Wilfried Ortmann
The time is World War II and Juergen Siebusch (Thomas Stecher) and his mother (Gudrun Ritter) are retreating along with the German army, just ahead of the invading Russian forces. Both mother and son hole up in the town of Hohengoerse, where Juergen finds some work watching over sheep - and learns a bit about the facts of sheep life that he extrapolates to some advantage when he meets the appealing Amelie (Brit Guelland), daughter of the landowner. He first helps Amelie out and later applies his new-found knowledge in a barn, appropriately enough. As the Red Army draws near, Juergen deserts a hastily put-together "people's force," as he prefers the barn to the gun. Russian soldiers are shown sleeping and snoring next to their tanks, and the local fascist executed - the war is over. When the new Communist government sets up a land reform package, Amelie's mother's land gets divided up into small plots for small farmers.
Daniela – a single mother, whose boyfriend left for the US – believes wholeheartedly in Cuba's revolutionary new order. Meanwhile, in Florida, a plot is afoot. Under the command of an American officer, four Cubans ex-patriots and a Guatemalan land on the Cuban coast to prepare a US invasion of the island. Daniela's superior, the corrupt Cuban officer Palomino, is secretly helping the invaders and the young woman becomes entangled in the intrigue.
Young lovers Hero and Claudio, soon to wed, conspire to get verbal sparring partners and confirmed singles Benedick and Beatrice to wed as well.
At the end of the 1950s, the production of optics in the German Democratic Republic has reached top quality and instigates interest in the West. When national demand rises strongly and at the same time the export to South America heavily decreases, the Volkspolizei - the GDR police force - starts to look into the case. Two seemingly unrelated cases are the starting point for the investigation by second lieutenant Schellenberg of the department for optics racketeering: An old woman who was arrested in the Berlin city railway for trying to smuggle a pair of binoculars to West Berlin, and a dead person in an area of allotments who was involved in obscure dealings with optical devices.
First of two propaganda films about German communist leader Ernst Thälmann that follows him from the Western Front in 1918 through the Hamburg Uprising of 1923.
Several children find out what's the matter with a wreck offshore, which puts them into jeopardy.
