Maria Dragus
An all-girl Catholic boarding school near Vienna for the wealthy Austrian elite and their children. The school is thriving, but faith is declining and the upper floors are deserted. The head of the institution, a young energetic nun, fights with ardor against this decline. Martha, 12, one of the nun’s favorite pupils, is a devoted girl who wishes to expiate the sins of the world. Encouraged by the nun, she is given a penance belt and taken to the abandoned upper floor.
Summer 1939. Influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English seaside town to learn the language and be ambassadors for a future looking National Socialist. A teacher there sees what is coming and is trying to raise the alarm. But the authorities believe he is the problem.
In the midst of the impassable landscape at the foot of the Alps, a young group of serious offenders is undergoing an experiential educational program intended to rehabilitate them. All of a sudden, a member of the program dies a violent death. Nobody knows exactly what happened, and the youths face a difficult decision. Should they wait for the authorities to recover the body and investigate the crime? Or, escape and take their fate into their own hands? The group doesn't have much in common with each other, though one thing unites them; all of them have had really bad experiences with the authorities and don‘t expect to be treated fairly. Since they don't know who the perpetrator is, they only have one option: to run. Up the mountains, up the highest peaks of the Alps. It seems hopeless until they stumble onto a complex cave system where they can find shelter from wind, weather, and their pursuers.
In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.
It is Lara's sixtieth birthday and it is surely no coincidence that her son Viktor is giving the most important piano concert of his career – since it was her who mapped out and forced Victor's musical career in the first place. Yet the day does not go as expected and Lara has to discover that Viktor is using the concert to finally free himself from her grip.
In 1561, Mary Stuart, widow of the King of France, returns to Scotland, reclaims her rightful throne and menaces the future of Queen Elizabeth I as ruler of England, because she has a legitimate claim to the English throne. Betrayals, rebellions, conspiracies and their own life choices imperil both Queens. They experience the bitter cost of power, until their tragic fate is finally fulfilled.
The only time Maria feels liberated is when she is playing the organ. Bach’s music is something you feel in your gut. At home she bears the brunt of responsibility – both for her rebellious sister Hannah, two years her junior, who is busy planning her escape from the village, and for her father, Johann.
This film follows its two protagonists Anne and Leo like a wandering companion. Both in their early thirties, they are close friends but not a couple. What connects them is their urban background and their cosmopolitan attitude. Where they differ is their completely diverging approach to the little things in life. Their days and nights are full of possibility and yet nothing presents itself as inevitable. Anne is a successful director pursuing her career with singleminded determination. But she doesn’t have much of a social life. Leo’s head is in the clouds. He wants to be a photographer and is yearning to love and be loved. Their personal encounters and inspirational adventures cause them to realise the limitations of their varying approaches to life.
18th century Vienna. Maria Theresia von Paradis, a gifted piano player and close friend of Mozart's, lost her eye-sight as a child. Desperate to cure their talented daughter, the Paradis entrust Maria to Dr. Mesmer, a forward-thinking-physician who gives her the care and attention that she requires. With the doctor's innovative techniques of magnetism, Maria slowly recovers her sight. But this miracle comes at a price as the woman progressively starts to lose her gift for music.
Having failed to get into the police force, Margarete takes up training as a security guard. One night she runs into a sexually agressive ex-colleague who insists on hailing a taxi to take her home to his place. Enter Tiger: short brown hair, a tough girl and a fighter, the cab driver. Realising that the situation is far from consensual, Tiger speeds off with Margarete, leaving her companion standing in the street. It won’t be the last time she rushes to Margarete’s aid. Tiger lives in an attic flat with two men. She knows how to wield a baseball bat. Stealing a uniform from security and renaming Margarete ‘Vanilla’, she begins to steer her life in a completely different direction.
Astrid is a comedian who makes people laugh for a living; her husband Markus is her manager and the two of them work well together. They have a nine-year-old daughter and are expecting their second child. When they learn that their child will not be born healthy, they are at first optimistic that they will be able to meet this challenge – although they have no idea what awaits them. But the closer it gets to the due date, the more Astrid begins to worry about the future of her unborn child as well as that of her family and her career. After many discussions and arguments Astrid realises that the decision that will affect all their lives must be made by her alone. What complicates matters further is the fact that, as a successful entertainer, she is in the eye of the public and the media.
Romeo Aldea, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter.
Teenage Sascha has two dreams: to write a novel about her mother and to take revenge on her step-father who brutally murdered her. When she meets the newspaper editor Volker, he invites her to come to his and his son's place. A subtle love triangle begins which helps Sascha to find her personal way of growing up.
In the form of an anthology film, travelers and hosts encounter one another in four different places in Europe via an internet-based hosting network called “Couchsurfing”. In Stuttgart, the Swabian publisher Annette meets the Polish master in the art of living Pawel, while her niece Nina is expecting a big fiesta in Spain, but meets only a deaf old man. In parallel Matti, a freshly minted high school graduate, hopes to find a great adventure in Paris, while the two Erasmus students Reka and Alma wander through Frankfurt desperately seeking their hosts. In the quest of adventure, diversion or just an authentic travel experience, encountering people whom one never would have met otherwise and so they are confronted not only with counterparts, but also with themselves.
An unusually hot summer. Fourteen year-old Wanda moves with her family from Berlin to Switzerland. Everything will be better here. The move is meant to heal the open wounds of the family. Anna, the mother, has lost her self-confidence due to an affair her husband Joachim had in Berlin. The big house with the overgrown garden and the pretty small town all seems like one big promise. But the new beginning is difficult for everyone. Joachim, 40, throws himself into family activism while Anna, also 40, tries to strengthen the family with new rituals.
In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house whose first publication is, paradoxically to many, a controversial past work of Bernward's ostracized father, an infamous Nazi author. Bernward defends his father's writing ability, even if he is haunted by his father's suspicious past.
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.
Master painter Hans Moll and his wife, the television announcer Ms. Wellinek and her husband, and the German-Russian Jew Yevgenia have many things to live on: food, drink, an apartment. What they do not have is work. They all discover the yearning for a chance to start all over again and bring themselves back to life.
Based on a true story, Miguel Alexandre's two-part drama focuses on an East German woman and the fight for her children. Spring 1982: Sara Bender, living with her daughters Silvia and Sabine in the East German town of Erfurt, wants to marry her colleague Peter, but shortly before the wedding, her father is killed in a road accident. As the funeral takes place in West Germany, she isn't allowed to got there, so she starts planning to leave her communist home country forever. Trying to flee via Romania, she is caught by the secret service. After years in jail, Sara is ransomed by the West German government, but without her daughters. To draw the world's attention on her desperate situation, she starts demonstrating at the Berlin border crossing Checkpoint Charlie
