Petra Nadolny

A Russian-Jewish teenager Dima gets into a school fight, and then breaks the fourth wall and passionately and ferociously talks about his views, and about the hypocritically tolerant way in which his world works.

Benjamin and his best friend Otto have to deal with the shrewd Zora Zack and to reach deep into their bag of tricks to save the Newtown Zoo.

Ben (11) and Tariq (12) have more in common than they realise. Both are new to school and football and have lost their homeland. Ben's village will soon became an open brown coal mine. He and his family move to a nearby city but Ben fails to fit in at his new school. Bullied, he returns secretly to his old, abandoned home. His one pleasure, football, pales with the arrival of Tariq, a Syrian refugee and better player. But when bureaucracy stops Tariq playing, he runs away, Ben finds him and learns that Tariq is desperate to be reunited with his scattered family. Jealousy on the football field becomes friendship and understanding.

Martin and Eric grew up in a small village in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. They have been friends since they were little boys and met when they were fishing, and from then on went to the lake together every Sunday. But their friendship is also marked by rivalry, because on one of their trips together they also met Frenni, who both fell in love with. The three of them roamed the woods and fields as children and remained friends when they grew up and Frenni got together with Eric. The couple is inseparable and very much in love, and this great love and the friendship of the threesome is only repeatedly tested by the drunken attacks by Eric’s unpredictable, aggressive twin brother Basti.

Four teenage friends - Frank, Spüli, Mücke, and Pommes - try to have their first contact with the opposite gender. Not so easy in the Ruhr region of the 80s. Attempts at dancing and being in a band go wrong, and their parents and teachers can't help with that, so the four teens need to get creative.

Udo is invisible - no one ever seems to notice him. He makes the most of it, working as a department store detective and living off other people's lives as they never notice him tagging along. Until he meets the one woman who sees him.

While Sasha's mother is dreaming of her son's great career as a pianist, Sasha is left speechless for other reasons: his beloved piano teacher Mr. Weber tells him, he is leaving town forever. Sasha is heartbroken, and the only person in whom he can confide his feelings, is his best friend, Jiao. As a son of an Ex-Yugoslav family even in Germany one rarely lives outside the closet, and Sasha is grateful that his homophobic father believes Jiao is his girlfriend. But what begins as a useful lie becomes a large and complicated one, when Sasha's younger brother, begins an affair with Jiao. All lies get exposed and what appears to be a catastrophe is in fact the revelation of new possibilities in the lives of Sasha's family.

When being sent to a boarding school for classical music, teenager Julia discovers rock music - and rock musicians. Torn between these two musical worlds, she has to find her own way.