, nurse Laura. Rene, local cinema projectionist, steals Marco's car and gets into a car crash with local Theo, whose daughter, after being in coma for a time, dies. Rene suffers from partial short term memory loss and starts a relationship with Laura. Meanwhile Marco is looking for the man who stole his car and Theo - for the man who killed his daughter...
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.
A docu-drama about tetrachloro-dibenzo dioxin, later known as 'Sevesogift', sprayed on thousands of tons of vapor in Vietnam 'Agent Orange', and the involvement of the later Federal President, Richard Karl Weizsäcker, who was hiring manager when production was moved to another plant because of massive health problems of the workers, but claims to be unable to remember anything, in these crimes.
Several comedy situations are strung together for this offbeat satire. An unassuming businesswoman is discovered to be the mastermind behind a terrorist organization, and a disgruntled waitress has looks that can kill, literally and not figuratively speaking. In another tacky passage, played as a reoccurring gag, an official is infected with the AIDS virus after suffering a bite from the businesswoman.
Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich
Jesus (played by the director) returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey. (IMDB review)
Herbert Achternbusch wrote, directed, and starred in this comedy that pokes fun at the German way of subsidizing the art of creating movies and documentaries. He is a filmmaker playing the role of a filmmaker in a film he is making, and as a result, the film jokes might be a little abstruse for some of the viewers. The story centers on a "film" man just out of prison (Achternbusch) who has to make a living with his craft again. He is followed by a reporter who wants an interview, and winds up at an inn called "Zum Neger Erwin," run by a woman whom he convinces to be the leading lady in his planned production. As the story continues, the filmmaker finds ample excuses to pan the financial powers that be, and to paint the beknighted and talented seekers after funds as Neger Erwins, slaves to the funding process.
Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One of them is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.
Three people rob a bank to help a day care center that's in debt. Wolf is captured, Werner identified, police suspect Christa is the third. She and Werner ask Hans, a clergyman, to launder the money and give it to the kindergarten. He refuses. They try Ingrid, Christa's friend, who tries to help, but the school rejects the money. When tragedy strikes Werner, Hans helps Christa bolt to a collective in Portugal. Ingrid visits her; their relationship makes the collective nervous, so she returns to Germany and ceases living in hiding. The police are still looking for her and so is a witness to the robbery, Lena, a bank clerk. Lena's interest brings Christa's second awakening.
A man who is dissatisfied with his senseless existence in his family-life and social status steals the uniform of a policeman and then enters the Oktoberfest. Now he is somebody, he is important, he can help, people respect him, etc. His wife, other relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances. (IMDB review)
A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
Munich Heinz and Herbert wants to escape the torturous confines of their home by swimming across the Atlantic.
