Ulrich Matthes
Documentary about former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s political ascent and mental strength, featuring interviews with her and a variety of notable politicians.
The local theater in Armstadt has to take a step back; the budget gets cut due to less audience. However, the actors try their best to prepare for a new piece.
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.
It was a devastating day for Arnold and his wife, Karen when their son, Christian, a soldier in the German armed forces, told them he was going to be deployed abroad. Everything is different now. Arnold has decided to retreat to a secluded mountain hut in Tirol along with his dog in order to finally find some peace of mind. Barely has he reached his snow drenched destination, when he discovers the threatening traces of an intruder. While ruminating over the news of his son and the conversations he had with his wife, Arnold must also battle against an unknown fiend if he wants to save his own life. Director Rick Ostermann’s second feature elegantly combines two different time levels to tell the tale of a mourning middle-class German family, and the battle of a man against anger and loneliness in the face of inner and outer danger.
Helpless, the young convent student Richard has to watch as his mother Sarazenin Zobeida is condemned by the inquisitor Heinrich Institoris as a witch and burned at the stake. From then on, Richard swears revenge on Institoris for what he did to his family. He can escape and is taken by the merchant Jakob Fugger. He wants to teach him not only to seek blind revenge, but to manipulate people like puppets and thus to reach his goals. The two travel from Florence to Rome to influence the upcoming election of the pope and to witness the power struggle between the Medicis and the Borgias up close.
An award-winning performer trio and a sophisticated story characterize the thrilling TV thriller "The Missing Woman". From the naive betrayed to the tough revenge angel Corinna Harfouch turns into the lead role. At her side, Ulrich Matthes silently plays a professional killer, who does not look at the cards. Never laying an excuse, is the Dortmund crime scene commissar Jörg Hartmann in the role of a shameless swindler. Because all three want to cash in on the life insurance, begins a game of fraud and extortion, in which also the red light milieu interferes.
Freelance journalist Jan Schulte hopes for a job at the online portal of Berlin newspaper “Die Republik” when he discovers a potential scandal. Federal minister of health Elisabeth Stade apparently helped her brother’s search for a heart transplant by moving him up the waiting list illegally. But then Schulte’s colleague Britta claims the compromising material is a fake. Editor-in-chief Weishaupt and publisher Winter refuse to run the article. As Jan keeps on digging into the scandal, investigating state secretary Katharina Pflüger and political advisor Frank Gruber, his evidence is suddenly stolen from the newspaper office, and soon a competing tabloid breaks the story...
Freya Deichmann's life undergoes a radical change when she meets Helmuth James von Moltke at the age of 18. "I saw him and my heart stood still." He is the love of her live, a love which begins in the summer of 1929 and has to withstand the Third Reich. The dramatic climax is Helmuth's arrest. It is a time torn between hope and parting. Every day could be the last. Her great happiness: almost everyday they write each other letters, smuggled by the prison chaplain Harald Poelchau. A love in resistance, one which doesn't end with the execution of the beloved.
A lighthearted look at the opening of the border crossing of Bornholmer Straße in Berlin from the point of view of the confused border guards.
In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.
Fine suffers from not being seen but she also does her best at not being noticed, even though she is an acting student. At night, when her mentally handicapped sister Jule cannot get to sleep and stereotypically bangs her head against the wall, Fine turns the recorder on and gives a firework of singing, acting and dancing. However in the acting school she lacks self confidence to uninhibitedly storm the stage. After the well known director Kasper Friedemann invites Fine for an audition, she convinces him with her acting.
October 1941. Eighteen months into France’s occupation by German troops, young Communist members of the Resistance shoot dead an officer of the German Army. In retaliation, Hitler demands the deaths of 150 Frenchmen, as 'retribution'. The targets are to be mostly young men believed to share the assassins’ political convictions. Most of these men are taken from an internment camp for opponents of the occupation; a 35-year-old French rural administrator is ordered to select the victims. Although the parish priest appeals to their conscience and moral sensibilities, both the German military and their French helpers slavishly follow their orders.
In no less than 180 minutes the film showed frenzied dashes of wild colors and idyllic natural images, of wonderful music and powerful lyricism, which, among others was flawlessly recited by star actors such as Corinna Harfouch, Angela Winkler and Ulrich Matthes. The work treats of the consciousness-defining echoing thunder of modern rock music, of the rock inscriptions of the ancient Egyptians, of the Merseburg magic spells, the author’s childhood impressions, in the latter’s homeland in the forests of the Upper Palatinate, and the ghosts of the Nazi era, who today continue to haunt us in the most vivid manner.
Director Claudia Muller follows the career of conceptual artist Jenny Holzer in this documentary that's as illuminating as her trademark LED displays. For over 30 years, Holzer has used a variety of unusual backdrops for her text installations.
Frank Lehmann, 20, still lives with his parents in the dreary high-rise housing project "Neue Vahr" in Bremen. It's the year 1980 and Frank gets drafted to the army even though his friends assure him that "he's not really the guy for it". When he gets back home, after his first week at the army, his Dad has turned his room into a TV repair shop, so Frank has to move out. Luckily his old friend Martin is starting a commune with two other Punks in Bremens leftist borough "Viertel". Frank, without further ado rents the unlivable walk-through room. From now on Frank is a traveler between the Worlds. Each week he goes from the Army, with all the unconditional rules and regulations to the commune where his friends are preaching the world revolution. Frank is trying to avoid to stick out, but fails miserably, in both worlds.
"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."
Malchow, German Democratic Republic, 1980. 20-year-old Anne is hiding Juri, a deserter of the Red Army. The two fall in love with each other. But their love is threatened: there is an arrest warrant and possibly a death sentence waiting for Juri. The two leave the country and flee to the West, leaving Anne’s six-month-old daughter Inga behind. Inga grows up with her grandparents and thinks that her mother died during a swimming accident. 25 years later she meets the literature professor Robert, who sends her on the trail of her past. He met Inga’s mother Anne during one of his seminars. At first Inga is resistant, but then she asks for Robert’s help. Together they take off on a journey through Germany, in search of Inga’s mother Anne...
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women - one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.
Feuerreiter is an elegant period drama that begins in Frankfurt in 1796. Through his friend, Baron von Sinclair, romantic and rebellious poet Friedrich Hölderlin secures the position of a private tutor in the home of a banker named Gontard. He is soon torn between his passion for poetry and his love for Susette, the lady of the house. To top it all off, Baron von Sinclair is in love with him. Hölderlin's most beautiful poems are written during this trying time. However, he becomes a total recluse when he loses Susette. The film examines the effects of conflicting demands, both emotional and sensual, that may inspire art. Feuerreiter was screened as part of the New German Films at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival, 1999.
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...
A thrilling documentary with fictional elements based on the true story of the abduction of the president of the employer's association, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, by terrorists in the autumn of 1977.
The former waiter Ernst Held believes himself to be called higher and seeks self-realization as a poet. When he recites poems to his wife's beautician in an ambiguous situation, his wife puts him out the door. Completely destitute, the thwarted poet must therefore return to the lowlands of life and become the head in the Munich pub "Goldener Löffel".
