Michael Englberger

The late summer of 1918. Paul, Willi and Heinrich from an age-old German town are good friends, although there is a great deal that divides them. Heinrich comes from an officer's family with an army tradition and is preparing to enter cadet college. Paul's father and grandfather are workers, and Willi, left to depend on himself, works as a hotel messenger. The last year of the war is hard for everyone, but while Paul and Willi know their own minds and do not hesitate to help the war fugitives Tony and Sepp, for Heinrich everything is more complicated.

This film musical is a romantic comedy of mistaken identities set at the 10th World Festival in Berlin. Alexej from Moscow meets and is attracted to Mascha, right before he leaves for Berlin. Mascha also travels to Berlin to perform with her cultural ensemble. While there, she boards with the Krüger family, whose son Hans is attracted to her.

Horst, a young boy from Berlin, spends his holidays with the "Pirates" at Horse Island. The teen gang is led by Horst′s friend Benno. Soon, Horst realizes that the pirates create a lot of nuisance. Gudrun, whom Horst meets on his way to the village, tells him that she has been attacked and injured by the pirates when she tried to observe a rare cormorant. Gudrun and Horst become friends. Since Benno is less than thrilled about this friendship, he plots a second attack on the girl.

World War II has long provided fodder for European filmmakers and East German director Konrad Wolf is no exception. In this uneven though at times compelling drama, he examines the conflict involved in a forbidden love. While the war is in full swing, a young German solder is assigned to a unit in charge of deporting Jews to the death camps. He falls in love with one of the Jewish women being deported, an impossible situation which he knows has no easy solution, if any. Alternately philosophical and at the end, at least, quite powerful, this film may still be too downbeat for most general audiences.