Burghart Klaußner

Since Ben has been living apart from his ex-wife Mira and his children, his life has fallen apart. But unexpectedly, he gets a second chance: when Mira, pregnant to the teeth, has to be hospitalized, his children live with him again. This time, everything will be fine - he thinks! But his son Oskar brings a small problem: he wears a dress that he doesn't want to take off.

It's been 25 years since they graduated from high school or could have done it if they had not left before, made honors rounds or simply failed. Now they meet again at the class reunion, the former best of class, the former genius, the ex-class brat, the ex-class-ass, in their mid-40s, and suddenly face the people with whom they dreamed their future life , But what actually happened in the meantime?

A walk by American writer Paul Auster’s world, his past —his family, his youth, his work—, and his present, which is the publication of his novel 4321 in January 2017, an exploration of human identity and a glimpse to the soul of New York, a city that Auster has depicted as nobody has ever done.

Stalinstadt, East Germany, 1956. While the Hungarian uprising against Soviets is taking place, teenage members of a classroom of the local school perform a seemingly harmless act that causes unexpected consequences.

Painter Freddy lives with his wife and child on Lake Tegernsee and is working on his comeback until one day his life suddenly turns upside down: He is accused of beating up his wife and as a result of which he is said to have custody of his eight-year-old son withdrawn . But Freddy can not remember having committed the alleged acts and protests his innocence. In this grave crisis, Eddy appears, Freddy's childhood friend. Both look confusingly alike and Eddy immediately begins to interfere in Freddy's life, in which worse things happen. Only Freddy knows that he has a doppelganger, an imaginary one at that - how is he supposed to convince those around him that it is Eddy who is to blame for all the disasters? Freddy is slowly losing control of his life...

A hijacker threatens to bring down a passenger plane to a crowded football stadium. Fighter pilot Lars Koch decides to shoot down the machine. The court of Berlin should decide whether Lars Koch is a hero or a murderer. The viewers become jurors, and their decision determines the outcome of the film.

Eva Arctander is born with hypertrichosis, meaning that she is covered from head to toe with fine blonde hair. Her father is so ashamed of her that he hides her away from the world in their apartment. However, Eva’s nanny fights for her right to be treated like everyone else.

The family of Katharina Krohn is shocked when they learn that she is a member of a Swiss organization that helps people who have decided to leave this life, even though she has no life-threatening disease like many of the other members, but because she has lost the will to face life after the death of her husband.

It starts with "Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story", which tells of a man travelling the world in seven-league boots. Adelbert von Chamisso wrote the tale before setting off to Russia on scientific expedition in 1815. He analysed the flora of Alaska and then explored the Northwest Passage, just like Cook and voyager Bering had done previously, the latter with physician and naturalist Steller in tow. A porthole reveals the view. Thus begins Ottinger's journey from Alaska to Kamchatka via Chukotka, with her predecessors’ log books to accompany her on her way.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union captures U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers after shooting down his U-2 spy plane. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Powers' only hope is New York lawyer James Donovan, recruited by a CIA operative to negotiate his release. Donovan boards a plane to Berlin, hoping to win the young man's freedom through a prisoner exchange. If all goes well, the Russians would get Rudolf Abel, the convicted spy who Donovan defended in court.

It is the late 1950s. Flourishing under the economic miracle, Germany grows increasingly apathetic about confronting the horrors of its recent past. Nevertheless, Fritz Bauer doggedly devotes his energies to bringing the Third Reich to justice. One day Bauer receives a letter from Argentina, written by a man who is certain that his daughter is dating the son of Adolph Eichmann. Excited by the promising lead, and mistrustful of a corrupt judiciary system where Nazis still lurk, Bauer journeys to Jerusalem to seek alliance with Mossad, the Israeli secret service. To do so is treason — yet committing treason is the only way Bauer can serve his country.

The breathtaking story of a man who nearly would have changed the world. In 1939, when Hitler tricked millions of people at the height of his power, radical Georg Elser — disparaged as an assassin — is one of the greatest resistance fighters.

The night of August 24, 1944. The fate of Paris is in the hands of General von Choltitz, governor of Grand Paris, who is preparing, on Hitler’s orders, to blow up the French capital. The descendent of a long line of Prussian military men, the general has never had any hesitation when it came to obeying orders. This is what’s on Swedish consul Raoul Nordling’s mind as he takes the secret staircase that leads to General von Choltitz’s suite at the Hôtel Meurice. The bridges on the Seine and the major monuments of Paris (including the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower) are mined with explosives, ready to be detonated. Armed with all the weapons of diplomacy, the consul will try to convince the general not to follow Hitler’s order of destruction.

Jesper is a soldier in the German army, who reports for a new tour of duty in Afghanistan. His unit is to protect a village from the Taliban.

Raimund Gregorius, having saved a beautiful Portuguese woman from leaping to her death, stumbles upon a mesmerizing book by a Portuguese author, which compels him to suddenly abandon the boring life he has led for years and to embark on an enthralling adventure. In search of the author, Gregorius acts as detective, pulling together pieces of a puzzle that involves political and emotional intrigue and the highest possible stakes. His voyage is one that transcends time and space, delving into the realms of history, medicine and love, all in search of true meaning to his life.

Joseph is in his mid-sixties and has just lost his beloved wife. Everything in his big old mansion reminds him painfully of the years they spent together. One day several visitors turn up unexpectedly. They seem to be relatives of his deceased wife. In the beginning, the uninvited guests treat Joseph with loving care, but bit by bit the situation begins to change. The visitors slowly, almost unnoticably, become aggressive, even hostile, invaders. They try to get rid of Joseph and take over his house, his world, his thoughts. Is this just the paranoia of an old man or really a ruthless invasion?

Nono, a Dutch kid lacking two days being thirteen, runs away from problems at home and, disguised as a girl, takes up with the world's cleverest thief, who unbeknownst to Nono, may hold the bizarre key to his true identity.

40 years after her husband is shot and killed by a terrorist while on duty as a police officer during a routine traffic check, Erika Welves (Senta Berger), aided by a journalist (Felix Eitner) finds evidence leading to the murderer. For the killer has vanished. Is living in freedom. Because the state is protecting him, keeping him safe. He in turn has supplied information concerning other terrorists. Erika Welves considers this blatant injustice. But now, finally, there is a chance at revenge...

An English teacher brings soccer to a German school in the 19th Century.

After aspiring poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fails his law exams, he's sent to a sleepy provincial court to reform. Instead, he falls for Lotte, a young woman who is promised to another man.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

2010 documentary film on the Armenian Genocide by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It is based on eyewitness reports by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time, Armenian survivors and other contemporary witnesses which are recited by modern German actors.

Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years just before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. The abused and suppressed children of the villagers seem to be at the heart of this mystery.

An ill man’s dying wish reunites four old friends.

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

Georgia's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008

A young East German woman leaves her husband and business partner and relocates to a West German city to start anew as an accountant, but he soon catches up with her.

19-year-old NVA soldier, Alex Karow, is sent to the West German-East German border in May 1974, shortly after Willy Brandt's resignation and during the World Cup. The army is dominated by brutal rituals, tolerated or used by the officers. Alex understands that the ideals of balance, democracy and human dignity are propaganda. The question of what happens when the other appears in the sights of the Kalashnikov occupies the soldiers day and night, interrupted almost exclusively by the games of the World Cup with the historic encounter between the GDR and the FRG. Alex draws strength from his love for Christine, a confident tractor driver who lives in the neighbouring village. Christine encourages him not to do what his father expects, but to follow his dream of becoming a photographer. But when her brother sends Alex's photo from the border fortifications to the West, everything gets out of control...

For ten years Lena Drömer has been traveling to Tuscany alone for four weeks every November - at least that's what her husband, the Protestant pastor Hermann, and her daughter believe. But this time it will be a journey without return. Shortly after her departure Lena is killed in a bus accident near Bremen. Her death gives up Hermann Rätsel. Why did she die in the north, when she wanted to go to the south? When, as every year in November, a postcard from Lena arrives from Italy, Hermann sets off in search of the truth.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

Ausreißer [The Runaway] is a 2004 German short film directed by Ulrike Grote, with Peter Jordan and Maximilian Werner. It follows Walter, an unemployed architect, who is getting ready to go for an interview. But just as he is about to leave his flat, an eight-year-old boy, Yuri, approaches him at the door, claiming to be his son. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

Three activists cobble together a kidnapping plot after they encounter a businessman in his home.

Autobiographical movie about the publicist Carola Stern.

A great mosaic, a labyrinth of scenes, dialogue splinters, interviews, portraits of people surrounding Hamlet and wanting to be part of his story.

Alex Kerner's mother was in a coma while the Berlin wall fell. When she wakes up he must try to keep her from learning what happened (as she was an avid communist supporter) to avoid shocking her which could lead to another heart attack.

Benjamin is a 16 year old with lousy grades in math, who switches to a boarding school to reach grammar school. Acclimatization to the new environment is difficult in the first place and he has to struggle with the various problems of coming of age, when he falls in love to the school's dream girl Malen.

The movie's plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus", but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl's rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking - he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.

Zigeuner is on the hunt for the woman of his dreams, a woman who should also play the main role in the film. Meanwhile, ruthless producer Oskar Reiter wants to buy the film rights at all costs - and he is struggling for the love of the beautiful Valerie.

After the death of their parents, the sisters Astrid and Britta want to make the Winkelmann fashion house number one in their hometown. Astrid accepts that her already troubled marriage to Bernd suffers from the ambitious goal - until Bernd agrees to have a relationship with Britta. When she gets pregnant, there is a scandal between the sisters.

By 1941, Adolf Hitler had taken personal command of the German military apparatus. His initial successes made this seem like a good idea at the time, but by 1944, after an unparalleled series of military defeats that Hitler refused even to acknowledge, a group of high-ranking military and political figures in Germany decided to assassinate him and take over the government. Unfortunately for them, their assassination attempt failed, and the knives were out to find all the people involved in the attempt. The most wanted person in the coup was Carl Goerdeler (Dieter Schaad), a respected figure in German public life for many decades. Twenty years earlier, a girl by the name of Helene Schwärzel (Katherina Thalbach) met Goerdeler. After the coup attempt, during the nationwide manhunt, Helene recognized him and notified the authorities. In addition to receiving a huge reward, she became the focus of a nationwide propaganda campaign, and was widely resented for her "success."

When Micha's mother leaves his irascible father, he tries to prevent their divorce by any means he can think of, but his attempts to hold the family together lead to a catastrophe...

Black comedy about a lucrative business. Grandmother, mother and daughter live together in a love-hate-relationship and run their business with divided responsibilities: via marriage ads they are looking for candidates. It’s the daughter that gets dressed and styled according to the new mission: no matter if vamp or tree-hugger she twists the men around her little finger until they clear their accounts from all the savings. The money ends up in coffee tins stored in grandma’s fridge. But where do the men end up when they discover the secret of the trio?

Here is the third and last of three self-contained shorts by Helke Sander from her series of shorts entitled From the Reports of Security Guards & Patrol Services . BTW the numbering of the parts is a bit confusing, the only existing parts of the series are No. 1,5 and 8.

Story concerns two friends, Freya and Irmtraut and their relationships with the same man, Traugott, who finds it impossible to choose between the two women.

1934, Hamburg. Adolf Hitler is about to visit the city. Hamburg's executioner falls ill, and is unable to deliver the sentence of four communists who are awaiting capital punishment in jail. Fearing that this would spoil Hitler's visit, SS leader Footh offers a local bankrupt butcher, Albert Teetjen, 2,000 Marks in order to carry out the verdict. The broke Teetjen agrees and follows suit. When his neighbors hear of the execution, they shun him. His wife cannot tolerate her husband's deed and puts an end to her life. Eventually, Teetjen also commits suicide.