Ruth Reinecke

Michael, an open-pit miner, refuses to accept the fact that coal is being phased out. He doesn’t want things to change. Working in an open-pit mine is more than just a job to him. He tries to convince his co-workers to join in his protest of the changes afoot, but by not being able to let go, he gets less and less support — even from his family.

Boris and Jonathan have been a couple for many years. But their relationship has reached a point where they might as well spend their evenings together separately: One lies in bed reading, the other works at a desk in the next room. While actor Boris digs deeper into rehearsals for a new film with an ambitious director and begins to mix real and fictional characters, Jonathan tries to redefine his voice as a writer. Ghosting through these days of wrestling with distance, closeness, trust, desire and fear of loss is Jonathans' young niece Josie, who is trying to deal with the approaching end of her childhood in her own idiosyncratic way. BONES AND NAMES, the feature debut of Fabian Stumm, portrays people searching for their place in life in different ways. A sensitive and humorous reflection on the dissonances in relationships that both connect and distance us from each other.

The engineer Rosalie leads a life without standing still. She doesn't feel old for a long time, only mature. When Rosalie returns to Germany after a fainting spell at a solar project in Africa, it's just supposed to be a breather. When she shows up at her bourgeois sister Margret's with a huge container, she is not very enthusiastic about the surprise visit. The retired teacher sees right through that Rosalie isn't staying with her voluntarily. The well-travelled woman is broke! It seems like a miracle that there are a huge chunk of banknotes in a hole in the wall of the room. On the other side of the wall there is the room of the highly talented high school graduate Karla, who rents a part of Margret's house with her father Harald. After a failed first meeting, Rosalie befriends with the wheelchair-bound teenager and sets her mind on getting Karla out of her sheltered isolation, even against her will.

Christmas Eve. Airport Santa Thorsten has his hands full: An accident and bad weather lock everyone in as they are trying to make it home last minute! Small dramas play out under the eyes of Thorsten’s tyrannical boss, the airport manager: Secret lovers Martin and Eva are in a tight spot, when Martin’s family shows up. A retired couple can’t spend Christmas with their loved ones. Waitress Anja’s boyfriend suddenly falls for her old school mate. Helicopter mom Jette keeps fighting with her husband, when her son runs away. In the middle of it all is Thorsten, and it’s his job to keep them all happy. But that’s what Santa's are made for!

On a freezing cold winter day, several guests visit their relatives in an old people's home in the Frankfurt area. When the weather changes shortly afterwards and black ice falls over the area, the guests unexpectedly get stuck.

Klemens Kurz is a family man, a successful meteorologist - and autistic. He has Asperger's Syndrome, which means he takes everything literally, is a logic genius and has a special relationship with his emotions. When he was offered an attractive job for a research project in Svalbard in the Arctic, he quickly told his two teenage kids, Nelli and Carlo, that they were going to the far north. And Grandpa Arthur should come along too. No option for the three, a plan has to be found! In order to dissuade Father Klemens from his plan, the teenagers try to find a wife for him by all means of modern online dating. But as a person with a special relationship to his feelings, this is not an easy endeavor.

Matthias is hopelessly overwhelmed when suddenly his mother Gisela is at the door. After a thigh fracture she sits in a wheelchair and needs help. When Matthias learns that Gisela has discharged herself from the rehab clinic, he realizes that she needs new life courage and is desperately looking for a solution. It comes quite unexpectedly from Tom, Gisela's ten-year-old grandson: Grandma needs a worshiper! The unusual plan works. The anonymous love letters, written by Matthias himself, enchant his mother. But when she wants to meet the unknown, all the dizziness threatens to fly up.

Four very retired, ex-GDR spies, or "Kundschafter des Friedens" as they were officially named, led by the once legendary Jochen Falk, are called on by the German government. Their mission is to rescue the interim president of the divided Republic of Katschekistan, who has been kidnapped by separatists, along with Berlin's official man on the ground, Franz Kern. To keep Jochen and his maybe no longer so crack team under control, all of whom are determined to prove they were treated unfairly by history, they are put under the command of the young and enthusiastic BND agent Paula Kern.

The life of Marie and Peter seems perfect, but their greatest wish remains unfulfilled: a family of their own. After several painfully failed attempts to have a child by natural means, Marie and Peter decide to try adoption in Russia. Carried by their longing and after many months of preparation and waiting, they set off to get to know their future daughter Nina in a children's home thousands of kilometers away from Germany. They still have no idea that they are only at the beginning of a tour de force against the Russian authorities – and they are facing the biggest challenge for their relationship, because while Marie and Peter are fighting for their future child, the question is: are we still pursuing the same goal? Each for himself – and especially as a couple?

Without warning a father comes to visit his daughter abroad. He believes that she lost her humor and therefore surprises her with a rampage of jokes.

Choir director Johanna Bischoff and her girls choir go to a concert in their hometown Hameln. Shortly before the scheduled performance disappear four of the girls and the organist David.Sie were on a hike in a cave of the Ith - the fabled mountain, in which 700 years ago the Pied Piper is said to have led the children. Seeking help, Johanna turns to her ex-boyfriend Jan Faber, head of the police station in Hameln.

Nike, 19 years old, is a civil servant trainee at the immigration department in Hanover, but still lives with her father on his farm, where he tries to cultivate strawberries for the first time to overcome financial problems. However, while bringing in the crops, he suffers a heart attack. Suddenly, Nike has to take over business, but soon realizes that most of her father's employees are illegal immigrants.

Film by Evelyn Schmidt.

Eleven-year-old Jella lives with her mother in a rural idyll in which both feel at home and comfortable. Then, however, they move to the city where her father works. On parting, her friend Freitag presents Jella with a pair of pigeons. Although Jella is looking forward to life in the city, she is unable to accustom herself to her new surroundings. She is being picked on by the other children, and a neighbor′s son even releases her pigeons. They fly back to Freitag who returns them to Jella. When Jella visits the village one day, she is disappointed to learn that she has become a stranger there, as well. The two pigeons, however, which she has left at Freitag′s place, know by now where their new home is and fly back to the city. Jella follows them and realizes that it is only a matter of time until she herself will feel at home in the city.

Adaptation of Theodor Storm's novella "Hans and Heinz Kirch".