Christoph Engel

Set against the backdrop of post-unification Germany, the film explores the breakdown of relations in a decaying social structure.

Elias, born at the end of the war, receives an anonymous phone call on his 47th birthday: his parents are dead. He is now a successful politician, but thirty years ago he had fled from his home and parents in the East to seek a new life in the West. The return to his parental home causes Elias a sense of unease and disturbs the rigid order and complacency of his life.

The architect Daniel Brenner is in his late thirties when he receives his first challenging and lucrative commission: to design a cultural center for a satellite town in East-Berlin. He accepts the offer under the condition that he gets to choose who he works with. This way, he reunites with former colleagues and friends - most of them architects or students of architecture who have since chosen a different profession due to personal restraint or economic confinement. Together, they develop a concept which they hope will be more appealing to the public than the conventional and dull constructions common to the German Democratic Republic. However, their ambitious plans are once and again foiled by their conservative supervisors. As frustration grows, Daniel has trouble keeping his career in balance with his family-life: his wife Wanda wants to leave for West-Germany.

Film director Andreas Kleinert belongs to the last generation of filmmakers that emerged in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Born in 1962, Kleinert's attitudes were shaped by the late 1970s, and particularly by the 1980s—a period of increasing disillusionment. He wrote his thesis on “Levels of Consciousness in the Film Poetry of Andrei Tarkovsky,” the late Soviet film director who made a name for himself in the pre-perestroika years with bleak films. As Kleinert completed his film academy studies with his graduation film, Leb' wohl, Joseph ( Farewell, Joseph, 1989), the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the collapse of the GDR. Kleinert won the main prize for his diploma feature film, Leb' wohl, Joseph, at the Munich International Festival for Film Schools. The next year, this remarkable black-and-white Kafkaesque film of cryptic symbols and enigmatic metaphors was invited to compete at Locarno.

Summer holidays are beginning for 13 years old Daniel, a boy from East Berlin. He does not know yet that his parents are going to get divorced. They are afraid of Daniel`s reaction, so they have not told him about their decision until now. Together they drive to a village in the mountains. There Daniel finally recognizes the truth about his parents marital problems. When Daniel has an accident, this brings his parents together again, at least for the moment...

A story spanning three generations, from 1871 to 1945. When Gustav Wengler, a farmer’s son, returns from the Franco-German war in 1871, he goes to work for a precision mechanics and optical company, where he soon becomes a master craftsman. Wengler loyally promises the owner on his deathbed that his sons and grandsons will also stand by the company.

For five years Rogelio, a Chilean exile, has been in the GDR, where he works as a lighting technician at a theater. Though his colleagues try to make him feel welcome, he feels lonely and isolated.

1934, Germany. Jan is a 13 year old boy, who is raised without a mother. His father, a communist, is accused of a political murder, and predicted to be shot by the police when he was on the run. Jan lives with his aunt and finds a friend, Max, who wants to help him to find out what really with his father happened. During a conspirative gathering Max is shot by SA (Nazi paramilitary) and Jan succeed to escape in a barge. Erika, the daughter of the captain of the barge, and a boatman hide him. They try to help Jan to escape from police and find his father, who really survived.

After a hot and steamy company party, Sibylle and Harald, both in their late thirties, spend the night together. He is a widower with two sons, with the younger son just entering school. She is single and relatively satisfied in her current relationship with a married colleague. When they meet again later, they resolve to enter into a strictly intellectual relationship.

Lydia Kowalenko is fired from the pharmaceutical company where she has worked for many years because she refused to help cover up the use of a dangerous chemical. Her daughter Katja, however, has no scruples and risks an operation which is more beneficial to her own medical research than to the convalescence of a young patient. Then Katja's only son dies after a car accident. Was he too the victim of a career-minded doctor?

Otto Scheidel (Manfred Krug) has been captain of the Elbe steamer Jenissei for over twenty years, but his ship, the last of its kind, is going to be converted into a floating restaurant. Otto, whose his strong attachment to the ship has already cost him his relationship with his girlfriend Caramba (Renate Krößner), refuses to take another job and instead joins a railway construction brigade.

Inge Herold is in her mid-thirties. She is divorced and lives with her 15-year-old son. She works as a psychologist and social worker and is involved with a married man. Suddenly, Inge finds out she may have breast cancer, which would mean an operation the very next day. The 24 hours before the planned surgery puts her under enormous psychological pressure and she begins to reevaluate her life. With heightened awareness of matters of everyday life, she realizes that what she previously considered meaningful, was actually void of any real meaning.

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.

Ede falls in love with Unku, a girl from a travelling circus. Love cannot run smoothly however because Unku is a Gypsy. Various adventures take place before love is finally allowed to run its natural course.

Wolf Brandin is in his mid-twenties and lives with his wife and child in East Berlin at the end of the 1950s. In West Berlin, the student of electrical engineering is recruited by the American secret service CIA. But Brandin immediately notifies the State Security of the German Democratic Republic and from then on lives a dangerous life as a double agent. When Brandin reaches the breaking point, his marriage starts to unravel because Brandin is not allowed to tell his family about his double life.

After a fierce argument Steffi Zinn′s husband leaves the joint flat and stays away from home over night. The next morning, his wife Steffi has disappeared and is reported as a missing person. Captain Lohm takes over the case and at first looks for signs of a murder, but to no avail. Then, Steffi′s body is found in a lake. After her funeral, a stranger who had attended Steffi′s funeral for a short time is also found dead in a lake, and the connection between the two cases becomes apparent.

Last years in the Life of german Dramatican Georg Büchner. Around the year 1830 he and his fellow students try to initiate a revolution in Germany, but they are not successful. Büchner has to leave the country and seeks exile in France and Switzerland, where he falls ill with typhus.

Bruno Kappel is an established attorney in Hamburg who, in earlier times, belonged to an anarchistic student circle. His former girlfriend Karin Kunze is still a member of this scene. Bruno, who still has left-wing beliefs, becomes her attorney. But when Karin gets into a shootout with the police, she has to go into hiding. The prosecuting attorney Baller has also been a former member of the anarchistic scene. He does not want his past to be revealed by Karin′s apprehension and prosecution. Thus, he asks Kappel to find Karin and sneak her out to a foreign country.

Berlin at the end of the 1940s. Anneliese Weyher is working as a switchboard operator. She is living with her aunt after losing her parents in the war – a stroke of fate that has thrown the young woman off course emotionally. Indifferently, she is doing her work; her private life consists of an affair with a black-marketeer. Even when Anneliese witnesses an armed robbery, committed by infamous Wollnick and his gang, she stays lethargic and apathetic – she keeps silent instead of helping the inspector who is a friend of her aunt. It is not until Anneliese by coincidence meets her former lover, the watchmaker Kurt, that her life seems to take a positive turn.

A funny adventures of a two young boys who are trying to rebuild the ship called "Emma" for their friend - the old captain.

Although at first Ina barely takes any notice of Matti, the two teenagers gradually fall in love at their dance classes and begin their first real relationship. Their parents are upset about this development and try to prevent their children from seeing each other. But Ina and Matti continue to meet in secret and their first sexual experience together brings mixed feelings for Ina.

London in 1856. Karl Marx is living in exile in the British capital. One day, "Mohr", as Marx is called by his friends, meets the 13-year old worker′s son Joe. The boy works every day for twelve hours in a spinning mill and even has to work night shifts although that violates current rules. Marx tries to end the illegal activities of the spinning mill owner and one night shows up at the mill together with an inspector. But his foray is undermined by a robbery by the rebellious raven gang that is led by Joe′s brother Billy. The spinning mill owner of course takes this chance to blame his young workers for the theft. But Marx is not let astray and does not stop to fight against child labour. Furthermore, he tries to get the members of the raven gang back on the straight and narrow – with success.

On one very fine sunny day, a fourth-grader Thomas, as always, is out of the house in the morning to get to school by subway. But on this day he has a too good mood and that, along with the good weather, prevents him get to the lessons. He decides to skip his station, and take a walk through Berlin.

Four directors - four styles - four episodes, all relating the events of a single night which has entered the history books: August 12-13, 1961. There are thousands of complex narratives connected with the frontier drawn through the middle of Berlin, and each episode relates the story of a difficult decision made on that night...

In November of 1939, the British consulate in Norway receives documents saying that the Nazis are conducting secret rocket research in Peenemünde. But the British doubt the authenticity of the so called "Oslo report". Thus, the Germans continue their experiments unimpeded. At the same time, resistance groups from France, England, Poland, and Germany try to find and to sabotage the secret Nazi research base. When the first "V 2" rocket is successfully launched, the Allied commanders finally become interested in the "Oslo report".

The two-piece black and white movie "Brennende Ruhr" portrays the events during the Kapp-Putsch 1920 in a small german town in the Ruhr district. The main protagonist is Ernst Sukrow, a student who sympathises first with the bourgeois forces but finally decided to join the communists in their fight.

The Rabbit Is Me was made in 1965 to encourage discussion of the democratization of East German society. In it, a young student has an affair with a judge who once sentenced her brother for political reasons; she eventually confronts him with his opportunism and hypocrisy. It is a sardonic portrayal of the German Democratic Republic's judicial system and its social implications. The film was banned by officials as an anti-socialist, pessimistic and revisionist attack on the state. It henceforth lent its name to all the banned films of 1965, which became known as the "Rabbit Films." After its release in 1990, The Rabbit Is Me earned critical praise as one of the most important and courageous works ever made in East Germany. It was screened at The Museum of Modern Art in 2005 as part of the film series Rebels with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany.

The famous actor Ralf Horricht is a pain in his current director's butt while shooting a comedy about the army. So Horricht believes it a joke, when he receives an induction-order as reserve-officer... but the captain tries his best to make him realize this is no laughing matter.

After a breakdown, Rita returns to her childhood village in 1961. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior; how his enthusiasm about his new chemical process turned to bitter disappointment in the face of official rejection; how he escaped to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built and hoped that she would follow him …

Stasi agent Alexander Berg has to uncover a plot of sabotage.

Based on a true story of inmates at KZ Buchenwald that risked their lives to hide a small Jewish boy shortly before the liberation of the camp.

East German adaptation of Grimm‘s fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin“.

East German adaptation of Grimm‘s fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin“.

Post-war Germany: Like so many other women, Gerda Krause has lost her husband during the war and has to fend for herself and her two children. She finds work as a seamstress but refuses the offering of her department chief Zimmermann to upgrade her qualifications. One day she meets Uschi, an old friend of hers, whom she has helped with schoolwork before the war and subsequently lost track of. The reunion reminds Gerda of her childhood dream: to become a teacher. Thus, she decides to enroll at university to make her dream come true.

Actually, the Düsseldorf musician and composer Peter Weselin only wanted to spend his placid vacation with his uncle in the Vogtland village of Klingenthal. But in the city famous for its manufacture of musical instruments, the annual music festival is about to start. For the festival, the accordion factory asks Peter for a large composition for the symphonic orchestra. Furthermore, cute Anna asks him to write a pop song for her youth dance band. Thus, Peter finds no rest during his vacation.