Otto Tausig

Bremen, 1891. Udo Jürgens' grandfather Heinrich strolls thoughtfully about the Christmas market. For days, the young man has suffered a momentous decision: should he emigrate to America or seek his fortune in Moscow? The touching performance of a street musician playing a Russian song on his bassoon gives him an unexpected decision-making aid. Henry sets off for Russia - and thus begins a fateful story that spans three generations and two world wars.

Agnes, the proud managing director of a renowned Viennese jewelery business, has been happily married to the jeweler Leo Wieland for 17 years. He designs for her the exclusive collections and proves her despite the obvious age difference - Leo is a lot younger than his wife - every day his great love. But everything changes when Agnes receives a devastating diagnosis from her doctor: lung cancer. By chance, the couple will one day get to know little Max and his attractive mother Vera. In the terminally ill Agnes matures a plan: Vera would be a perfect partner for Leo.

The story and fate of three families: A Jewish family destroyed by the massacres of the Nazis in Lithuania; the family of the culprit, who flew to America and keeps grotesque family cohesion; the family of Ratz, a social democratic family, dissolving itself miserably in today's Vienna. The condemnation of the last century bundled in these three families showing clearly that one could never escape from its own past. Written by themoth-1

Berlin 36 is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in the 1936 Summer Olympics. She was replaced by the Nazi regime by an athlete later discovered to be a man. The film is based on a true story and was released in Germany on September 10, 2009. Reporters at Der Spiegel challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not learn Dora Ratjen was male until 1938.

Though approaching his eighties, Max Kohn shows no signs of slowing down. He pursues his love life - both real and imagined - with youthful vigor, thereby risking his relationship to Reisel, the woman he loves but neglects. LOVE COMES LATELY is a film about real and imagined longings, the never ending dream of love and the power of fiction.

A great Empire, once famous for its enlightened traditions, is taken over by a ruthless political establishment. Religious fundamentalists and national separatists are tearing at the fabric of its liberal society. Under the influence of his conservative advisors, the Emperor fails to initiate the reforms that could save the Empire from annihilation. One man alone can avert the cataclysm to come. The year is 1888 and the 600-year-old Empire of Austria-Hungary is at a cross-road of history. Crown-Prince Rudolf, son of fabled Empress Sisi, the most beautiful woman of her time, is the man with the vision and the ability to lead his Empire into the 20th century. Yet his enemies, the all-powerful Prime Minister first and foremost, scheme to isolate Rudolf from his father and from access to power. Against the backdrop of one of the most dangerous, exciting and colorful periods in history, at the dawn of the modern age...

Shameless slimeball Eduard "Edik" Letov - clad in an everpresent Hawaiian shirt - puts the sting on alien travelers hoping to connect with their roots, by having local phonies pose as the visitors' long-lost relatives. Complications abound when Letov attempts to pass off an entire village under the guise of a community wiped out during the Second World War. The arrival of a group of trouble-causing misfits, among them mobster Barukh - who wishes to bury his mother's remains, only to discover that someone keeps exhuming them - and the lech Simon - a Canadian with an insatiable fetish for his sexy translator - turn Letov's latest scheme into a veritable cat's cradle.

A holocaust survivor now living as a respected writer in Manhattan is the only person who can identify a suspected Nazi back in his native Austria. When a beautiful reporter eager for a scoop tries to lure him back, Geburtig must decide whether to confront his past.

Austrian television director Fritz Lehner makes his feature debut with the big-budget drama Jedermann's Fest, based on the 1911 play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which in turn was based on a medieval tale. Originated in parts of England, the myth of Jan Jedermann ("John Everyman") deals with a rich man on his deathbed coming to terms with his life's failures. Not following much of a plot, the modernized version involves famous fashion designer Jedermann (Klaus Maria Brandauer) imagining his last big gala event while rendered unconscious as a result of a car accident in his Ferrari. He is a success in Vienna but not in fashionable Paris, so he wishes to impress French elder stateswoman Yvonne Becker (Juliette Greco).

A movie from the italian director Fabio Carpi.

The story of a woman that remained distracted for a long time from her life, from the passions that made her feel alive. The importance of true love is compared with the material value of diamonds. Only one truly lasts forever. She's got to find the thing that values most for her, the thing that gives psychical stability and real happiness again to her life.

An unhappy young photographer is about to make his debut as a journalist. He is to write an obituary about the weapons-crazy mayor of a Lower Austrian village who, it is said, had a tank from WWII. In the course of his research he unearths a conspiracy of wifes murdering their husbands to get an early widowers pension.

Simon Granderath has been found dead in his appartment. His only daughter, Monika Besse, who lives in Luxembourg, arrives to arrange the funeral and settle his estate. She wishes to get back to Luxembourg and to her normal life as quickly as possible. However, she quickly realizes that in fact, she hardly knew her father, and tries to trace the various stages and encounters that made up his life. Much later, she realizes that the search for the identity of her father has actually become a search of her own identity – though still she believes she can get closer to her father after his death.

Documentary that follows the lives of several Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai during WWII.

Paris, Kingdom of France, August 18, 1572. To avoid the outbreak of a religious war, the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois, sister of the feeble King Charles IX, marries the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre.

The mis-adventures of three Polish-Jews on the road to Gdansk is the basis for this German comedy that was filmed in New York, Germany, and Poland. Genovefa and Moshe have been married and living in New York for 30 years. Physically the couple resembles Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat. The two have decided to return to Poland for a visit. They intend to have Moshe's best friend Isaac, an unlucky, depressive German, take care of their house while they are gone. Unfortunately, Isaac loses his job before they go and ends up accompanying them on a Polish freighter. When the ship dies in a German port, the threesome must go overland to Gdansk. They encounter many mishaps along the way.

In this tragic melodrama, a man who has been hiding his Nazi past has it come back to haunt him when his hippie daughter, whom he disapproves of, comes back to bond with her daughter, whom he's been raising. Meanwhile, he and his drinking buddy, a beer-truck driver, go on a jaunt to Poland to recover some gold fillings he had hidden years ago during the time when he worked in a concentration camp. The truck driver inadvertently leaves a filling lying around at home, and his mother immediately recognizes it for what it is. When she confronts him, he claims that "Jews don't mean anything to me" and she must then reveal his Jewish heritage to him: she was a housekeeper in a Jewish household and he was a child there whom she adopted during the Holocaust in order to save his life. The driver then confronts the wily old Nazi, who conceives a brutal scheme which will save his cozy life at the expense of the reputations of the driver and his granddaughter.

The enigmatic but vivid imagery of this loosely plotted film is based on a similarly evocative novel by the Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, Noturno Indiano. An old friend of the hero's has been living in Bombay with a prostitute. His friend Peter Schlemihl (Otto Tausig) is a concentration camp survivor, who went to India after being captivated by a photograph he saw there. When the prostitute writes to him in Europe asking that he rescue his friend from a mysterious malaise, he flies into India to try and help. When he gets to Bombay, he discovers that his friend has disappeared. Following the clues left behind by the friend, and based on his acquaintance with him, he journeys to Madras to speak to a Theosophist dignitary there, and then journeys on to Portugues Goa. With each step of his journey, the hero (Jean-Hugues Anglade) becomes more identified with his friend, and re-enacts in his own person the transformations he must have experienced.

This film combines two very different styles: an atmospheric psycho thriller about the ice-cold hired gun (masterfully played by Frank Gorschin), and the bizarre satire of the Austrian TV serial "Kottan ermittelt".

Biographical TV movie about controversial Austrian artist Egon Schiele.

The twelve year old Ivo has been living in Vienna with his family for three years. His father and brothers work at construction sites. Their Austrian neighbors despise the Yugoslav guest workers. Because the mother has to look after the sick grandmother at home in Croatia, Ivo runs the male household in Vienna alone. Solitude and insults from the locals make the child unhappy. And so Ivo decides on a rainy winter's day to return to his home village on his own.