Ursula Werner
Birth : 1943-09-28, Eberswalde, Germany
History
Ursula Werner grew up in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. She first learned the carpenter's trade in the collective 'Wilma Rudolph' in Adlershof. After studying at the State Drama School in Berlin, today's Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art, her first engagements took her to the Landestheater Halle an der Saale and to the Berlin cabaret Die Distel. From 1974 to 2009 Werner was a permanent member of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. She can still be seen as a guest performer on the Gorky stage. At DEFA, her role as Dr. Unglaube in the film A crazy scent of fresh hay (1977) is particularly remembered. From 2001 to 2007 she stood in front of the camera as Ms. Mell in a constant supporting role in the series Schloss Einstein. After a few minor roles in film and television, Ursula Werner returned to the spotlight in 2008 in the lead role in Andreas Dresens Wolke 9. In Wolke 9, she embodied a woman who, in her late 60s, leaves her older husband for an even older man. The aim of the film is to show that love and sex don't just stop when you get older. For this extraordinary achievement, she received the German Film Prize in 2009 for the best female leading role.
Lilo
Orphea in Love, now, fuses many of these diverse forays for a singular piece of musical theatre cinema. Structurally a musical or operetta, it features famous opera tunes paired with modern classical ballet choreographies. Befittingly, the title might insinuate a version of Jacques Offenbach's 1858 Orphée aux enfers (we have that somewhere else in the programme, though!), but the story of young, multi-job hassled Nele, her dream of opera stardom, and her love for dancer Kolya feels in its razzmatazzy mix of realism and kitsch simultaneously closer to Flashdance (1983; Adrian Lyne) and the average Lady Gaga music video. Wow. WOW!
Edith Telaar (The Bog Mistress)
After returning from a police mission in Afghanistan, Chief Inspector Harder is set to investigate a bog body found in a village called Friedland. The confrontation with Friedland's brutal history brings a grave guilt from Harder's own past to the surface and forces her to face the echo.
Dr. Herta Maria Lundin
Heimpi
In 1933 in Berlin. Anna is only nine years old when her life changes from the ground up. To escape the Nazis, her father Arthur Kemper, a well-known Jewish journalist, has to flee to Zurich. His family, Anna, her twelve-year-old brother Max and her mother Dorothea, follow him shortly thereafter. Anna has to leave everything behind, including her beloved pink rabbit, and to face a new life full of challenges and privations abroad.
Gabriela
An empty, undefined world. Gabriela (70) is seriously ill. By all means she tries to keep alive, to escape from her own death. In her suppressed and rising fear of death she refuses any moral argument. Gabriela becomes an animal.
Oma Bertha
Dramatised origin story of one of Germany's most beloved contemporary comedians.
Ilse
In the summer of 1976, a shared family yard becomes the setting, as the adults bicker over selling the garden and the kids are free to explore the mysterious neighboring lot. Then they hear about a girl that has disappeared...
Rosi
With Mike it's anything but round: flat away, job a one-way street, and to make matters worse, his little loser heart still beats for ex-wife Claudia.
Dr. Marczewski
A family reunion aboard a ship becomes a turning point in the life of 39-year-old engineer Markus. When his son Adam (4) gets a little cut after going to the bathroom with his grandmother Renate, Markus recalls for the first time what his mother did to him when he was a little boy. Markus and his wife Monika find themselves confronted with an ugly truth of the kind you wouldn’t think a mother capable of.
Monika
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.
Sabine Grimm
Oma Bode
November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came down. A 10-year-old girl and her friends attempt to use their teleportation device to beam her uncle back to East Germany but instead, as they witness on TV, end up beaming everyone in their town into West Germany! They have to race against time to undo the experiment before the nasty border guards open fire...
Usch Kerkhoff
The happening of a ceremonial robing of the youngest daughter as a novice in a Swabian convent screws up the values of a modern family. As if life wasn't complicated enough anyway. And how are you supposed to be happy without new clothes?
Olga Schmidt
Hiltrud
Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?
Frau Schmidt
The film is set in Berlin in 1965. Τhe old woman welcomes the Commissioner at her doorstep with the words “I have been waiting for you for 30 years”. She has been maintaining for years the grave, where now by accident, this skull was found. The skull, has a rusty nail in it. In a long monologue, the woman confesses for the first time, her tragic life story.
Eva
Christine is tired of life. When her retirement home roommate abducts her for a night in the Hamburg red-light district, she is confronted with a flashy and entertaining world that she feels way to old old for.
Renate
Frank and Simone have fulfilled a dream and live with their two children in a row house in the suburbs. They are a happy couple, until the day Frank is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. The family is suddenly confronted with death.
Lene Graumann
For 11-year-old Kattaka it's an escape: she's looking for her biological father, a Russian sailor whose ship is currently moored in Gdansk and whose existence her parents have kept secret until now. For 70-year-old Lena it's a journey back: back to her home in Masuren, from which she fled in the Second World War. And back to her suppressed pain of having lost both parents. Only together can the mismatched couple regain the ground beneath their feet, and themselves.
Corinna Trampe
Everyone wants to get to the top as fast as possible, but the artistic directors' performance is turning into a desaster. A fierce, improvised comedy about a group of acting students fighting their angst and the school system.
Marlies
In an attempt to save their troubled relationship, Stefan (Wolfgang Menardi) and Claudia (Stephanie Schönfeld) go on a camping trip to the coast. They pick up Uli (Norman Schenk), a professional puppeteer who turns out to be quite entertaining. But when the puppet develops a life of its own, and Stefan seems to remember Uli from the past, they are already caught up in a mysterious and dangerous game.
Marianne
Marianne works for a crisis line night after night; no one is able to help all the lonesome people at the other end of the line no matter how hard she tries. But tonight she will have to face her own problems ...
Inge
A romantic drama about a woman who enters into an affair after 30 years of marriage.
Kommissarin
Second-hand car sales man Willenbrock has everything that he could ever wish for. He is married, has two lovers, a cottage in the German city Grünen, and a BMW. Yet one day while at his cottage he gets mugged and his life is drastically changed. Little by little the world he once felt safe in falls apart around him.
Dr. Fabian
Gundula
Mutter Schmiedel
Die Polizistin is a documentary by Andreas Dresen about the life of a young police woman who is faced with the difficulties between her responsibilities at work and her personal responsibilities.
Christa
Mascha
Hede
Jenny
Susannes Mutter
Susanne (17) and Robert (18) want to get married, but because Susanne is still under-aged, she needs parental permission. With twin babies and tight finances, the newlyweds soon feel overwhelmed, and dealing with everything makes them forget the love that originally brought them together.
Hexe
The law student Caroline and the assistant professor Tom are husband and wife, but they keep their marriage a secret. While Caroline is afraid of annoying her mother Hella who ever since her divorce twenty years ago distrusts men in general, Tom dreads the criticism of his professor, a family law specialist who objects to the concept of marriage. By chance, Caroline gets hold of some juicy information: Her mother and the professor used to be a couple and she is their child. With almost missionary zeal she addresses herself to the task of convincing the two grown-ups to get back together. In the process, however, she steers both her academic studies and her own marriage into a crisis.
Frau Berens
Mutter
Gina Krüger
Maria
Film by Roland Oehme.
Inas Mutter
Two best teenage friends spend the summer holidays together in a village. Then a good looking teenage boy appears.
Stefans Mutter
Fourteen-year-old Stefan Kolbe, along with his mother and sister, moves from an idyllic small town to the developing area of Berlin-Marzahn, where his father works as a construction worker. Stefan must find his way in a completely new environment and surrounded by strange people. Stefan gets to know two girls, who attempt to seduce him, and gets himself into trouble with the landlord, who kisses up to societal authority figures. He becomes friends with the anxious Hubert, defends him against the constant humiliation of the older student Windjacke, and encourages him to stand up for himself. It ends tragically in a bitter fight between Stefan and Windjacke.
While studying in Moscow, the GDR resident Christiane falls in love with Hatem, a fellow student from Syria. The two become a couple and even have a child together. When their study draws to an end, Christiane and Hatem have to decide if they want to share their future together. After Hatem explains to Christiane that as a woman she will not be able to work in Syria, Christiane suggests moving to the GDR together. For Hatem, however, this is out of the question, since he considers it a betrayal of his country. Thus, the two young people are forced to go separate ways.
Frau Müller
Nina Kern, a divorced woman in her late twenties, will soon be fully deprived of her custody rights for her three children, who already reside in a home for the displaced due to Nina’s many years of willful neglect. Although she has broken her promise to change her moral conduct many times, she is given one last chance on probation.
Karl Erp is a middle-aged man with two children and a boring marriage. After starting an exciting affair with his intern, Miss Broder, he leaves his loveless marriage and moves in with his lover. Under pressure from Miss Broder’s mother, Karl once again promises marriage. He finds, however, that the excitement that drew him to her in the first place doesn’t carry over into their daily lives.
Mutter
An eleven-year old girl goes on a sailing trip with her parents who don't know much about sailing.
Dr. Angelika Unglaube
Marion
Verkäuferin
Martina
Angela
In this film, Wolf and scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase explore the role of art and the artist in socialist society. A sculptor questions the reception and value of his work, in a delicately nuanced narrative interweaving personal memories, historical dilemmas, and political defeats.
Eva Thiessen
Dr. Gerd Thiessen, an experienced veterinarian, takes up a new job at a publicly owned manor. His research colleagues are less than thrilled about his ideas and modification proposals. Thus, the pretty and confident veterinarian Sabine Ladenbach becomes his only ally and soon they fall in love with each other. When Thiessen’s wife Eva notices that her husband is growing away from her, she starts to fight for him. Eventually, Thiessen realizes that Eva is the woman of his life, both privately and professionally. At the same time, he figures out that he needs the support of his team to achieve success in his field.
Film by Ralf Kirsten.
Gabi
Kasper Mai, an export merchant and comrade with a “clean” record, discovers he is the prince of Hohenlohe-Liebenstein. His royal grandmother designates him as the heir to her estate. A private trip to her reveals that she does not want a NATO airbase built on her land. The GDR and his grandmother thus find a common interest, and a clever lawyer from the East works against other family members looking to settle their debts with the estate money.
Maria / Moritz
Hans Müller finds himself on a trip in Thüringen, accompanied by his loving female friend, Moritz. Hans doesn't understand much about trust, which constantly leads to problems between the two of them. During one of their fights, Lady Venus intervenes and sends the young man back to the Middle Ages - so he can learn the true meaning of love. Disguised as Tannhäuser, he has to stand his ground against a horde of minstrels. At a singing competition, he blunders, without the support of Moritz, who had also been thrown back into the 13th century. And with the help of Frau Venus, his adventure will surely turn out even worse...
