Sophie Rois

Wunderkind, scandalous author, traitor to the fatherland, fury of the theater, feminist, fashion-lover, communist, pessimist, language terrorist, rebel, enfant terrible, nest fouler, brilliant, vulnerable artist, Nobel laureate. This film about Elfriede Jelinek, who in 2004 became the first Austrian author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, focuses on her artistic approach to language. The montage of archive material with voiceovers and interviews, some of them recently recorded, is told from Jelinek’s point of view.

Anna is 60 and her acting heyday is now behind her. She lives on her own but has a friend and confidant in her downstairs neighbour Michel, who is also single. Reluctantly, Anna accepts a job as a language coach for 17-year-old Adrian who has a speech impediment and is something of a misfit. She recognises him as the boy who recently snatched her handbag in the street.

Judge Praetorius-Camusot’s legal routines are interrupted when the ghost of a member of the Paris Commune turns up at an event celebrating German-French relations. An anarchic comedy about the origins of German criminal law and much, much more.

Ida has a hard time making friends. One day, her weird class teacher announces that everyone in the class will have a magical animal with them. Ida is put to the side of the fox Rabbat. Benni, just like Ida also an outsider, has the turtle Henrietta as a new companion. Together they have amazing adventures ahead of them, but will they be able to fulfill the main requirement of the "Magic Pet Shop": to keep their new friends a secret from adults?

Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.

Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.

Anna teaches violin at a music school, her husband is an instrument-maker. They have a 10-year-old son, Jonas. At school, Anna champions young Alexander, in whom she alone sees great talent. She devotes much energy and attention preparing him for the next stage exam to prove she was right. Soon Anna devotes more time to him than to Jonas, bringing the two boys into rivalry. At the same time her marriage is collapsing, she withdraws increasingly from her own family and starts an affair with her colleague Christian, who is encouraging her to join a quartet. When she fails during their joint concert, the pressure mounts. With Alexander now her vehicle, she drives him ever onwards and upwards. Come the day of the exam, events take a tragic turn...

Phoebe Phaidon works as a climatologist at an institute of cybernetics which is about to be shut down. So there has to be a solution in the form of a successful evaluation. The strategy consultants now work against the student movement in a virtual reality. Turmoils start.

Stefan Gabriel is an active father always looking at life positively. While he tries to give back to society, his daughters Jessica (12) and Sabrina (15) struggle with their own problems. Jessica is often mistaken for a boy and has to deal with her many ticks. She would happily swap places with Sabrina, who, despite her illness, appears to have her life completely under control. But the more Sabrina’s health worsens, the worse Jessica’s ticks become. The girls need a plan and fast. They come across a special ritual in an old book, which could be their rescue. But the girls first have to find a boy to sleep with Sabrina. They don’t have much time left and Jessica puts all she has got into implementing the life-saving plan, no matter how crazy it may be.

As a divorced father of two teenage daughters, with a head-strong ex-wife for a best friend, too many peculiar patients to keep up with and a new dog, psychotherapist Max certainly doesn't need another challenge. But when Sophie, a compulsive gambler with a boyfriend problem, regularly shows up late for her appointments, she rocks his world in ways he's not ready for.

Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 1992-2017. The end of the GDR gave rise to new artistic freedoms in reunited Berlin. Shortly after the fall of the Wall, rebel director Frank Castorf was appointed artistic director of the Volksbühne. His way of working altered the public’s perception of this theater. The chronological history of the Castorf era between 1992 and 2017 is told here in excerpts from the productions and in a series of conversations conducted on the long sofa in the theater's foyer.

Documentary about human hair, including its political significance.

After several strokes of fate ends a rage eruption of the otherwise so quiet power engineering technician Felix Grünler with a criminal complaint for assault. A grateful affair for his sister-in-law Karin, who forges an intrigue to gain the inheritance of her mother-in-law. She succeeds in having Felix admitted to psychiatry as incompetent. He is determined not to get into therapy. For doctors, this confirms the picture of the labile patient. But in the other patients Felix gives his consistent anti-attitude in the long run benevolent recognition.

Eleven-year-old outsider Stephan arrives at Castle Schreckenstein, an all-boys boarding school, where he learns about life within a community and soon finds himself being part of a funny 'pranks-competition' the boys are currently fighting against the neighboring girls of Castle Rosenfels. When the girls have no choice but to move to Schreckenstein after a failed prank, life at school is suddenly nothing like it used to be...

Molly Monster is going to have a sibling soon, but his good friend Edison is a little bit jealous and worried she might forget about him. When Molly's parents have to travel to the Island where monster parents hatch their eggs, Molly is not allowed to go because she is too young, nonetheless she decides to reach them on her own as soon as she realizes they missed to bring her sibling's gift with them.

Through previously undiscovered private letters, photos and diaries that were found in the Himmler family house in 1945, the "The Decent One" exposes a unique and at times uncomfortable access to the life and mind of the merciless "Architect of the Final Solution" Heinrich Himmler.

A dark psychological thriller, A Pact tells the twisted story of a contentious love triangle. As teenagers, Paul tricked Georg into handing over his girlfriend Anna to him. Georg agrees, on the condition that he can have her back whenever he wishes. After decades of silence, when Anna and Paul have a family together, Georg suddenly re-appears. Strange things start happening to Paul, and it soon becomes clear that Georg has not forgotten the pact.

A new film about Molly Monster and her best friend Edison. Christmas is approaching, and all the monsters in monster land are getting ready for the big day. One night, Molly and Edison find out about the mysterious Christmas monster. They set off on a journey to find him. Will they succeed? And will they make it back home in time for the celebrations?

Hanna and Simon are in a 20 year marriage with an unexciting relationship. By chance, they both meet and start separate affairs with Adam. Adam has no idea that his two lovers are married, until they are all found out when Hanna becomes pregnant, with the natural doubts stemming from their situation.

Early evening - a big city. Two teenagers shyly flirt with each other, a housewife sits down to watch her daily soap, nurses in a hospital gossip before the nightshift starts, a trendy couple drives through rush hour, so excited they can hardly wait to get home - a man with a rifle enters a building seeking revenge. In the blink of an eye seemingly unrelated events turn upside down what were once secure, happy, 'normal' lives. Behind fear, beyond the unexpected, there is love and hope.

On the escape of the violent Poles 1946, the child of Rosemarie get lost. And Rosemaries tries to find her daughter.

Alexander Kluge's News from Ideological Antiquity begins with Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's ambitious but unrealized plan to combine Karl Marx's Capital and James Joyce's Ulysses. For over nine hours, the film expands in concentric circles as Kluge, his guests, interlocutors and monologists make associative links on a range of topics that starts from a filmic discussion of Eisenstein's notes.

Accepting a prize, architect Georg Winter explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every completed building against the rightness of his original idea. Soon Georg himself is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life. An intense drama in which the four members of the family travel to a mountain village to bury Georg's mother. They get stranded in bad weather. This unexpected isolation throws new light on the past and present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children.

Unites grotesque elements, tempo, quiet dream sequences, the thrill of a detective story, but above all, he manages to capture the temperature of an actor ensemble that throws itself into the world of Dostoyevsky with immense pleasure and passion.

A dog who was named after the Beatles album, inherits his master's fortune. His owner's two children, however, devise a plan to make off with his wealth.

'Clemence M. Schönborn"s first feature film is a typical Austrian black comedy, dealing with an easy-going forty-something, who likes playing games with others, which has serious consequences... Phyllis, in her early 40s, still lives together with her mother, whom she loves and hates at the same time. When she gets to know Henry, supporting actor of a soap opera, she pretends to love him, but sleeps with the show's lead actor Walter, whom she finally runs over with her car, which makes Henry the show's new star - and the new lover of the lead actress Doris. However, Phyllis isn't done with him...

18-year-old school boy Helmut falls in love with fellow pupil Britta. He starts working for a Peace movement to get to know Britta. Britta, however, suddenly moves to San Francisco to live with her father and whilst there, finds a new boyfriend. Helmut studies, literature and politics in his home town and have a relationship with another girl from his former school, now studying medicine at the same university but they break up after having an affair with her roommate. Helmut begins a lot of short affairs with different women but still searches for his first girl.

A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.

In the last house just behind the western borders of Russia, between Paris/Texas and Korleput/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Cindy Sherman, Dogma 95 and Duma 2000, Frank Castorf directs his virst video production "Dämonen" ("Demons") as a sort of post-Soviet-panslavistic panopticon in his own dramaturgy based on Dostojewski's "Demons" and Camus' "The Posessed". All that in set designer Bert Neumann's industrial-designed bungalow (with swimming pool) built onto forbidding landscape.

Two young and attractive social workers/nuns bring fresh air into a city missionary station, but are also challenged by lust and money, offered by a millionaire.

In a small farming valley in Austria in the beginning of the 20th century a tyrannical farmer is found dead, and all the farmhands are relieved to be free of their tyrant. But the farmer was childless, so suddenly they all inherit the farm together. Now conflicts begin, as nobody is the boss and nobody has to obey.

An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.

Ramona lives her lonely life in Berlin working in a lipstick factory. One day she accidentally runs into Andrzei, a Polish mechanic illegally selling cigarettes in Germany during the weekend. One thing leads to another, and soon she finds herself pregnant. Then her life starts falling apart, when Andrzei tells her he already has a wife back in Poland and her baby dies shortly after its premature birth.

Nine persons sign up for a self-awareness course at an isolated country estate. Dr. Romero, a charismatic therapist, and his assistants confront the patients with their problems. Cut off from the rest of the world, the participants are increasingly drawn into the therapy's spell.

"The Devil's General" - A post war Germany pick up the involuntarily knowledge about the "black hole" of the 1950s.

The plot takes place in New York, and in the present. In a Hotel called "Quicky" a professor blackmails a student of his into having sex with him. But when the professor puts on a condom, the carnivorous condom bites off his penis and disappears. Detective Mackaroni who gets the case thinks that the college girl just bit off her teacher's penis! Mackaroni goes to the motel himself to check out the crime scene, in the lobby he finds a gigolo named Bill and he asks him to follow him to crime room, there the two men attempt to have sex when they are suddenly interrupted by the attack of a killer condom.

A young student travels through Europe as a sleeping car attendant.

Comedy drama about one of life's perennial losers who finally strikes it lucky with a beautiful woman, but not before experiencing the usual seemingly endless pitfalls.

Die Brüder Kipp (Joachim Król) und Most (Horst Krause) machen sich auf den Weg, um das Gut ihrer Oma zu erben. Auf diesem Weg begegnen sie Viktor (Konstantin Kotljarov), einem desertierten russischen Soldaten, der die beiden kidnappt und Nadine (Sophie Rois), die sich ihnen freiwillig anschließt. Zwischendurch gibt es noch einen Zusammenstoß mit Straßenrowdies, was diesen allerdings nicht gerade gut bekommt. Auf ihrem Weg zum Erbe (oder was davon übrig bleibt) geraten die Protagonisten in manche scheinbar ausweglose Situation.

OSTKREUZ tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanies shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany.

A young customs officer is bored by his job and his situation at all. He tries to have some fun, but in a way that nobody else can enjoy. The situation changes when he decides to let his too long hair be cut.

American social psychologist, Ben Monroe investigates a local cult connected to a disturbing event. While he immerses himself into his work, his rebellious teenage daughter, Mazzy, gets involved with a mysterious local boy, who introduces her to the city’s underground party scene. As these two worlds head towards an intersection, Mazzy finds herself in great danger and Ben will need to race against the clock to save her.