Reiner Heise
Timm Thyler is poor, but he laughs a lot and he looks so charming. One day, the world’s richest man makes the boy a dubious offer: if Timm agrees to sell him his laugh, he’ll win every bet he ever makes in the future.
KAFKA'S THE BURROW tells the story of a man's "metamorphosis" (as Kafka would put it) in a rapidly changing and increasingly isolated world. A man (Axel Prahl), who has seemingly achieved everything, ensconces himself in his burrow, a fortress-like apartment complex. But no matter how hard he tries to keep the outside world at a distance, he gets more and more entangled in his own web of fear and paranoia: those outside know he is there, they want him, they want his wealth, and they are inevitably going to get him ...
Based on Michel Houellebecq's controversial novel, Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles) focuses on Michael and Bruno, two very different half-brothers and their disturbed sexuality. After a chaotic childhood with a hippie mother only caring for her affairs, Michael, a molecular biologist, is more interested in genes than women, while Bruno is obsessed with his sexual desires, but mostly finds his satisfaction with prostitutes. But Bruno's life changes when he gets to know the experienced Christiane. In the meantime, Michael meets Annabelle, the love of his youth, again.
After 50 years, Marek remembers his dangerous adventure as a five-year-old, when he and his friend Itzek left a Polish transit camp one night in 1942 – a few days before their evacuation to Auschwitz – to go get the toys they forgot at the ghetto. Based on Becker's personal memories and his 1980 short story "The Wall."
Winter 1968. Historian Dr. Dallow is released from prison. He is still trying to cope with and understand why he was put behind bars for 21 months for defamation of the state. His supposed "crime:" for five minutes he accompanied a cabaret chanson on the piano. The film shows what "ordinary socialism" was like, letting the audience feel the threat under which the people in the GDR had to live over many years.
After the Nazis take over political power in Germany, the father of Rosi and Hansi, a member of the communist party, must hide from the police. One thing he left behind is a watch which might contain a message.
Young construction worker Ralf Reider leaves his home village Katzsprung in the Rhön mountains during the "Berlin Initiative". In the capital, he wants to earn enough money in construction to build his own house for his wife and his child. But Ralf is an unconventional character who soon becomes an outsider because of his behaviour.
Based on a switched identity, in circumstances that are found in real life as well as fiction, this drama tells the story of two soldiers fighting together in World War I. Karl (Joachim Latsch) and Richard (Hans-Use Bauer) become close friends while serving time in a German POW camp. One day Karl manages a successful escape and goes to Richard's home where he seeks refuge posing as Richard. But Richard's wife Anna (Kathrin Waligura) has never given up hope that her husband is still alive -- a possibility that would shatter Karl's proposed new life. In fact, Richard did not die in the POW camp. This film shared the Grand Prix award at the 1985 Berlin Film Festival.
